The Recipe Box | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: The Recipe Box | Previous Challenge Entry
By Angie Schulte
01/27/06
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It didn’t look like much. It never really had. It was just an old green metal box that held 4X6 recipe cards with a motif of apples all around the hinged lid. It’s funny though when Mom died two years ago, it was the only thing that my sister and I argued over. We both wanted that little green box. The only resolution lay in joint custody. We traded with a quarterly tradition. Whoever had the box would cook one of Mom’s special recipes before handing it off for the next three months. It was a wonderful time to remember the uniqueness of our mother.

As a child, the recipe box sat on the cabinet to the left of the stove right beside the heavy wooden breadbox. I remember standing beside her barely able to see the top of the cabinet and waiting with all kinds of excitement to see what magic she would conjure up out of that little box. My favorite was “Amy’s Chocolate Chip Sprinkles”. She had modified a chocolate chip cookie recipe to include my name and lots of other little magic things. She had added a dash of Amy’s Gifts (actually chocolate sprinkles) and a scoop of Amy’s Giggles (actually pecans) along with a heap of magic (actually just an empty bottle labeled “Magic”). My sister, Laura’s favorite was “Laura’s No Bake People”. The No Bake cookies were green and Laura never had to share because, well, green people cookies with tiny raisin eyes weren’t all that appealing.

There were all kinds of interesting recipes in that box such as “Amy’s Laughing Soup” and “Laura’s Limp Lasagna”. Mom could be counted on to try and test anything when it came to cooking. When it came to other stuff, well she was the normal harping and yelling “please pick up after yourself type of Mom”, but the most amazing thing was the space that she gave Laura and I to be ourselves. She not only gave it, she created it.

In that little box, she created the time and place for us to find and explore the wonder of who we were and what we could become. I remember she was always telling Laura & I that “the place you find yourself, is the space that God granted you, to become yourself”.

The little green box wasn’t about the recipes written in ink encased within it, it was about the loving space that Mom had created as a result of it. So nope, it didn’t look like much, but to Laura & I, it was the greatest gift that our mother had left us with.

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