My mama's recipes were in a cupboard. Some recipes were in worn books with tattered edges and egg splattered pages. Others recipes were inside pristine covers protecting pages that had only seen daylight once or twice. A few recipes were on glossy magazine papers that had been ripped from their bindings. But my favorites were the ones that were from someone else. I loved to finger through the cards.

When I encountered one written by my Great Grandma I immediately thought of her in her little white house making me my own cup of hot cocoa from scratch on the stove top. When I saw one in my Grandma's handwriting it would bring back savory memories of Sunday afternoon dinners with a table groaning under the weight of her delicious Southern cooking. Coming across a recipe card from a family friend always awoke pleasant memories too. Oh what fun you could have flittering away an afternoon down memory lane with my mama's recipe collection.

Today I have my own growing collection of memories in a basket on a kitchen shelf. I too have a collection of favorite books that are often opened. These proudly perch beside the Martha Stewart one only cracked open once. I have a few antique cookbooks with quaint recipes I'll never use but still these cookbooks have met homemakers of old and will always number among my most precious treasures. Now I have my own stack of magazine pages. (No, none of them are ripped from a back issue of TEACH. I could never do that!) Some of these recipes appear with tantalizing photographs so appealing you can almost see the steam rising off the page and feel the calories adhering to your hips. But once again, my dearly loved recipes are the handwritten ones gathered from family and friends.

I have cards that my home-economics teacher required me to fill out in 7^th grade for part of my grade. One of these recipes I even still use. Some of the recipes I collected from friends' mothers and wrote out in my ten-year-old distinct handwriting to earn some Camp Fire Girl beads. Other cards are from friends of my own adult years, collected from dinners shared or culinary feats told of so alluringly I had to have the recipe so I could mimic their fabulous results.

Every so often we have Cornbread Waffles and remember some old neighbors we have lost touch with. Each year at Christmas time when we make our traditional Danish pastry I think of a beloved old friend I no longer see. Double-Stuffed Baked Potatoes, Mint-Filled Chocolate Cookies, and many more treasured recipes are from my mama's good friend I used to baby-sit for. When I pull out the delicious recipe for Crock Pot Chicken I think of my friend appropriately named, Karen Cook. My friends Trudy, Patty, Karlene, and Charlotte come to mind when I pull out exceptional recipes they shared with me.

Today some of my recipes are printed from the computer picked from the seemingly endless internet sites or email exchanges. There's something funny about these. They seem cold and impersonal, almost lifeless until the recipe has proven its worth and I have transferred it to its own place of honor on a recipe card.

Now I am a mother of eight and my oldest girl is early nine. Guess what I found her doing today: poking through our recipe cards. What a thrill that sent traveling through me. She has just begun her own collection and sitting in my closet awaiting its birthday wrapping paper in May is a beautiful recipe box and about a hundred different cards.

My mother or I don't often add to our recipe collections these days. But what fun we will have helping Dessaly begin to gather hers. They say history repeats itself. Well I rather hate to refer to myself as history but there you have it.

Next time you pull out a recipe turn it into a family history lesson. Talk to your children as you use various recipes. Tell them about who gave you the recipe or where you got each cookbook. If this information isn't recorded on them already be sure and make a note of it now. As recipes turn into family favorites have your children copy the directions onto a card of their own. What better can way can you combine history, handwriting, fractions, and spelling together?

One thing my mom did that I like to do to this day is record people's impressions and comments the first time they ate that particular dish. It might say something like this, "May 10, 2003 -- Daddy says, 'This is as good as great grandma's custard pie!'" Capturing these comments (good or bad) make delightful memories come to life in later years as you and your children go strolling down memory lane.

Lorrie Flem has been honored to be the happy rib of Randy for 20 years. They make their home in Maple Valley, Washington until they reach the mansion Jesus is preparing for them. She considers it a privilege to be a stay-at-home homeschooling mom to their always precious and often precocious eight children.

Lorrie has always been prone to talk and as a result she has written a number of books, is the publisher of TEACH Magazine, a FREE bi-monthly ezine, and speaks nationally at conferences, retreats, and teas. Lorrie is known for her humorous and gentle words of encouragement to other keepers of the home. See her and get a sample of TEACH -- The Magazine that Puts the Home in Homeschooling -- For Mothers of Today with Yesterday's Values, at www.TEACHmagazine.com.