Recipes for Remembering

Recipes for Remembering

As the days grow shorter and the mornings turn crisp, I find myself reaching for my recipe box. It happens every fall. I spread the cards across the counter and start planning what I’ll make for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cooking has always been one of my great joys, but it’s also one of the ways I remember the people I’ve loved and lost.

Thanksgiving wasn’t a holiday I enjoyed as a kid. The day felt tense—emotions high, anxiety simmering, everyone a little on edge. So much seemed to ride on the meal and the gathering. But somewhere in college, a few of my classmates and I realized we’d all grown up with similar feelings. Together, we decided it didn’t have to be that way. We chose to reclaim the holiday.

Now, thirty years later, Thanksgiving is my very favorite day of the year. It’s low-stakes. There’s good food—traditional food—but I celebrate it the way some people honor saints’ feast days or Burns Night: by remembering the people who are no longer with us. In my case, that means making their signature dishes, pulling out their photographs, lighting candles. Remembering them. And keeping it simple.

One of those early college Thanksgiving friends wrote a few years back on social media about cooking from his mother’s and grandmother’s splattered old cookbooks, and his words have stayed with me:

“It’s hard to stand in the kitchen with sleeves rolled up and apron secured; pots bubbling, cutting boards dirtied, measuring spoons temporarily missing, and not think that I’ve entered into one of those spiritual thin-spaces. Cooking their food… trying to recreate by taste and smell the recipes that went with them to their rest. We miss them all terribly, but know they are with us still. Even in the messiness of the kitchen on Thanksgiving Eve.”

He captures something so beautifully that I’ve always felt but never quite said aloud. The holidays are lovely, but they can also be hard. Every year, there are more empty seats. For those who have lost someone recently, the season can feel especially heavy. This year I lost my father-in-law, who was my partner in crime in every way. He was such a good dad, a wonderful grandpa, a loving husband, and he treated me like I was his own daughter. And he loved my baked sweet potato recipe.

So this year, like I do every Thanksgiving, I pulled out my grandmother’s recipe for whipped twice-baked sweet potatoes. When I look at the photo I snapped after sliding the pan out of the oven, I can see her face in my mind. My Grandma Fran died when I was ten, so I barely knew her, but I remember the holidays at her house. She loved to cook and entertain, and she made every gathering feel special.

She was born in Indiana, the daughter of Polish immigrants. At her house, NPR played quietly in the background, and there was always the faint hint of cigarette smoke. Even today, if I see a burgundy Cadillac or Buick, I think of her. These sensory flashes—small as they are—are what linger.

That’s why we make these recipes, most of them only once a year. It’s why we brew a big pot of coffee and let the kids sleep in. It’s why we prepare the food the old way, the way our mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and aunts prepared it. Cooking is remembering. It’s how we honor them, how we tell their stories, how we share a piece of them with the next generation.

The sweet potatoes, like they were my father-in-law's, are my teenage son’s favorite dish at Thanksgiving. I love telling him that it was his great-grandmother’s recipe—one she made for our family long before he was born. And when I roll out pie dough with my daughter, I tell her about the solid maple rolling pin that once belonged to my great-grandmother, brought with her from Hungary. It’s the only heirloom I inherited from my maternal grandmother, and every time I use it, I feel those generations in my hands.

At Thanksgiving, we also make my Grandma Anne’s cranberry relish. It’s a lot of people’s favorite part of the meal because it’s so unique—and so elegant and straightforward, unlike the canned stuff.

Sometimes these are the only physical items we have: dishes, utensils, recipe cards. But what matters more is the way those items come alive in our hands—how the stories travel with them. They remind us who we came from, and in turn, who we are.

So as I make these recipes this season, I’ll keep telling my kids the stories of the people they never had the chance to know. I’ll keep filling the table with more than food—with memory, with love, with continuity.

That’s what my friend meant when he called it a thin space: a moment where memory, love, and the ordinary work of cooking all meet.

And this year, I’ve also been on a pumpkin kick—something I probably need to acknowledge. I made a new pumpkin pie recipe, and this morning I experimented with spiced pumpkin pancakes. A few days ago, it was pumpkin biscuits with honey butter. Last summer I grew sugar pie pumpkins, and although the plants only produced about six, the yield was impressive: nearly eight quarts of pumpkin purée. I froze it all, but every time I open the chest freezer for something else, I’m reminded of that stash. So yes—expect more pumpkin recipes.

