texasmesquite

Recipe boxes offer more than dinner

Heather McPherson FOOD
Source: Orlandosentienel.com

What if a hurricane destroyed your family's written culinary history? Could you re-create your favorite Thanksgiving stuffing recipe from scratch? Could you move on without Aunt Ella's spice cake with caramel icing?

If you met up with Charley, Frances, Jeanne or any of the other storms of 2004, you may already have dealt with this ordeal.

Food not only comforts us, it tells the story of our life. And as we prepare for the holiday season, the recipes near and dear to us come into play.

I was recently in New Orleans for the Association of Food Journalists annual conference. In the aftermath of Katrina, the staff of the Times Picayune newspaper began an immediate dialogue with their readers to help replace treasured recipes collections.

A reader named Phyllis Marquart suggested to food editor Judy Walker that the reader recipe exchange column be re-themed to address the recorded losses of one of America's great culinary destinations. After all, cookbooks sat for weeks in stench-filled water. Pencil-written recipes faded into unreadable messes. Precious files blew away to who knows where.

On Oct. 27, 2005, Walker invited readers to participate in a column called "Rebuilding New Orleans, Recipe By Recipe." With the help of readers and the newspaper archives, the column grew into a recovery gift. Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found From the Times Picayune of New Orleans (Chronicle Books, $24.95).

The devastation of the Lake Mack storms and hurricanes of our recent past made me think of the wealth of information in the test kitchen archives. In more active hurricane seasons, I am generally busy telling you what to keep or toss in the refrigerator after power outages.

We hope we never see the devastation of a Katrina again. But we know a horrific sucker punch like that delivered by Charley or Camille is possible.

I'll always be on call to help readers weather any storm. But after flipping through the pages of Cooking Up a Storm, I have a new resolve to keep our electronic recipe archives intact.

It's not just food on the table, it's Central Florida's culinary legacy. Those recipes reflect our history, diversity, struggles and our growth as an important agricultural state.

Really, could we live in a world without Lee's Lakeside's Pina Colada Muffins or Dixie Crossroad's Corn Fritters? I think not.