My recipe box contains many treasures. It is home to not only recipes that I have collected over the past fifty three years, but it also holds memories and as I am reminded each time I open it, emotions.
My old recipes, those that have made the cut during purges, serve as a backdrop and have literally woven themselves into the before, during, and after pieces of my life. All of those in the box are in their original form; my handwriting, newspaper and magazine clips, printed notecards, bit and scraps of paper contributed by family and friends, all nestled in, all in good company. Ready to spring into assigned duty. Many show signs of time on the kitchen counter, their duties fulfilled time and time again until they become worn out, smudged or simply, faded due to age.
The Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffin recipe is one of those classics. My copy appears Xeroxed onto a large sheet of white paper. I'm guessing it was passed on to me from a Cape Cod friend sometime in the seventies or possibly in the eighties. I do recall that the recipe had appeared in the Boston Globe, years before the internet arrived, and its appearance delighted thousands of people who were already familiar with this iconic marriage of fresh blueberries, well-endowed with baking powder batter, and a sugar topping, that had been sold exclusively in the Jordan Marsh department store in downtown Boston.
So, my emotional attachment to the recipe comes from my memory of trips off-Cape with friends, also young mothers, to an outdoor shopping mall in Braintree, one that was home to a Jordan Marsh "Basement Store". In the store was a small glass case that held their signature muffins for sale. I never left without a few. Nor did I leave without the sacred feeling that came with having had a child-free day out, an adventure that my mother allowed by a full day of grandmother duty. We didn't have a lot of extra cash in those days that we thought would never end but that taste of freedom and that day away was unparalleled.
Oh, to have those days back. To be tugged at and pushed to the limits in ways that only young children can push. Oh, to savor once again, the feeling of being an adult and thinking that a trip to a mall was worth the economic challenge, the logistics involved in passing the torch to my mother for a day. If I knew then how much I would miss those feelings and how one day, I would look back, longing for two young children who needed me every minute, I would have done it all so much slower and taken bigger bites of my life, allowing the flavor of the blueberry muffin to sink in and hold me.
