Pass me the pliers, this turkey's going down

Also: a joyful look back at The Cookbook Issue

Before we begin…

Is there a cookbook in your kitchen that holds more than recipes for you? Share it with us along with the memories and stories that rise up every time you reach for it. And while you’re at it, let us know the three books that you are most glad you read in 2023?  I’m putting together this year’s list of top reads from the entire Spark community. Let me know the ones you want to include!

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Of course things went wrong…it was Thanksgiving

So, last week didn’t exactly go as expected. The flu struck, my son and niece stayed home, and we were left with a twelve-pound turkey that took its own sweet time to defrost. At go time on Thursday morning (because even without a houseful the damn thing had to be cooked), my husband was elbow deep in the bird swearing like the drivers at a horse pull. I knew we were in trouble when he yelled at me to get a pair of pliers from the garage. The giblets, it seemed, were stuck. Hot water was called for along with more patience than either of us had.

It’s all behind us now. I got to practice the art of letting go of my expectations and made an important decision: I will never, ever, cook a turkey again. Life is too short. I don’t care how many ways that people come up with to brine it, roast it, stuff it, deep fry it, or spatchcock it. They all involve a level of commitment that ran lukewarm within me at best but has now drained away entirely. 

Finding joy again

The whole miserable experience sent me looking for joy and I found it in the archives of Spark. Three years ago, when this publication was young and our community was small, we shared the cookbooks and recipes captured on scraps of paper or well-worn index cards but what we really were sharing were the stories behind the special relationship we had with these books which somehow capture a slice of our histories.

What struck me when I looked back were the pictures of these books: the stained pages, the scrawled notes in the margins, the tattered binders, the pages full of stray clippings cadged from newspapers, magazines, and ultimately the Internet. These books contain hopes, dreams, comfort, memories of meals gone well along with memories of disasters. Even the greats have their own versions of these. I thought of

Jillian Hess

‘s recent and wonderful newsletter about the way Julia Child annotated her own recipes.

For many of us, the coming weeks will mean treading carefully around emotional landmines. Perhaps you’ll reach for your own familiar recipes or just read through your cookbook for a glimpse of a loved one’s notes in their own hand. Perhaps you will cook. Perhaps you will just be content to remember past meals. Maybe you will try something brand new and that will become not only part of your repertoire or your kitchen library, but new chapter in your own story.

Here are some books and stories from three years ago to get you started. What books, memories, recipes are part of you? Please share them! If you’ve got pics, send them in with your own account and and I’ll make a gallery for all of us. The joy you spark may be your own.

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Rae Francoeur: Soul Mates and Memories

This cookbook came with my house. I bought the house from my landlady, Lura Hall Phillips. I loved her and admired her. She was 94 when I moved in downstairs from her. When I looked through the book, I saw that her favorite things — hermits and apple cake — were also my favorite things. We were soul mates to the end! She made the hermits many times, by the way. The tiny newspaper clipping of the recipe that was stuck in the cookbook is stiff with flour—almost like papier-mâché. Thanks for asking. Holding this book is definitely a happy moment.

A gift from a soulmate

Patty F: The Highs and Lows of Nostalgic Cooking

My dad's Saturday morning joy was making pancakes for the family. This is the coffee splattered recipe in his own handwriting (with unfortunately my note in the upper right).

Recipe for “Poppa’s Pancakes” in his own handwriting with years of coffee splatters - Patty F.

Sometimes, though, nostalgia doesn’t taste as good. I'm trying to brighten our days with something fun to eat. So remembering my husband Rusty talk about a childhood favorite of tater tots in a hamburger casserole I was excited when I found a recipe in a Little Free Library cookbook. Anticipation was greater than the taste! It would have probably been better had we both been 10 years old but it was fun finding the recipe and shopping for tater tots. I don't have the cookbook anymore (it got returned to another Little Free Library), but here's the recipe:

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PJ Colando: Dog-eared, discolored, and woebegone

Here’s my beloved cookbook. Dog-eared, discolored, and woebegone. It used to have a red sister, but she got lost in a move. Oh well, this one - she persists.

Her beloved Silver Palate Cookbook dog-eared, discolored, woebegone but still loved

I began using her with good intentions to run through all of the recipes, serving them to couples we cooked invited into our home. You know, the meals one served on china plates flanked by silverware and tricked-out napkins. We’d light the tapers and lift wine glasses to toast our friendships and then feast. My husband and I would annotate each recipe with the date, who we served, and guest comments.

