Linda’s Recipes: A Look Back at Some of My Favorite Recipes in the New Year

For my first Clearly Delicious post of the New Year, I thought I would begin with a look back at some of my favorite recipes by longtime family friend Linda Jones.

Within 24 hours of returning to Maine, I made it my mission to go through Linda’s recipe box unveiling the ingredients and instructions to all of my favorite dishes she would make when I was a little girl.

I recognized Linda’s brown recipe box right away, eyes drooling.  About the size of a bread box, this dark wooden container opens with a lid hinged only at the top.  Inside sit two compartments just large enough to hold two note card containers and any other unfiled recipe worth keeping.  It wasn’t a complete catalogue of Linda’s years of cooking, but it certainly retained anything worth making.

The box was like a culinary treasure chest mixing popular American dishes with classic casseroles, appetizers, and desserts—lots of desserts.  Some French and French Canadian dishes also occupied the box.

Much of what I found inside will be featured soon on Clearly Delicious, but I have been sworn to secrecy over several of Linda’s favorites (some recipes are just too good, too infamous, too closely associated with this French Mainer and popular female cook to be published on the internet, and I agree).  Take Linda’s recipe for “Mint Chocolate Dessert,” often referred to as a “Chocolate Mint Brownie,” for example.  Many of her friends ask for a batch each Christmas and even one of her co-workers swears it could make her famous.  Give me the recipe? Yes, but of course (“Oui, bien sûr”), but publish the recipe on Clearly Delicious? Never! (“Jamais!”).

But other recipes—other than super secret ones—fill the container as well.  Take her recipe for a salmon dish in white sauce written on an x-ray technician report card from the 70s.  The newspaper clipping “Try Some Fresh Maine Shrimp in Seafood Lasagna,” or “Biscotti Maria Lucia” with a typed note “Here’s Aunt Mary’s Address; I know she’d love to hear that you like the biscotti” are just some of my cooking finds.  Each recipe appears to have originated from some specific place whether it’s a Maine newspaper or a friend’s elderly Italian aunt (Maria Lucia).   And each recipe is clearly worth keeping (as indicated by the many stains that mark their pages).

So, I think dubbing this well-preserved, yet timeless box as a “treasure chest” is an apt starting point for the next two weeks of recipes.  We often associate “treasures” as being something that can be appraised at an infinitely pricey amount, something valuable, cherished, or at times financially immeasurable.  And in truth, you can’t put a price on these recipes.  It’s just not possible.  But this doesn’t mean that these dishes possess no currency. I think Linda would agree that one can measure each recipes’ worth in the number of “mmms,” or smiles that greet the successful preparation of each dish, but these responses aren’t real “dineros.”  Or, are they?

–Helana Brigman

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