My Recipe Book
Community Recipes
Jennifer Bar Life-Long West Perth ResidentIn a world where one can type into a search engine for a recipe and have thousands of possible options pop up instantly, or have hundreds of menu plans pinned on a digital board, having a recipe book with handwritten recipes may seem to some a little antiquated.
In our ever disconnected modern world, sharing food and recipes is an important tie to others, an almost radical act of intentional community creation. Flipping through my recipe book, I revel in as many memories as I do flipping through a photo album. Each recipe is connected to shared meals, deaths, births, parties. Each time I eat with friends, family, or even strangers, we build our bonds and break down barriers.
Every day we are interacting with others in many seemingly minute and unimportant ways, but these moments are the almost miraculous creation of community. The energy we put into every action comes back to us in the most unexpected ways. We create community, and then community creates and sustains us right back.
My favourite example of this, from my recipe book, is a folded recipe given to me by a former colleague.
In my twenties, I started my career supporting adults with special needs with their daily living. Through that work I met an amazing group of people. One of these wonderful humans was Marion. Now, those of you who know me, know I am a ‘bit’ of a talker. I love to meet new people, learn about them, and watch how they create community. I literally have a degree in it - Sociocultural Anthropology. So it likely won’t surprise you that Marion and I had some lengthy discussions at times, she was passionate about Tai Chi, a compassionate support provider, and wonderfully likeable.
One cold winter morning, Marion’s husband Phil popped in to our workplace to pick her up, and Marion took that moment to introduce us. That small act of introduction is linked to my recipe book.
He and I had one of those small town moments, whereupon hearing my last name, he became suddenly invested and realized we may share a connection. Phil asked if I knew a woman named Nettie Marriott, whose maiden name was, if he recalled correctly, also Barr. She was a woman he had known some 30+ years before. That moment could just as easily have been an unremarkable introduction, but what followed was a sharing of information that has stuck with me.
Nettie was my great aunt, the elder sister of my paternal grandfather. Due to some stretched out generations, she passed away long before my parents married. I knew her only from pictures and stories. As it turned out, when Phil was in his early twenties, he had rented a room from Aunt Net. He lived with her for enough time to get to know her cheeky humour, generous nature, and to enjoy many a meal at her table. These stories he recalled to me in our discussion that cold morning.
This act of feeding someone, aiding in the continued nourishment of their body and very being, is something we underestimate and undervalue. By cooking for Phil, Net made a ripple that miraculously reached through time, to me, her great niece. Several days after our introduction and discussion, I received a handwritten note from Marion, with Aunt Net’s Oatmeal Cookie Recipe on it. This isn’t a recipe I use regularly, but it is one that warms my heart. Through this recipe, Marion and Phil had become a bridge to a part of my family that I would never have had the chance to know otherwise. I can make my father the cookies that his aunt made him as a child. In sharing them with my daughter, I am passing down stories, community, and food.
Whether Aunt Net shared this recipe, having received from her Scottish great grandmother, or like the famous FRIENDS TV scene plays out for Phoebe Buffay, it came from the Nestle Tollhouse packet, isn’t the point. The sharing of food over generations matters; it creates something undefinable.
I made friends, connections, community and they made me. The humble handwritten recipe is a mode of cultural sharing, community building and connection, and I want more that these days.
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
- JRR Tolkien
“Food, in the end, in our own tradition, is something holy. It’s not about nutrients and calories. It’s about sharing. It’s about honesty. It’s about identity.”