The Pink Cookbook

First published in Ponca City Monthly, September 2022.

In my kitchen cabinet, there is a pink cookbook. It's not a fancy cookbook, in fact, it's rather plain. On the cover of the recipe book is a drawing of a rocking chair, with a simple wooden side table and oil lamp, and a small bible resting delicately near the lamp.

I received this pink cookbook in August of 1995. I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was a sweltering summer Oklahoma day. I was ten years old, with not a care in the world. Family had traveled from all over the country to a small rural town in Oklahoma to celebrate the birthday of my 100-year-old great, great grandmother Gertrude. We had all manner of food and there were children running and playing as the adult relatives caught up after years spent apart.

The elder women of my very large family felt it imperative to mark the birthday occasion with the creation of a family cookbook. Over the course of a year, painstaking time was spent collecting, compiling, and composing family recipes and memories. Members of all ages contributed, from a "how to make snow ice cream" from a young cousin to my great, great grandmother Gertrude's own recipe for making canned preserves. The cookbook was titled Making Memories.

I remember my mom telling me that day that I had a cookbook with my name written on the inside cover, and that she would keep it for me and give it to me when I was older. Every member of the family, including all the grandchildren, were given a copy. At the time I thought nothing of it. My Mom gave it to me after I got married and moved away from home, and still for years, I didn't really pay it much attention, until one day, a few years into adulthood, I finally sat down to read it.

My great, great grandmother wrote:

"My grandparents Tebbe and Gertjen were born in Osfriesland, Germany. That is in northern Germany near the North Sea. Grandfather was a shoemaker. He bought the leather and made shoes. My father was born on May 14, 1863, in Arle, Germany, a small village. His mother died when he was 17 years old. He told his father, 'Now I am going to America.' My grandfather walked with my father to Bremen, Germany, where my father boarded the ship to America. My father never saw his father after this. He had a half-brother living in Illinois. He was on the ocean eleven days."

Gertrude, or "Gertie" as she was known to her friends, was the last fluent German-speaking member of our very large family. In this cookbook were her memories, as she recalled them. In her later years, I was told, she would sit and read her German bible in her rocking chair, and scribble down notes and memories of her life.

Since the day I finally picked up and read my cookbook, it has become one of my most treasured pieces of family history. I make the recipes and re-read the stories. My cookbook now looks worn, and used, or as I like to say, "well-loved." I feel so blessed that my family members took the time to record and preserve some of my written family history. Reading my family's story through the words of my great, great grandmother is such a special gift for someone like me.

You see, I know that words have the ability to connect and to inspire.

When I hold my family cookbook in my hands, I think about how it isn't just the story of my family, it's the story of me. The food, the stories, the memories — they are all a part of who I am today. And because of that book, I have dedicated myself to recording my own memories, in the hopes that one day, a long time from now, my great, great granddaughter will read my words and feel that same connection to her history as I do to mine.