Cooking up a Story

Photo by Helena McMurdo
Writer, Linda Light's recipe books are peppered with recipes clipped from newspapers, written by hand, and sometimes, they come by mail as — like this letter from Light's mother with recipes for chili, crab casserole, pink and apple pudding with notes about boyfriends, sore throats and the comings and goings of family.
Auntie Marg’s toffee. A cup, a cup, three cups, a can.
Krishna, above, was the most legendary of our family cooks. But he rarely committed his recipes to paper. His measurements, much like his life, were based on instinct rather than conscious thought. When he died, it was the women who gathered his recipes into a collection, scouring his papers, our own recipe books, what he had shared with friends, our recollections as his sous-chefs.