By the time I married my husband, my mother-in-law was battling early Alzheimer’s. She was warm and bubbly, but I always regretted not knowing her at her prime. She had been a sharp, organized woman who gave up a teaching career to raise her four boys. I’m told she ran a tight household, made delicious meals, budgeted wisely and kept her kids in check. Even as her memory began to slip, she cooked up a storm whenever we visited Honolulu, where my husband grew up. Occasionally, she began to slip up as her memory gave way, like the time she substituted lemon juice for chicken broth in a pot of saimin.
Cookbooks were scattered throughout her home, ranging from the early 1960s to the present. Poring through these volumes was my favorite pastime. I’ve always enjoyed food and cooking, and maintain my own library of vintage and contemporary cookbooks. My mother-in-law’s cookbooks became my window into her earlier life and my husband’s childhood. Long after her memory loss advanced and she stopped cooking, I continued to learn more about my mother-in-law through these books, to learn from how she ran her household and imagine what she was like in more vibrant days.
Always thrifty to stretch every dollar for her large family, Mom — her name was Dolores — wrote to food companies for free cookbooks and tip booklets. A well-worn Jello brand cookbook was the launching point for her own handwritten recipes. Pamphlets from local utilities companies included energy maximizing tips along with free recipes. I laughed when I found an unmailed letter stuffed between pages of one book reading, “Sir: Request your newly revised publication ‘A Guide to Budgeting for the Family.’ Enclosed 10 cents for a copy.”
Mom loved telling a story about how my father-in-law once announced late in the day that two coworkers were coming for dinner. She was planning to make pork chops, and didn’t have enough to feed the guests. Annoyed, she looked in the pantry and found a can of cream of mushroom soup. Ultimately, she served the pork chops, cut up into small pieces in a makeshift gravy. It was probably not her finest culinary moment, but I’m sure it did the trick to feed her guests. I think of that story, and my mother-in-law’s thrifty ingenuity at adapting recipes whenever I am challenged with stretching ingredients to feed my own three kids or forced to make a dish work. Flipping through one of Mom’s books, I was surprised to find she actually documented this recipe — pork chop casserole baked in cream of mushroom soup.
As her experience grew, Mom experimented and liberally adapted recipes to suit her sensibilities and family’s needs. After my father-in-law was diagnosed with diabetes, she stuffed healthy recipes and tips between pages, and bought a new cookbook on “healthy island style” cooking.
Some of Mom’s recipes are legendary, like her holiday fruitcake. Most people nowadays — including myself — are not fans of fruitcake, but hers was unique. Even my cousin, who lives in Colorado and only tasted it once, asked for the recipe because of its moist, slightly boozy and fruit-forward texture.
My mother-in-law passed away four years ago. After valuables like jewelry and other heirlooms were stored away, my husband and his brothers began the inevitable tasks of sorting through Mom’s possessions for donation, disposal or distribution. I asked if anyone wanted her cookbooks. Luckily for me, there were no other takers. Now, the cookbooks sit — clippings, notes, and all — on my bookshelf in Brooklyn ready to impart her culinary wisdom whenever needed. They are my personal connection to young Dolores — to Mom. And to my husband and children a continent plus an ocean away from Hawaii, a link to their culinary and family heritage.
Khin Mai Aung is a civil rights lawyer living in New York City with her husband, who was raised in Honolulu, and their three children.
