Beech Tree News Network

Recently, my daughter, Natalie, made an appointment with me so she could learn to make salsa.  I have a recipe that Garey developed over the years through trial and error.  I make several jars every year, and I always share with her.  I think she has come to the realization that we won’t always be here, and it’s up to her to carry the torch.  I say this because she also asked that Garey and I write down what we know about gardening.

“Mom, I want you and Dad to write down everything you know,” she said.  “I want to know how far apart you plant stuff, how deep and what time of year to plant it.”

I told her I would get a garden journal and make sure she had all that information.  I know our garden journal won’t have the kind of information that changes the world, but it will be important to our family, so it’s important that I write it down.

Generations of people have understood the importance of writing things down.  In Thomas Cahill’s book, HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION, Cahill tells how the Irish monks saved countless ancient writings by copying them and making sure they were passed on to future generations.  Even in ancient civilizations, cavemen drew pictures on cave walls, Egyptians inscribed hieroglyphics on tombs of their dead, and the Israelites kept the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant.

When we visited the Tower of London last July, one of the most fascinating things I saw was the prisoner graffiti on the walls.  This graffiti dated back to the 16th and 17th centuries.  Paper had been invented by that time, but the prisoners didn’t have access to it, so they chiseled what they wanted to say into the stone walls themselves.  The prisoners chiseled out things like: “Grief is overcome by patience; My hart is yours tel death; The more affliction we endure for Christ in this world, the more glory we shall get with Christ in the world to come.”

My granddaughter loves to cook, and she has called dibs on my recipe book that contains generations of handwritten recipes.  I’ve told myself that I need to make copies of those recipes just in case something happens to the collection.  Recently, I decided to take pictures of each recipe, so I could store them with my pictures on my phone until I get a chance to do better. 

I came up with this solution after my friend, Greg Hampton, sent me a picture of the recipe he uses for pickled beets.  The picture was a snapshot of a handwritten recipe on an index card.  The recipe was written down by Exie Hawes, one of the best Butler County cooks to ever stand in front of a stove.

I followed the recipe to a tee, and the beets turned out beautifully.  Biting into them is like tasting a day out of my childhood, when my stepmom would give me my very own pint jar of pickled beets, and I would sit on the kitchen floor and eat the whole jar at one sitting.  Thank God for people who write things down.