My mother was a good cook and an excellent baker. I bake bread and rolls using the recipes and techniques she taught me. She made a lot of cakes from scratch, but I never picked up her flair for cakes and don’t have any of her cake recipes. She raised seven children and was actively involved in our family business, so she had little spare time. She had a few cooking shortcuts that produced less than gourmet results. I like macaroni and cheese, but I don’t think of it as a comfort food and don’t make it the way she did. Her macaroni and cheese was cooked elbow macaroni and melted Velveeta Cheese. It was quick and easy when life got hectic. When I make macaroni and cheese, I make a baked version from a recipe I downloaded online. We often feed the children mac and cheese from a box. When shopping, I never buy the Velveeta brand of mac and cheese. I don’t buy Velveeta cheese either.

My father didn’t cook very much. He could make breakfast, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and sandwiches for supper. When it fell to him to prepare dinner, we usually had fried chicken from the cafe next to his shop. If we were lucky, we’d also get fried potatoes. And on a special occasion, he might even bring home ice cream and root beer for floats. That was pretty much his repertoire of recipes.

Before we married, I learned my future mother-in-law’s cooking. She was a good cook and prepared the meals when I visited their home. I don’t remember my father-in-law cooking anything except frying bacon and eggs. My mother-in-law collected recipes from newspapers and magazines, had a box of recipe cards with family recipes, and had a significant collection of church and service club cookbooks.

When we got married, we were intentional about sharing household chores. I worked hard to learn to cook and to be an equal partner in grocery shopping, food preparation, and clean up. We didn’t always divide the chores 50/50. There were phases in our marriage when one of us took more responsibility for meals than the other.

As I learned to cook, one of my guides was Irma Rombauer’s “Joy of Cooking.” We received a copy of the book as a wedding gift, and there are many recipes to which the 52-year-old book opens automatically. The pages are stiffened and discolored by spills. I use it as a reference for ingredient substitutions and adjusting the size of recipes. We also have a collection of church and service club recipe books to which we refer, especially when making dishes that we’ve been making for years.

Early in our marriage, we served as managers and cooks at our church camp for two summers. We learned to prepare big meals for large groups. While most of the camps we hosted were under 60 people, there were a few that topped 100. We learned through experience that if we prepared a delicious dinner for the first meal we served, we got fewer complaints about the food later in the week. We often prepared a turkey dinner with all the fixings for the first night of camp.

After our summers at camp, we would return to our student apartment where we had just two for meals. We knew how to cook for two or how to cook for 50, but found cooking for six or eight to be a challenge. We seem to have mastered that over the years, however. We are usually two for meals these days, but almost every week, we share a meal with our son and his family. They have four children, so we get to put the leaves in the table and prepare larger quantities. Sometimes we have leftovers for several days. Sometimes we have leftovers that go into the freezer for later.

Recently, I have been thinking about cooking and recipes. I couldn’t think of any family recipes that have made it from our parents’ generation to our grandchildren. I’m sure there are a few. Maybe one of our grandchildren will treasure the recipe Susan uses for chocolate chip cookies. Our daughter has a Pizzelle iron and recipes from Susan’s Uncle Bill, but her iron is at our house, and I don’t think it has been used since she was in high school. I’m pretty sure her son has never had homemade Pizzelle cookies. Uncle Bill was picky about his choice of vanilla, but I couldn’t choose the same kind of vanilla from what I know.

When the time comes for us to close up housekeeping, I wonder if any of our children or grandchildren will want our cookbooks and recipes. The topic didn’t come up when we recently prepared new wills and advance directives. We did talk about the fact that we have antiques that we love that the next generation doesn’t seem to want. Our old wind-up clocks and cane-bottomed chairs are beloved by us partly for the stories of how grandparents obtained them and layers of memories, but so far, none of our children or grandchildren have indicated that they would like to carry on those traditions. I think the same may be true of our recipes.

I have a grab bag of essentials I could quickly pack if we had to leave home in a disaster. We’d probably get most of our photo albums. We’d take our computers, though the contents of their drives are backed up on the Internet, and we could retrieve that data even if the machines were lost. There are a few sentimental items that we’d quickly grab. I doubt that we would gather up cookbooks and recipes.

There are a few recipes that I have in my head for which I don’t need a cookbook. I can bake bread and rolls without referring to a recipe. There are several meals I can prepare without a cookbook. Still, I think I would miss our “Joy of Cooking.” There are a couple of other recipes that I would miss as well.

For now, we eat well at our house and enjoy cooking at home. And I have the security and comfort of a shelf of cookbooks to consult whenever I need them.