I WISH I had saved the stained and torn recipes my mom had stuffed inside her Betty Crocker Cookbook because they were the tastes that influenced our home in the last half of the 20th century. Moreover, many of those recipes came from Iowa where mom wrote down the exact method used by her mother to create meals. And some of those recipes were mash-ups of ideas that came across the ocean on wooden ships.
Today, I'm delighted that our four-year-old son enjoys some of the same tastes that I learn to like when his age. Within a few years, I'll teach him how to make mashed potatoes for the rest of the family, hoping he passes down the technique to another generation.
[Bernie Goldbach is a blow-in American living in County Tipperary, Ireland.]
