Recipes... Better than a Scrapbook

I usually cook like an Italian. Pinches, dashes, adjusting as I go, hoping for the best.

But when I bake I find myself resorting to favorites, distrusting my own instincts in the site of this complex chemistry taking place. Baking is a scientific art, if not an artistic science. In general, I need to bake something several times before I feel comfortable modifying it.

And so I find myself lost in my recipe books often, especially when cookies, bread, or pastries are to be made. Favorite recipes are warped and crusty with battered-finger prints, making them easy to find.

Smelling them cooking I am reminded of all the times I have made it before. A certain fudge cookie has been enjoyed by my brother who has passed away, a former boyfriend on deployment, women's groups I once belonged to, and countless parties long since ended. As I inhale, I conjure, briefly, the person I was each time I set the oven, softened butter, measured cocoa. The person I was each time, the people in my life.

A five chip cookie came in a book we received from Mark's mother and was first baked by my sister while we were bored on a visit. I remember the surprise of the book in our mailbox. I remember walking with Megan for the chips we needed.  It has since been my fail-safe recipe. The cookie I always turn to.

A french bread recipe is my first successful yeast bread.  It was been a gift for elderly neighbors, made for visiting relatives, eaten when I discovered my new favorite soups.  It is, to me, the first hint of fall. It failed three times when we moved to our new home, and I worried it was a bad omen. But then it rose again, the bread and I both less stressed.

They are better than a scrapbook. I am immersed in each one. The touch, the feel of mixing batter, dropping dough. The scent when I know definitively that each batch is ready. The taste of the trial cookie. The sight of extra on the counter. This is what we miss when we pass by a life from scratch.