On Family Recipes

I speak in praise of family foods. Not just the things that appear once a year on holidays, but the things that you think of when you are far from home. The things you crave when you've eaten restaurant food for a week straight. The chicken-and-dumpling soup (made with the leftover chicken carcass, of course), the new potatoes and peas, the Sunday morning waffles, the raisin snack cake. That thing that no one seems to understand the deliciousness of outside your family. There are things you don't want to admit to for fear of snobbish judgment: things with cream of chicken soup or Velveeta or prunes or potato chip topping.

You take them for granted. Your parents or grandparents make them, so you don't need to. There may be better recipes; recipes that are either more elaborate or easier, but not quite the same. But grandmas don't last forever, and neither do moms. The food that reminds you of them will be lost.

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*If your parents and grandparents are still alive, get those recipes soon. Today would be ideal.

*If you have children or grandchildren, write down your recipes and get them each a copy.

*Answer: What foods remind you of home? What were the foods you ate most as a child?