By Renee Lajcak

Renee writes both for the page and for performance, adjusting her style for each. “For spoken word, I use shorter sentences, more repetition. On the page, you can be more abstract. For listeners, I keep it visual, ‘in your face’,” she says. Performing lets her shape how her audience experiences her stories through her stress and intonation; reading aloud is how she prefers to publish on this blog.

Sometimes, on a cold winter night, I try to clean out my recipe boxes.  I open them up and flip through each section, thinking, “This I make all the time. This one I’ve never made.”  The first pile is large.  I’ve cooked most of my recipes many times. So why do I keep those in the second pile?  Why keep recipes that I’ve never made?

Maybe they are like a bucket list, a list of things that I would like to do should life give me enough time and motivation (and ingredients on hand).  That is, they are aspirational recipes.  And like other elusive aspirations, they carry with them the itchy subconscious ideas that, like a new dress or car, they will somehow perfect my life.  Let’s call them Martha Stewart aspirations.  For who hasn’t had at least once been bewitched by a photoshopped meal on a table decorated by a whole team of food stylists? I succumb to the witchery and think, “If only I can bake this amazing 3-layer cake with the glossy frosting, I can throw a perfect birthday party.  If only I can cook these plum dumplings, I will be able to truly honor my Czech and Slovak heritage,” (ignoring the fact that I really don’t care for dumplings).

But maybe some of these “never-cooked” recipes are still in my recipe boxes the same way we keep a photo that is out of focus or the one with Uncle Pete half off the edge and Aunt Edna with her eyes closed.  You keep those photos to remember a place, a time, a loved one.

One recipe I’ve never made was actually called “The Recipe.” Babi, my grandmother, had hot cereal or oatmeal cooked on her wood stove every morning of her life.  “The Recipe” is the delicious mix she used to make her hot cereal. Babi had passed by the time I finally got this non-recipe, but Uncle John, who lived with her, listed the ingredients on a card: “Maltex (for flavor), Malt-o-meal, Wheatena, Ralston, and 5-minute oatmeal (for fluffiness).”  I doubt I could even find all the ingredients these days, but I keep the recipe–not to actually make it, but to remember having hot cereal with fresh cream straight from the barn’s milkhouse and wild blueberries picked in the nearby Blueberry Hills.  And sugar sprinkled on top.

I also have a recipe glued on a recipe card that was originally an email from my globe-trotting cousin Kevin when he was in the Virgin Islands.  It’s for Gourmet French Toast and he spotted it on a menu:  “Thick slices of apple raisin bread dipped in a batter of Bailey’s and eggs and then grilled. Does that sound good or what???  Call me when it happens.”  This half-formed recipe brings up a vision of my always interesting, peripatetic cousin having breakfast at yet another lovely outdoor cafe as the sun slowly rises over a golden ocean.

My final example is a recipe from my sister when she lived in Alaska in the ’80s. Back then, her newspaper had a 4-panel comic strip that described and illustrated a recipe, featuring a moustachioed cartoon chef with a cat on his shoulder.  Michelle probably didn’t have much money for Christmas that year, so she cut out recipes and pasted each on a folded recipe card. It was a gift of time and love.  Of course I still hold onto one of these: Noodles and Feta Casserole.  When I come upon this recipe card, I think of her in the cozy Alaskan home she and her husband built themselves, sending me love from so far away.

So the next time I try to clean my recipe boxes, I’m going to forgive myself for having recipes I’ve never made.  There are reasons, albeit subconscious or nostalgic, that are even more satisfying than the actual finished dishes.

© 2026 Renee Lajcak

Renee is a newly retired English language teacher who has taught in several Asian countries but now enjoys her woodsy backyard the best.  She loves the connections made through storytelling and teaching conversational English, but writing about memories allows her to go inward to contemplate the good, the bad and the ugly.  But mostly the good.