Maybe there’s a wise woman who has been important in your life. What would you miss if she were no longer here? Her advice? Her calm demeanor? Her smell? Her knowledge of the family history? The way she gets so frustrated at her dog? Her formal table settings? Knowing that she makes the best fudge, and she won't share the recipe with you? Her surprising humour? Her fabulous red lipsticked-lips? Her warm and comforting hugs?
Food Found Forgotten celebrates our cherished matriarchs by sharing memories of times spent in their presence, usually in the kitchen. It’s a place to swap recipes and stories, of both cooking and eating. Where age is celebrated and life experience is considered a blessing and a source of knowledge. It’s about those special qualities that make us all so unique. Where we all have a story to tell and share. Through this collection of stories about and by the women in our hearts, our memories, and their kitchens, we celebrate our differences, we learn from the richness of their experiences, and we see the cumulative effects of their fingerprints, and the foods that in their own ways bring us together.
A lovely woman around the age of 85 years young recently told me:
"I didn't realize I had a story worth sharing.”
I was shocked, saddened, and proud to hear these words quietly confided to me. How can a woman who has lived over 85 years not recognize that her story had worth to share? I feel our culture is so much about disregarding our seniors, allowing their stories to become invisible, especially a woman’s.
I created this online collection of images, memories, recipes, and anecdotes to capture a sense of some of their life, of their passions, of their dreams, their achievements, their struggles, and their beauty. They are often the most themselves in the comfort of their kitchens, kneading dough, waiting for the perfect feeling and sound to appear from a pot or the oven, or beaming with pride in their garden. Let’s not forget to learn, to recognize the life lessons and the cooking, and the beauty life brings in the everyday moments, of those most important to us.
As women, of any age, our stories are worth telling, and definitely worth sharing.