Thanks to TikTok, I’m in the middle of a full-blown kitchen reorganization project—swapping my pantry with my upper and lower cabinets in hopes of creating something more functional (at least that’s the hope). I thought it would be a quick weekend task. Just clear some shelves, make things easier to reach, maybe label a few containers. Simple, right?
Wrong.
Because tucked in the back of an upper cabinet, buried behind a stash of birthday candles and the waffle iron I never use, were all my old cookbooks. The moment I touched that stack, time stopped. Dust floated through the light like it does in a movie, and suddenly I was holding a hundred different versions of home in my hands.
It’s been years since I looked at these books. These days, I find most of my recipes online—Instagram reels, blog posts, asking ChatGPT to create a weekly menu using only the random things I found in my pantry and fridge, and of course, the endless scroll of TikTok food hacks. But back then, meals weren’t saved in digital folders. They were scribbled in the margins of cookbooks, jotted on index cards, cut from magazines, or typed on yellowing paper with a typewriter that missed the “e” every so often.
There are recipes in that pile from everyone. From my grandparents and parents. My aunts and uncles. From my mother-in-law, and a few surprise gems from my husband’s side of the family. Some pages are smudged with grease or flour, others wrinkled from years of handling. Some are barely legible, like they were scribbled down in a hurry before the next pot boiled over. But all of them carry the rhythm of family—the small rituals that made ordinary days feel sacred.
And then I found the one.
My very first cookbook.
It was a birthday gift—maybe when I turned four or five. I must’ve taken it very seriously, because there are little notes in the margins about which recipes I liked (apparently I had very strong feelings about fried chicken), and inside the front cover is my signature, written and rewritten every few years like I was leaving breadcrumbs for future-me. Watching my handwriting change from crooked little letters to more confident loops was oddly emotional.
I held that book for a long time.
Tucked among the handwritten cards and typewritten pages, I found something else—Cooking for Dummies. A different kind of heirloom, but just as meaningful. Before John and I met, he had launched out on his own—new state, new job, first apartment all to himself. In that season of figuring life out, he picked up that book and went page by page, teaching himself how to cook.
I met him just a few months later, and those beginner recipes quickly turned into sweet date nights—us, side by side in the kitchen, learning more about each other over chopping boards and boiling pots.
The first time he met my family, he decided to cook for them—spaghetti bolognese, one of his go-to recipes from that book. It called for a classic mirepoix mix: onions, celery, and carrots, sautéed together until golden. My 12-year-old brother was horrified. He couldn’t figure out why we were sneaking vegetables—especially carrots—into his spaghetti. We still laugh about it.
It hit me that so many of these recipes are more than just food—they’re stories. They’re laughter in the kitchen, holidays with mismatched chairs, “oops, I accidentally mixed up the sugar and salt” moments, and quiet Sunday afternoons when someone just wanted to make you feel loved. They’re proof that someone once stood in a kitchen thinking, “I want to make something good.”
I meant to reorganize my cabinets today. Clear out the clutter, swap some shelves, make things easier to reach. But somewhere between the flour-dusted pages and the faded ink, I forgot about my to-do list. Instead, I remembered who I came from.
From grandmothers who measured by feel, not by spoon.
From uncles who made one signature dish—but made it flawlessly.
From parents who cooked with love and a little improvisation.
From generations of hands that stirred, seasoned, served.
Each recipe, a fingerprint.
Each note in the margin, a whisper from the past.
What I found instead was a timeline of love—flavored by tradition, spiced with curiosity, and simmered over decades of togetherness. And that feels like the kind of recipe worth keeping right on the top shelf.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
