from left to right: Ania, Carla, Jan, and Laura

We grew up in a family that loved food, a family that had more than a few stellar cooks, a family that really and truly enjoyed being around the table with each other. This blog is simply a collection of family recipes for the food we loved as children, learned to cook as we grew up, included on menus when we planned special meals for our friends, or experimented with when we were bored and wanted to taste something new. Some of the recipes were given to us by friends, when we tasted food at their tables that we wanted to enjoy again or share with others. Some are recipes that we still cook regularly, and some are so out-of-fashion or inexact – or just plain weird – that we will probably never make them again.

What all of them have in common is that each of them evokes a memory of the cooking or the cook or the other people around the table who shared it with us. That’s the reason why we decided to put all of them together in one place. Sure, we can always find an interesting recipe on the internet, but taking a bite of pound cake made from a century-old recipe returns us to the table where we first tasted it, and helps us remember all of the people in our lives who loved it too.

We want to share those memories with our friends, our children, and our grandchildren.

All of the recipes are from our recipe boxes and notebooks. If a friend gave it to us, we’ve acknowledged the credit. However, we are certain that some of these recipes were copied from newspapers or magazines or other cookbooks throughout the years. Unfortunately, if you’ve been cooking something for decades, perhaps from a recipe you got from your sister who got it from someone she worked with, it’s impossible to track down the original creator or publisher. (Or, in the case of a few recipes, to even agree who we got it from in the first place.) We have deliberately omitted any recipes we cook often but determined came from copyrighted sources. Yes, we are well aware that the U.S. Supreme Court long ago decided that a “factual compilation” (like a cookbook) may be copyrightable, but copyright protection is limited to the “particular selection or arrangement” and never to the facts (the recipes) themselves. But we were raised to play fair.

We note here one significant exception to the fairness doctrine: several recipes that our paternal grandmother handed down to us also appear in the cookbook her younger sister published in 1983 (Nela’s Cookbook, Knopf, now sadly out of print). Hey, family recipes are family recipes; also, we honestly don’t think our cousins will mind.

Originally, we intended to compile a family cookbook to serve as a long-overdue thank you to Kate, a woman whose last name we don’t know but who cooked in Grammy’s kitchen in the 1920s and 1930s and who taught our mother to cook. More important, Kate taught our mother how to live with dignity, self-respect, and grace under the most difficult circumstances, as well as the ability to recognize injustice and the courage to fight against it. She left our family a greater legacy than she and her descendants could ever know. We are grateful to her and to them, whoever and wherever they are, for everything she gave to us.

However, as we were working on the book, we unexpectedly lost our best family cook: our eldest sister Ania. She inherited every culinary star and sparkle of the best who came before her – our grandmothers, our great-aunts, and all of the forgotten mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles before her. She had what the best cooks have: not just technical skills, not just experience, not just the ability to know instinctively what would or would not work. She had the gift of knowing, unconsciously, viscerally, with all of her senses, when something in a pan or bowl looked right or wrong and what to do to move it from “it’ll do” to “that’s perfect.” She welcomed friends and family and strays to her tables, fed and cared for and loved us all with an abundance of patience and kindness most people seldom find. We loved cooking with her and eating at her tables. Our family meals will never again be complete without her.