That habit fell by the wayside long ago, but one recipe has prevailed: Banana nut bread. The page, which happens to be near the middle, has nearly fallen out. It has a royal blue sticky note to mark its place, but I could likely find it blind-folded. I have the ingredients and how-to memorized as well, but I turn to the page of the cookbook deferentially. My husband doesn’t like ripe bananas, so I make banana nut bread a lot.

Mike Sakasegawa: The Joy of Cooking

When I was a kid, I used to leaf through my mom’s copy of Joy, which was always either out or close to hand in the kitchen. I particularly liked the section where it described how to dress small game, including butchering a porcupine. Both J and I were given copies of Joy by our respective mothers—she the Christmas after she graduated high school and I as a housewarming present when I got my first apartment after graduating college—so when we moved in together we had two. We ended up keeping hers because it was in good condition and had an inscription from her mom in it, whereas mine was beat up and not personalized. Eighteen years later, the dust jacket on our copy is getting frayed around the edges, and some of the pages are warped from having gotten wet. Sometimes I forget that it isn’t the one my mom gave me. Read the rest of his story, here: Not if, But When.

Receiving The Joy of Cooking from his mother was a rite of passage but what to do when he marries someone with her own copy?

Sandra deHelen: More Joy

This is hands down my favorite cookbook. It explains everything you need to know in order to cook and enjoy your recipes, including how to hold chopsticks and set a table. My most-used recipe from the book is the New York Cheesecake. It brings me compliments every time I make it.

Three photos showing the cover, the recipe, and how to hold chopsticks:

Cynthia Newberry Martin: Lilli’s Legacy

My grandmother Lilli was known for her cooking—pimento cheese, divinity, fudge, devil’s food cake with seven-minute icing... One Christmas when I was little, our family arrived at their house in Mobile, Alabama, at what seemed like the middle-of-the-night, and the entire sideboard in their dining room was covered with homemade goodies. Before she died, she gave me two cardboard boxes full of recipes—handwritten by her, by her mother, by my grandfather (who was also a good cook—he made the best crabmeat omelet), recipes cut from newspapers and magazines, and recipe cards given to her by friends. After she died, I sorted through the boxes, throwing away anything that wasn’t personal, saving everything in her handwriting, and collecting them all into a cookbook. My daughter, who was fifteen at the time, did the illustrations. For Christmas 1996, we gave everyone in the family his or her own copy. I make Lilli's pimento cheese all the time. Cass, the main character in my novel Tidal Flats, also makes her grandmother’s pimento cheese, adding a few ingredients of her own. You can find that recipe here. 

A grandmother’s recipes live on

Note: In the photo of the page from the book, the pimento cheese recipe is in my handwriting. I don’t have one in hers. But you can see Lilli's schoolteacher handwriting in the recipe for the Cheese Ball.

Mary K.: Coming of Age With Julia

I discovered Julia Child in my 20’s when I was living in Boston with my roommate. We were both in our first jobs out of college. On lazy Sundays we used to curl up and watch re-runs of Julia on WGBH. We were newbies in the kitchen and in life. Whether it was our lack of experience or hunger for a taste of home, we were enthralled by the way Julia sliced and diced her way through a dish, with fresh ingredients and the inevitable unmeasured splash of wine, and then presented it all with a flair I later learned came from her adventurous spirit.

Cut to my 40’s. Mother of two, a New Englander transplanted to the south, a long way from home. Betty Crocker and the basics I learned in Home Economics got me through many meals. One day a book-rate envelope arrived in the mail. In it was a used copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking with a note from my mother: “I found this old book in a thrift shop. I had a copy for years and marked the recipes I use.” Marked in pen are her adaptations and advice for Beouf Bourgignon and Veau Marengo. I leave my book out at all times, its tattered spine for all to see. Not only is it good reading, it has taught me to braise, appreciate the delicacy of using real butter, and brought the best of what the farmer’s market offers in the spring — fresh garlic soup.

A mother’s gift

I moved to Florida a year ago with my soon-to-be retired husband I took Julia with me. I wrapped up my copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which still contains all my mother’s notes. They were precious cargo!

Precious cargo

David Abrams: this chili started out tame and grew its fangs over time

Growing up, my three children were notoriously picky eaters and no matter what I prepared, at least one of them invariably balked and pouted.  This led to some very painful civil wars around the dinner table with both parent and child firmly entrenched in their camps.  Remind me to tell you about the Great Salisbury Steak Standoff of 1998 sometime.  One thing my beloved offspring agreed upon, however, was my home-brewed recipe for chili.  I've adapted the ingredients and increased the pepper level as we've grown older and strengthened our intestinal fortitudes; this chili started out tame and grew its fangs over time… Read the rest and get the recipe HERE.

