The Recipe Box

I read about this in the San Francisco Chronicle. Maggie Mason found the plastic recipe box at the Alameda flea market a few years ago. It was intact. Yet mysterious. The 800 plus recipes were clearly well-loved and stained from use. But the woman who collected them remains unknown. Maggie started to share the recipes on Instagram, posting one a day on Instagram, calling the project the Kitchen Committee (@thekitchencommittee). Followers on the site claim the posted recipe and promise to make it within a week, posting comments and feedback back to the Instagram feed.

Some favorites:

Home Baked Beans
Broccoli with Corn Cheese
Candied Sweet Potatoes

The project has a devoted following, with more than 2,000 followers. I love it for so many reasons: the devotion to recreating vintage recipes, the community created around the cooking and sharing, and the very idea that something so everyday as a recipe box can evoke long-buried memories of taste (Velveeta anybody?) and family meals eaten while young. As Maggie Mason said in the article, “for someone like me, who doesn’t have a family recipe box that’s been passed down, it can sort of become a surrogate
family recipe box.”

Ideally, she continues, the Kitchen Committee members will determine the box’s owner and reunite it with her family members. But even if they don’t, her collection will live on, a portrait of a time and a place and a woman’s intimate choices of what to cook and what to keep.

What treasured recipes have you received from a loved one? What do they make you feel? Remember? Do you still use them? Why? Let us know: email WhatLivesLongest@gmail.com.