the recipe box
Monthly recipes + Illustrations from a writer mother and an artist daughter
A little bit About Penny
The middle daughter of three, 75 years ago, I was one of that burgeoning group of children who launched the post-war population Boom. My two sisters and I grew up on Maryland’s rural Eastern Shore, where our parents were farmers. Life revolved around food: growing food, picking food, sharing food, planning meals, feeding family and friends, and preserving food in jars, freezer bags and boxes. Every day was organized into three delicious meals. For many years, the biggest meal – called dinner – occurred in the middle of the day. When I was 10, I tried to persuade my mom to rename the meal at the end of the day (which we referred to as ‘supper’) to dinner so we could seem more sophisticated! (It never happened!)
And, there was always a bed-time snack!
Our dad’s parents lived right next door. I can remember every afternoon, when I was little, walking across the field that separated my grandparents’ house from ours, to visit my Mom-Mom, where we would sing Methodist hymns together at the top of our voices, and Mom-Mom would share a little dish of rice pudding or a muffin or some other treat she had made or baked – with only me, she said, in mind! Nearly all of my mother’s seven siblings lived nearby with families of their own (my 26 cousins). And, that extended family, with the meals, the games and the local excursions we shared, were what socializing meant to a child living in a rural community where a family’s well being depended upon successful, self-sufficiency along with outreach to and from other extended family members.
Every get together focused on food. In fact, we described destinations and events in terms of what we would be eating once we arrived: sweet potato biscuits at Bloomery Church suppers and Maryland beaten biscuits from the breadbox in Grandmother’s pantry, oyster fritters at the Sharptown Carnival, crab feasts with our relatives in Salisbury, home-made ice cream for birthday celebrations. On freezing-cold winter evenings when the icicles harvested from farm building overhangs furnished the coolant that turned custard into frozen nirvana!
Nearly everyone I knew was a fabulous cook – especially our mother – and, as my sisters and cousins and I grew up and started feeding families of our own, we relied on those recipes and all of the baked-in love that had nurtured us. We have shared our own growing collections of recipes that we phoned and later e-mailed to each other. And so, our personal recipe boxes have expanded, diversified, and brought us so much pleasure. Molly and I can count on serving at least one of my sister’s famous, chocolate buttermilk cakes at someone’s birthday party several times each year! Summer suppers planned to entertain our favorite friends are guaranteed to feature my mother’s crab cakes and my dad’s pickled cukes! We need applesauce cake and plum pudding at Christmas! And every child I’ve shared a table with over these past many years– carnivores and vegetarians alike! – has petitioned for and savored Eastern Shore peas and dumplings!
Now that my sisters and I are the older generation, our children and their children are simply adding to the diversity and tradition, and these are the recipes that Molly and I will be tapping into as we share with you. We are so pleased to welcome you to our expanding community of food and family and friends.
A little bit about Molly
If you have signed up for this newsletter, then you probably already know that I am a visual artist that specializes in botanical and food painting. I have always been attracted to creating with my hands. Before transitioning to a full time artist, I baked as a pastry chef in my sister and brother-in-law’s gelateria in New Orleans. I also utilized baking as a skill that traveled with me while living in Australia, New Zealand, and Bulgaria.
Something that Penny did not mention about herself in her own bio, and is a huge contributing factor into my own creative work, is that Penny was born blind and has been her whole life. Being raised by a blind mother made me examine the world around me with even more of a focus and attention to detail, because I was verbally describing it and seeing it to share with Penny.
That kind of attention to visual detail has come through in my painting and drawing work, as well as my own cooking and baking, and even in styling food and botanicals for photoshoots.
My love of food, both where it comes from and how it is grown, is now seen in my large scale paintings. I am attracted to creating works that tell a story, whether that is around the nature of the plant subject itself, or the dish or pastry I painted that holds a lineage of creation which is almost a symbol in itself.
Making food is a catalyst for connection, and sharing this newsletter with you all – our recipes, stories and artwork – is also a way to connect. I hope that you find inspiration and perhaps some new favorite dishes to create in your own kitchens, for your own families, within these monthly emails.
We look forward to sharing our very first illustrated recipe with you all, later this month! Thank you for joining us.
If you’d like to reach out about anything at all, please leave a comment on the substack page.