Mother’s Recipe Box

Sarah Russell

My thanks to Your Daily Poem for publishing my poem this morning as part of their Poetry Parade for Poetry Month.

Mother’s Recipe Box

Friday night baked beans with salt pork, molasses, 
and just enough water to keep them covered, 
simmering in the bean pot her mother used. 

Refrigerator rolls, dusted with flour, punched down, 
rolled out to rise again as doughnuts, cloverleaf rolls 
for company, hamburger buns for picnics. The dough 

kept a week in a big bowl covered with wax paper 
that took up most of a shelf in the icebox, its recipe card 
with Mother’s school teacher penmanship, splotched 

from yeasty hands and buttered fingers. And oh my, 
the Jello concoctions—celery, slivered carrots 
and pineapple in jiggly lime or orange with a mayo 

and sour cream topping. And the congealed 
Christmas staple of cranberries from the grinder 
with orange bits and that ubiquitous celery. 

Some of the cards have friends’ names—Hilda’s cherry pie, 
Wilma’s meatloaf. Some have culinary graphics in a corner—
wooden spoons, checked aprons, Italian chefs winking. 

My daughter asked for the box awhile back. It blesses 
her kitchen from a high shelf. I doubt she has ever used 
the recipes, but she knows its legacy, its secrets.   


 

8 thoughts on “Mother’s Recipe Box”

  3. Lovely poem, Sarah. Although I have no children, I do have fond memories of my mother’s recipes that somehow disappeared when clearing out my mother’s estate. I tried duplicating my mother’s chicken and dumplings, the dish she most often made for my new husband and me when we went over on Sundays to do our laundry. I tried Maya Angelou’s recipe. To give Maya some credit, her sauce was tastier than Mama’s with the addition of onions, celery, and carrots, but the dumplings were more like rocks than my mother’s heavenly clouds.

    Alarie Tennille alariepoet.com

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