I’d love to hear from you, too.
What recipes keep someone’s memory alive at your table?
What dishes do you make in their honor?
Do you share their stories with your children or grandchildren?

Because that’s what food does, more than almost anything else. It keeps us connected—to the ones who came before, and to the ones gathered around us now.

Recipes: 

Pecan Bars My new favorite bars recipe.

Parker House Rolls

Baked Sweet Potatoes

4 lbs. sweet potatoes, 1/2 t. allspice, 1/4 t. nutmeg, pinch of cloves, 3/4 cup butter, 1/2 t. cinnamon, 1/4 t ginger, salt and pepper.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the potatoes on a rimmed baking sheet. Slit the skin of the potatoes down the center. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Remove. Cool slightly. Lower oven to 350 degrees. Scoop out the pulp of the potatoes (discard the skins), and put into an 8-9 cup baking dish. Add remaining ingredients, whip with a hand-held mixer (like you're whipping mashed potatoes), and then dot with butter. You can also mix them in a bowl, and then transfer to the baking dish. Bake for 1 hour uncovered.

Classic Stuffing

2 lbs hearty white sandwich bread (I will usually buy the 1 lb baguettes or Italian loaves, whole at the grocery if I am thinking far enough in advance). 16 tablespoons of butter (2 sticks), 4 onions  (chopped fine), 4 celery ribs (chopped fine), 4 teaspoons of poultry seasoning, 1 3/4 t. salt, 1 t. pepper, and 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth. 

Make sure the bread is fairly stale. What I do is I purchase it or make it a few days before, and then two days before I want to make the stuffing, I tear it up, (discard most of the crusts), and put it in a bowl, cover with a towel, and put it out of sight .. maybe in the oven for a day or two. Then it's ready to absorb all the juices and be fluffy and crispy.

Next, in a large skillet, melt all the butter over medium-low heat, stirring constantly until it turns nutty brown, about 5-7 minutes. Reserve 3 tablespoons of the butter for later. Add onions and celery to the skillet, increase the heat to medium, and cook until browned, 12-15 minutes. Stir in the poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Then add the vegetable mixture to the bowl with the bread.

Heat the oven to 425 degrees. In the now-empty skillet, add 2 cups of broth and cook over high heat, scraping up any browned bits, and reduce the broth to 1 cup, about 6-8 minutes. Combine the remaining 4 cups of broth and reduced broth with the vegetable bread mixture into the big bowl, and let it sit for 10 minutes. You can stir it once or twice, but don't let it get mushy.  Transfer the stuffing to a 13 x 9-inch baking dish and press into an even layer. Drizzle the reserved butter evenly over the top and bake on an upper-middle rack until golden brown and crisp, 35-45 minutes. Let it cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes

1 cup of flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 t. baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, or cinnamon, 1/4 t. baking soda, 1/4 t. salt, 2 eggs, 3/4 cup buttermilk, 1/2 cup plain yogurt or sour cream, 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree, 2 tablespoons cooking oil or melted butter, 1/2 t. vanilla, and maple syrup for serving.

In a mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. In another bowl, combine all the wet ingredients plus the eggs. Mix them together by adding the bowl of wet ingredients into the dry. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy - but don't overmix, because buttermilk could get tough the longer you mix it). Heat up a skillet or griddle, spray with baking spray to help it be more non-stick, or use melted butter. Drop the batter by 1/4 cupful's. Cook about 2 minutes each side. 

Serve warm with honey butter and/or pure maple syrup. Makes about 12 pancakes.

Cranberry Relish

I'm sharing this recipe with you because I love you. This is my Grandma Anne's cranberry relish. Enjoy!

1 bag of fresh cranberries, 1 large granny smith apple, 1 orange, 1 cup of sugar. 

Remove the rind and the skin from the orange and the apple. Place everything in a food processor and process until smooth. You can add a little bit of orange juice, or some apple cider if you want to thin it out or adjust the taste. You could also add water instead. Or if it's too tart, you can add up to 1/2 cup additional sugar. But that's it! You can make this days ahead because it tastes better after it's been made and sits in the cool refrigerator before the meal. Store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Brown Butter Pecan Pie (from 4 and Twenty Blackbirds) I have their cookbook, so I don't want to reprint it here without their permission. But if you want the recipe, chat me up and I'll snap a picture for you. The biggest difference is that you are putting browned butter into the puree, using only 1 cup of evaporated milk, and you are using 4 eggs in the custard (2 whole eggs, and 2 egg yolks). Slightly time intensive compared to the average pumpkin pie, but 100% Worth it.