Recipe Lines

Rachel Mills seen here, far left, celebrates with family on her 20th birthday in Curtis Michigan. (photo courtesy of Rachel Mills)

I’ve been cared for by almost every permanent neighbor within a square mile of my parents’ home on the north shore of Big Manistique Lake, and many other country “neighbors”. As a result, my early culinary background was diverse: Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup at the Saunders’, sliced hotdogs on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese at the Vogels’, cream cheese and olives in pita at the Guenthers’, salad with blue cheese at the Londons’, and sushi at the Smiths’, but it was only Grandma Harkness who made us pancakes for dinner.

Grandma and Grandpa Harkness live in a little yellow-sided farm house six miles from my parent’s home. From his front window grandpa looks out over the fields and points west, to the place where his parent’s little homestead once stood. The place, only a foundation in a cow pasture now, where grandpa began his life in this world almost ninety-one years ago. Turning to the east, grandpa can see where his one-room schoolhouse stood, just beyond where the mowed grass ends, beneath wide-limbed, ancient maples. Only a lilac bush remains to mark where the doorway once was.

Both he and grandma went to high school in the little town of McMillan and used to go to dances at the former town hall turned junk emporium just a few miles down Co. Rd. M98 from their farm house. Grandpa was in the Second World War with Grandma’s brother. A picture of the two long-legged young farm boys from rural Upper Michigan hangs on the living room wall. Sepia-tinted dog tags glint on bare chests, loose-arms slung over each other’s shoulders, easy as their smiles, lazy as hammocks stretched from cheek to cheek.

Grandpa came home from the war, married grandma, got a job as a postman, and they had three children—none of which are my parents.

Angel food cake made by Grandma Harkness was a birthday tradition for Rachel Mills seen here at her 10th birthday party in Curtis Michigan. (photo courtesy of Rachel Mills)

Grandma told me, only just this year, how nervous she was when she answered my mother’s advertisement for a babysitter. “I didn’t see why this nice young teacher would want to hire me to watch her little baby girl,” she told me, smooth pink cheeks rosy and earnest. I looked at her incredulously—grandma is the picture of someone you would want watching your little baby girl: she isn’t much over five feet tall, but goodness and strength radiate from her small form and when her arms wrap around you, the smell of baking bread lingers, warm and comforting.

She and grandpa began babysitting me shortly after I was born because my mother and father, elementary teachers at the local K-5^th grade school across the lake in Curtis, had to return to the classroom. Three years later, when my little sister Laurel was born, grandma took on the task of watching us both.

Clyde and Betty Harkness became family, imprinting my mother, father, and sister with their love and generosity, and in grandma’s case, forever influencing the trajectory of my life by instilling in me an early love and curiosity for food.

My father raised an enormous garden, hunting and fishing for our food. My mother bought bulk chunky peanut butter from the co-op, allowed limited organic soda pop, and baked her own thick, nutritious bread. As a result, my childish taste buds were captivated by the processed, boxed, and junk food served at the houses of friends and other babysitters. But Grandma’s food was something different altogether—it was fun.

My adult self has come around to my parents’ ideologies and methodologies surrounding food—they are the building blocks guiding my research and writing on the subject over the past decade, as well as the principles that influence every gardening, purchasing, cooking and eating decision I make. Equally influential are the sensory memories I hold of my Grandma Harkness’s cooking:

I’m seven, have an ear infection, and I’m home from school for the day. Grandpa picks me up early in the morning when it’s still dark and brings me the six miles to their house. Grandma opens the door. The house is warm, smells like Folger’s percolating in the white coffee pot, baking bread, and that unique Grandma’s house smell, comforting as my blankie. The news is on in the living room—grandma never misses Good Morning America—loves Katie Couric. She nestles me in a blanket on the couch, brings me hot orangey Tang in a mug and a plate of toast. Her homemade bread crunches, then springs chewy and buttery against my tongue. I forget my pounding head and aching ears. I can taste the molasses, a dark note that I love amidst the warm yeasty flavor.

I’m nine, my sister six and we’re spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s. We’ve picked out our bedtime story: “Horton Hears a Who” and we’ve had our bath. Our clean scalps tingle from water Grandma carefully poured over our tilted heads, smoothing out the soap as we purr and natter like kittens beneath her gentle hands. It’s dinner time and tonight grandma’s making one of our favorites: individual pizzas. My sister and I delight in our own pizza crusts (halved English Muffins). Everything is better and more interesting in miniature. We slather on grandma’s homemade tomato sauce, three pepperonis each, and sprinkles of grated cheese. We cluster in front of the hot oven door, watching cheese melt beneath orange broiler light.

Angel food cake batter in preparation for Rachel’s 30th birthday cake. (photo courtesy of Rachel Mills)

I’m thirteen and the six of us, my family and grandma and grandpa, gather around their round kitchen table, as the last evening light slides behind the hill, lighting up the western picture window and illuminating cracks in the neighbor’s old barn. The house smells different tonight—spicy and foreign. I’m intrigued by the aroma, my interest in flavors growing even at this young age. Something new bubbles on the stove, fogs the windows, and sends enticing aromas wafting through the kitchen. We pull up our chairs, hold hands and bow our heads and I’m overwhelmed with love as I glance at the faces surrounding me. When we lift our heads, grandpa, a twinkle in his blue eyes, won’t let go of grandma’s hand until she loses patience, fixes him with a stare and says, “Clyde,” in a voice my sister and I both know means no-nonsense. We giggle and she fills our plates—scoops of white rice topped with the mystery mixture in the pot: the sauce is yellow, cut with white potato slices, glints of halved eggs, green pea dots, and chunks of chicken.

I take my first bite, piling a bit of rice, egg, potato, and sauce onto my spoon and bring it to my lips, blowing a little as the fork passes my lips. It’s delicious, the spicy bite of what grandma explains to me is curry lacing across my tongue, muted and tamed by creamy egg and starchy potato. I love it instantly, eating until I’m stuffed. Grandpa complains it’s too fancy, that he’d prefer toast, canned peas and sardines for his dinner. The rest of us laugh and rush to grandma’s culinary rescue, complimenting her cooking until her already pink cheeks blush red.

Rachel delights over her 30th birthday cake celebrated with Grandma Harkness’ angel food cake recipe. (photo courtesy of Rachel Mills)

It’s my thirtieth birthday. A cake on the counter glistens with sugary glaze, resplendent in flickering candle light. Almost every birthday I can remember I’ve eaten this cake: Grandma Harkness’s Angel Food with lemon glaze. My birthday is late July, crickets singing, and angel food fluffy, white, spun-sugar high.

Momma passes an envelope to me across the counter. Inside are pictures and a recipe. Grandma’s sweet smile shines up at the camera as she mixes cake batter, each recipe step documented, captured images to supplement my memories.

I blow out the candles and we slice the cake. Each bite, so familiar.

Recipes, like life lines on a palm, direct how I journey through the world. As I research food, write about food, and cook in my own kitchen, these meals, these memories, guide me.

Passing on recipes is a kind of immortality. The cuisines that sustained loved ones generations before us are recreated to nourish and bring joy in the present.

I sprinkle cumin, coriander, turmeric, and ginger into my mortar and pestle. I bring the pestle down, pressing it into the mortar’s bottom, grinding and mixing spices, releasing the aromas in grandma and grandpa’s kitchen the evening grandma taught me about curry.

by Rachel Mills

Rachel Mills is a professor of English at Northern Michigan University where she received her BS in English, MA in Creative Writing, and MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her current writing focus revolves around looking at food from a universal perspective-- the history, culture, and traditions surrounding both her family's food traditions, and those of other cultures.

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