ETHEL'S CAPE COD COFFEE CAKE

I consult my Epicurious app when I cook most days. Even though my kitchen bookshelf overflows with culinary tomes from THE JOY OF COOKING to BAREFOOT CONTESSA AT HOME, it’s just easier and quicker to google “how to fry haddock” or have Epicurious show me “six different slow cooker pot roast recipes.” 

But not in late November. This is the time of year my treasured recipe boxes sit on the high altar, filled with manna from past feasts. I have two, one colorfully done up in a peace-and-flowers motif which I received at a bridal shower in 1966. The other is gun metal grey, ugly, provenance unknown.

Both boxes are divided into sections (Meats, Desserts & Puddings, etc) and crammed with hand-written cards, such as “Patti’s Pasta” or “Jackie’s Southwest Chicken Chowder.” My most treasured are written in Mom’s unmistakable handwriting, and she’s been gone for more than two decades.

My Thanksgiving cooking starts when I dig into the “Biscuits & Bread” section and pull out “Ethel’s Cape Cod Coffee Cake.” Between you and me, Ethel was not much of a cook. But when my new mother-in-law served this for breakfast 52 years ago, I KNEW it was a keeper. It’s survived a 25 year marriage, a less-than-jolly divorce, a joyous remarriage, and never missed starring on Thanksgiving morning.

The recipe card for “Polly’s Zucchini Bread” is dotted with blobby splatters of vegetable oil that would give Rorschach much to contemplate. My handwriting on this 50-year-old-card is perky and readable, unfazed by the arthritis currently numbing and disfiguring my fingers. But who the hell is Polly?  For the life of me, I have no recollection.

I have total recall, however, of the provenance of “Anne’s Sweet Potatoes.” Anne was my next-door neighbor in Ridgewood, N.J. We stood at our kitchen sink windows and waved “Hello!” every morning. She shared this recipe 45 years ago. Delicious as it was, I improvised (and believe I improved it) by adding a cup of Jack Daniels. Let’s put it this way: there’s never a spoonful left in the bowl on Thanksgiving night.

Besides my treasured holiday recipes, certain cookbooks stand at the ready all week.  Nothing stirs nostalgic memories of past feasts like the JOY OF COOKING instructions for Molded Cranberry and Orange Salad. OMG, the best.! I defy you to find a tastier cornbread stuffing recipe than Craig Claiborne’s in THE NEW YORK TIMES COOKBOOK. (That page is so smeared, it looks like it was cooked inside the turkey.)

Recently, an article in the BOSTON GLOBE caught my eye. It read, “Recipes are now in the cloud, not on cards. What have we lost? For so long we were a nation of recipe cards, handwritten or typed, carrying instructions from long-gone grandmas and great-aunts. Voices from the grave telling you to double the cinnamon or that it’s okay if the batter is lumpy.”

Yup. And I cherish every one.  Happy Thanksgiving!