Deb-lectables: A Midwestern Cookbook Collection
At age 30, I moved back in with my parents for a few months after two years of living abroad. Although at times it felt like I was in adventure rehab or paying some sort of fun tax, it was good to eat my mom’s cooking again after years of subsisting on noodles and pre-packaged meals from Japanese 7-Eleven.
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Being this age and living with your parents makes one face many realities. One for me was that my parents don’t stop aging while I’m away and some things I took for granted (like mom’s cooking or dad’s same 17 stories) won’t always be easily accessible forever. This truth, plus an overabundance of free time, gave me the idea of compiling my mother’s family-favorite recipes in a cookbook.
Other than being a nice gesture for my mom (I presume she thinks that, anyway), I thought it could serve as a culinary heirloom of sorts, something my siblings and myself might reference in the future at our own family functions. By extension, I think it also serves nicely as a snapshot of what Midwestern cuisine is often like: hearty recipes that looked like they could be pulled out of a mom-targeted magazine (and they often were) as well as many ‘borrowed’ from other styles of cuisine. I don’t know if anyone will ever ask me what Midwestern cuisine means to me, but if they do I’m ready.
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For my family, I hope this book can be a small token; for any others that stumble upon it, I hope it takes you not necessarily to your home, but maybe one like yours growing up.