David Abram’s this chili started out tame and grew its fangs over time Chili: he wasn’t really trying to kill his children

Me: The Cookbooks I Love Are A Mess

When I married for the first time, I received that sturdy standby, The Joy of Cooking, which I ended up using in the summers to keep my bedroom window open. I was eighteen, a mother, and a full-time student on a very limited income. I had ideas about nutrition and enjoyed eating but no time and even less aptitude. I developed a taste for my infant son’s rice cereal and strained applesauce.

The idea of joyful cooking was a long way off for me so I never fully appreciated that a cookbook is more than the sum of its recipes. I never understood that a good cookbook is one part history, one part adventure, one part survival manual. I did not have any idea, for example, that the Joy of Cooking explained how to skin and butcher a porcupine until Mike Sakasegawa wrote about how he used his copy of the book just before Thanksgiving (see below). I vaguely recall something about instructions for setting the table but not instructions for using chopsticks, as Sandra DeHelen highlights below. This is too bad; even now, I struggle with chopsticks.

I could not imagine having a relationship with a cookbook. I regarded them the way I used to regard my high school algebra textbook, full of formulas designed to make me feel incompetent. 

So my mother started with index cards. Over the years, she copied recipes for foods I loved onto 3X5-inch cards and tucked them into envelopes for me to try in the privacy of my own ill-equipped kitchen. Inspired by a few successes, I clipped madly from magazines and newspapers to save for that day I’d get around to making them. They found their way into envelopes large and small and, eventually, into messy binders that are in no way organized. I like the idea of all those ideas mingling while I’m busy doing something else. I like the surprise of opening the binder and seeing a yellowed envelope containing the recipe for my mother’s “Chocolate Mousse” or, more accurately, “Charlotte Russe” which she made for special occasions and my birthday. I can taste it as I write these words.

When I married for the second time, I found myself in a family of cooks. I was intimidated until my stepdaughter presented us with her own, much more organized binder, full of recipes she had grown up with, some of which she inherited from my husband’s grandmother. Each page has photos, a story, recommendations and tips. And each one is protected from the drips and dribbles of our efforts by plastic sleeves. It is a thing of beauty and love which I have still, somehow, managed to convert into a holder for yet more stray clippings and notes. 

Today, although we are sitting on a pile of cookbooks given over the years that are beautiful to look at, the only ones I keep nearby for ready use are these two binders and, of course, David Leibovitz’ The Perfect Scoop which is now secured with a rubber band to keep the inevitable stray pages and modifications I’ve added over the years. 

They have become trusted friends, these three books. I go to them when I am hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. I go to them when I want to surprise someone I love with something I know they like. I open them with the same anticipation I feel when I sit down to write. I have no idea if it will come out alright but the only way I will find out is if I start.

Your turn!

Share your go-to’s, your adventures in cooking, the books that you reach for when it’s time to eat. And if you’d like to check out the entire post as it appeared in Spark three years ago, click here.

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Are you team Elizabeth or Julia?

I’ve watched all of Lessons in Chemistry and the first three episodes of the second season of Julia. I loved the first season of Julia because I learned how to make a fluffy omelet for the first time. The second season, so far, is making me want to scream in frustration. I may have to talk to

Jolene Handy

about this who is savoring each episode and is only one degree of separation from Simca, Julia’s “French sister.”

As for the fictional Elizabeth Zott in Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus? I want to say I love her. I want to say I cheered. I can say this: I’m still thinking about her and want to talk next week about the strange emptiness that lurks beneath the pleasure watching and reading gave me.

In the meantime Who are you more drawn to, the fictional Elizabeth Zott or the larger-than-life Julia?

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Watch party

I know this is long but I can’t not share these clips. If you’ve never heard of Franny Cradock, treat yourself. Doesn’t everyone wear rhinestones and a gown in the kitchen?

Julia Child Presents… The Chicken Sisters!

James Beard, the Man Who Brought Food to T.V.

Fanny Cradock - Don’t Try This At Home

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P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Rachel’s morning stroll

Hi Elizabeth! New subscriber here! This past week I’ve been putting my coffee in a to go cup, pulling on a sweatshirt (sans bra) and going on a walk with my dog first thing most mornings. With the leaves changing and daylights savings in our rear view, it’s been so peaceful. -

ratchel reads

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”: 

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Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone  -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed. 

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