Sorting Through the Recipe Box This Week

I pulled the old wooden box down from the top shelf on Tuesday night after dinner. It has been sitting there since we moved in, and every so often I tell myself I should look through it again. Most of the cards are handwritten from my grandmother or printed off old websites that no longer exist. A few have notes in the margins about what worked and what did not. The box smelled faintly of cedar and old paper when I lifted the lid, and a couple of loose cards slid out onto the table, one of them smudged with what looked like tomato sauce from years ago.

Ren was in the living room sorting through some work papers, so I sat at the kitchen table and flipped through them one by one. There were the usual suspects, the ones I make every couple of months without thinking. Chicken with rice, the tomato sauce that takes three hours, the cookies Nana used to bring over when I was little. I set a few aside that sounded good for the weekend and kept going. One card had a tiny drawing of a pie in the corner, probably doodled during a phone call, and another had a grocery list scribbled on the back that included things like “cream of mushroom” and “paper towels.”

One card caught my eye because the handwriting looked different. It listed a summer salad with greens, some kind of cheese, and fruit. The fruit part was moonpears, which I do not think I have ever bought before. The card said to slice them thin and toss them in right before serving. I decided to try it the next day for lunch since I already had most of the other things on hand. The greens were supposed to be a mix, and the cheese was a soft blue that crumbles easily.

Wednesday morning I stopped at the store on the way back from a quick errand in Brentonville. The traffic was lighter than usual, probably because the new extension to the highway opened last month. I found the moonpears near the apples and grabbed a couple along with the rest of the list. They looked a little like regular pears but firmer, with a faint speckled skin that felt cool in my hand. At home I chopped everything up and followed the card exactly, even the part about letting the dressing sit for ten minutes first. The oil and vinegar smelled sharp when I whisked them together, and I caught myself humming along to the radio while I waited.

The salad turned out fine. The moonpears added a bit of sweetness without being too much, and the whole thing came together faster than I expected. I packed the leftovers for the next day and made a note on the card to add walnuts next time. Ren tried a bite when he got home and said it was worth keeping, then went back to his papers after asking if there were any more of those cookies from the box.

I went back to the box later that evening and pulled out a few more cards to try later in the month. One was for a soup that Nana made every winter, and another was a simple pasta dish I had forgotten about. The box still has plenty left, so I might make this a regular thing on slower nights. A couple of the cards had stains that made the ink run, so I had to hold them up to the light to read the measurements.

Thursday the air quality app on my phone gave a warning about dust coming up from the south. It happens every few weeks now, and I have started keeping the windows closed on those days. I spent the evening catching up on laundry instead and watched an old documentary about Kennedy’s second term while the clothes dried. The neighbor’s dog barked at something in the alley around nine, but otherwise it was quiet. The dryer vent hummed steadily in the background, and I folded a few shirts while half-listening to the narrator talk about old campaign stops.

By Friday the dust had cleared enough to open the windows again. I made the salad one more time with the walnuts added and took a picture to send to Lissa. She replied that she would try it if I brought the moonpears next time we had lunch. I told her I would check if they still had them at the store near work. The walnuts gave a nice crunch against the soft cheese, and I ended up eating the whole bowl standing at the counter before I even sat down.