Taryn’s Story

It's not just about the macaroni salad. 

I lost my mom in 2021. I was 39 at the time, with 9, 7, 3 and 1 year old daughters. There's never a good time to lose your mom, and while I guess I could feel fortunate she met all of my children, I still feel so robbed. Maybe I was done being raised, but what about them? What about the countless grandmother experiences they would never get to have? What about the many more times I could have called her for advice, or at the very least, solidarity. 

A few months after losing her, I opened up the cookbook she handed down to me when I got my first house. A cover stained by kitchen grease and the obvious sign of her favorite recipes by what pages were the most worn. I flipped to the inside cover and found a handwritten note I don't think I ever knew was there:

Taryn-

This is the "Campbell Family Cookbook" - used by Grandma, her mom and other family members. You won't find anything fancy - just good old American cooking. 

Happy Cooking!

Love 

Mom

The sight of this note took my breath away. This cookbook had been in my kitchen for 14 years. I had cooked from it many times, yet I never realized she left a note in it for me. Would I have appreciated it if I discovered it all that time ago? It felt like no coincidence. 

I flipped to page 434 to make "her" Macaroni Salad, for the first time without her here. Her cooking, like her note said, wasn't fancy, but it was always delicious. Yet it was always what happened around her food. The family memories, laughter, joy. "Can your mom make her macaroni salad?" when we were home on summer break. Her food was at the center of so many significant events in my life. Her food was comfort, stability and home. 

Since I lost her three years ago, I feel most connected to her when I cook "her" things. Hosting St Patrick's Day for 30 with her corned beef recipe, spending all day in the kitchen on Christmas and placing her macaroni salad down in the middle of the table at a barbeque. "Give it a good stir" she would say at the end of recounting some of her best recipes to me over the phone, a phrase I can still hear with perfect clarity in my mind. 

She taught me the length of time to boil corn, the way to make hard boiled eggs and to take the butter and milk out of the fridge ahead of time before mashing potatoes, to make them stay as hot as possible for serving. The things you need to know, she taught me. I cook for my family almost every single day, because she cooked for us every day. She set the standard, I just get to carry it on. 

Over the years, I know that naturally her recipes will become my recipes, and someday maybe their recipes. Maybe that's the legacy she was supposed to leave to my girls...providing comfort, stability and home through the foundation of these simple meals that we could all count on. 

Just good old American cooking, made with love.