There are many ways to describe any person, but this title refers to my position between the woman and girl who have meant the most to me, my mother, Rosa Randolph Taylor Robinson and granddaughter, Rosa Lee Williams. I don’t know how my mother happened to be given the name Rosa, but granddaughter Rosa was named for her two great grandmothers, Rosa Robinson and Rose Stenberg. I was named Betty Mae by my brother, who was nearly twelve when I was born. He named me for mother and daughter cousins who were distant if you only look at a family tree, but close if you take into account feelings. We had lots of cousins like that when I was growing up, both blood and honorary.
Mother was a wonderful cook, and accumulated quite a few recipes. Some were written neatly on recipe cards, but most were scrawled on the back of receipts, deposit slips, strips torn from paper bags, scraps of notebook paper and in the margins of her cookbooks. Some were written in pencil and others in ballpoint pen which is now fading away. Some are in her handwriting and others in the handwriting of the friends who gave her the recipes. They were tucked away in a wooden recipe box, stuck between the pages of her cookbooks, or stuffed into an embroidered recipe holder. If memory serves, Mother had only two cookbooks, while I have way too many, plus access to all those recipes on the internet. The lesson to be learned from that is that while having more recipes may make for a more varied menu, it does not make one a better cook.
I am now the keeper of those recipes as well as a few recipes from other relatives, including my mother-in-law, Iris Parrish Williams, another fine cook, and friends. There are also a few that I adapted by trial and error after tasting them in the homes of friends and in restaurants.
Since my brother died last year, I am also the oldest keeper of family memories, and I find myself reflecting upon them more often than I did when he was alive. During a recent visit from my niece and her family, while teaching her to make lacy cornbread, it occurred to me that I am the only one left to pass on family stories and recipes to Rosa, her dad and her cousins. Since I’m not getting any younger, it seemed that now would be as good a time to start as any.
Many of these recipes were collected before we thought much about the danger that resided in all that yummy goodness, though Mother did try to avoid salt in day to day cooking because of Daddy’s high blood pressure. I want to keep you dear friends and relations alive and healthy for as long as possible,so it is only right that I tell you, especially you beginning meal planners and cooks, that for the sake of your arteries and your waistlines, many, if not most, of these recipes should be relegated to the “ special treat” category. That said, I would also put many of them in the “best things I ever put in my mouth” category.
I decided to pass this information along in blog form because organizing the recipes and my reminiscences into book form with beginning, middle and end would have been just too much work and taken too long. By the time I finished, Rosa would have grandchildren of her own. Blogging seems to be a better method for a person who tends to think in a stream of consciousness sort of way.
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