A Recipe Is A Story

This story of recipes and concentric circles of hospitality takes me back to my mother's amazing baking (today would be Nancy Jane's 105th birthday). Her breads and cinnamon rolls were legendary and labor-intensive: eggs from our chickens, cream from our cow Bessie, water pumped from the well. We joked that neighbors could smell the bread baking over the telephone's party line. She created feasts and our garments from comparatively primitive technology. I think of hospitable friends now and specialties they bake: one's melted chocolate lava cake, and another's sourdough bread. I've memorized a recipe for sweet potato muffin with blueberries and walnuts, so easy to share and nourishing, delicious warmed. I watched again the movie 'Babette's Feast." A story of a chef and her act of radical hospitality in a creative meal that suspended time and place. The feast magically created reconciliation in a small group of villagers whose hearts had become cold. Their eyes and hearts and palettes softened; they tasted infinite mercy and grace around the table of Babette's service and sacrifice.