Lee's new book, 
Recipe Box
My mother's recipe box sits on the windowsill above our kitchen sink where my eye falls on it twenty, maybe thirty times a day. I will never move it. An anachronism in this modern kitchen, the battered box contains her whole life's story, in a way, with all its places and phases, all her hopes and the accommodations she made in the name of love, as I have done, as we all do. An odd green-gold in color, she "antiqued" and then "decoupaged" it with domestic decals of the Fifties: one depicts a rolling pin, a flour sifter, a vase of daisies, and a cheerful, curly-headed Mom wearing a red bead necklace; another shows a skillet, a milk bottle, a syrup pitcher, three eggs, and a grinning Dad in an apron.Oh, who are these people? My father never touched a spatula in his life. My mother suffered from "bad nerves," also "nervous stomach," and colitis. She lived mostly on milk toast herself, yet she never failed to produce a nutritious supper for my father and me, including all the four Food Groups, for she had first come to our remote Appalachian town as a home economics teacher. Our perfect supper was ready every night at six thirty, the time a family ought to eat, in Mama's opinion, though my workaholic daddy never got home from his dimestore till 8 or 9 p.m. at the earliest, despite his best intentions. Somewhere in that two-hour stretch, I would have been allowed to eat alone, reading a book-my favorite thing in the world. My mother would have had her milk toast. And when my father finally had his own solitary supper, warmed to an unrecognizable crisp in the oven, he never failed to pronounce it "absolutely delicious-the best thing I've ever put in my mouth!" and my mother never failed to believe him, to give him her beautiful, tremulous smile, wearing the "Fire and Ice" lipstick she'd hurriedly applied when she heard his car in the driveway. Well, they loved each other. They were deeply, passionately in love, to my horror and embarrassment-two sweet, fragile people who carefully bore this great love like a large glass object, incredibly delicate, along life's path.
My mother's recipe box reflects the journey. She was born on Chincoteague Island, off Virginia's Eastern Shore, in 1908; her father, a high-rolling oysterman and harness racer, killed himself when she was only three, leaving a pile of debt and six children for my grandmother to raise alone. She turned their big Victorian home into a boardinghouse, and it was here in this boardinghouse kitchen that my mother learned to cook. Her recipe box holds sixteen different recipes for oysters, including Oyster Stew, Oyster Fritters, Oyster Pie, Scalloped Oysters, and the Biblical-sounding Balaam's Oysters. Clams are prepared "every whichaway," as she would have put it. There's also Planked Shad, Cooter Pie, and Pine Bark Stew. Mr. Hop Biddle's Hushpuppies bear the notation, "tossed to the hounds around the campfire to keep them quiet." Mama notes that the favorite breakfast at the boardinghouse was fried fish, corn meal cakes, and hot coffee. These corn meal cakes remained her specialty from the time she was a little girl, barely able to reach the stove, until her death 84 years later in the mountains so far from her island home. I imagine her as a child, biting her bottom lip in concentration, and wiping perspiration off her pretty little face as she flips those corn meal cakes on the hot griddle. Later I see her walking miles across the ice in winter, back to college on the mainland.
Her lofty aspirations were reflected in her recipes: Lady Baltimore Cake came from Cousin Nellie who had "married well and got herself a butler;" the hopeful Plantation Plum Pudding and Soirée Punch were contributed by my Aunt Gay-Gay down in Alabama, the very epitome of something Mama desperately wanted to attain. She wanted me to attain it, too, sending me down to Birmingham every summer for Lady Lessons ("Don't point; Don't make a scene; Don't sit like that!") The Asparagus Souffle came from my elegant Aunt Millie who had married a Northern steel executive who actually cooked dinner for us himself, wearing an apron. He produced a roast beef which was bright red in the middle; at first I was embarrassed for him, but then it turned out that he'd meant to do it that way all along; he thought red meat was good, apparently, and enjoyed wearing the apron.
But the recipes Mama actually used-these soft, weathered index cards covered with thumbprints and spatters-reflect her deep involvement with her husband's family and their Appalachian community; Venison Stew, Mrs. Owens' Soup Beans, Ava McClanahan's Apple Stack Cake, my grandmother's Methodist Church Supper Salad, and my favorite, Fid's Funeral Meatloaf. I also love her bridge club recipes, such as Chicken Crunch (cut-up chicken, mushroom soup, celery, water chestnuts, Chinese noodles) and Lime Angel Mold. (All the bridge club recipes involve mushroom soup, or jello, or Dream Whip.) I can see Mama now, greeting her friends at the door in her favorite black and white polka dot dress.
Here's the recipe for Mama's famous loaf bread, which she made every week. I make this bread often myself, because the smell of it baking in the oven brings my mother back to me so vividly. In my memory she's always in her kitchen, and she's always cooking, smoking a Salem cigarette, and drinking a cup of coffee from the percolator which is always going in the corner; Johnny Cash sings "Ring of Fire" on the radio while the coal train roars along the mountainside behind our house. Somebody else is always in the kitchen with us-a neighbor from down the road, a friend from out of town, some of our innumerable cousins-eating and drinking, rocking and talking, always talking, giving us the real lowdown on somebody. I write and draw at my own little table, but really I'm all ears: I live for these stories.
I never did turn into the kind of lady Mama had in mind. The Lady Lessons didn't take, though I married a man who eats rare meat, wears an apron himself upon occasion, and makes a terrific risotto. But I live for stories, still, and many of them still come to me in my mother's voice, punctuated by her infectious laugh, her conspiratorial "Now promise you won't tell a soul."