Author: Sandra Lee
Category: Cook books
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/sandra-lee/page,3,434257-the_recipe_box.html
“You lied to her?”
“Sweetie, when you’re dealing with the police, all bets are off. Besides, who lied to whom, here? I feel terrible. This is all my fault. I was responsible for her.” It was getting dark. Ken switched on the headlights as they turned off on the 101.
“Where did it happen?”
“Malibu. This Suki kid picked Emma up at school after lunch and they went off to Zuma Beach to surf. Apparently they were going to pick up stuff for a bonfire, but they hit someone going out of the parking lot near the Sunset Restaurant. The guy they hit called the police to file a report. The police got one whiff, and bam! Suki went to the hospital, apparently he didn’t have on his seat belt and he got banged up pretty good. His next stop may be rehab.”
“Oh, God,” moaned Grace. If only she’d come home yesterday like she’d originally planned.
“Emma says she had her seat belt on. She didn’t smoke pot. She wasn’t drinking and she passed a Breathalyzer.”
Grace had to stop herself from shaking. “I don’t know what we can believe anymore. She was there, not in school. Well, at least she wasn’t hurt. We think.”
They drove in silence another half hour or so. Grace thought she’d go crazy sitting in traffic until it finally thinned out and they reached the Agoura cutoff. Ken pulled off the freeway.
“I thought the accident was in Malibu?”
“This is where the Malibu police station is—in Agoura. It’s called the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Department.” Ken had a house in the Malibu area hills just above Zuma Beach and knew the area. “This is a celebrity police station. You know—the facility for movie stars who drink too much and forget where they are? It’s where they locked up that pop star when she had the nervous breakdown during a pedicure.”
“Great, I feel much better knowing that.”
They pulled into the parking lot, and Grace leaped out of the car.
A female officer brought Emma out from the back of the station. Emma’s eye makeup was streaking down her cheeks. Her eyes and her nose were red from crying. She was wearing a vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt and a micromini over purposefully torn black tights and knee-high, lace-up platform boots. Her left ear sported four piercings. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Grace, then ran straight to Ken.
“I thought you weren’t going to tell her,” she cried.
“This is not about your mother, Emma,” Ken said. “This is about you. You told me you were going to be in school. Instead, you were in a car with marijuana, and then there was an accident. Someone was hurt. Thank God you’re OK.” He kissed her. “You know I love you and so does your mom, obviously, but this has to stop, Em.”
“It’s not my fault,” whispered Emma as Grace hugged her. She could see the halo tattoo on the back of her daughter’s neck. How had they become so distant? When Emma was born, Grace vowed she’d have a different relationship with her daughter than the one she had had with her own mother. She would be open. There would be no secrets between herself and her daughter.
“It’s not my fault,” Emma said again, pulling away.
“I know whose fault it is,” thought Grace as she watched her daughter climb into the backseat. There was something other than the truth about her divorce that Grace was holding back from Emma, and this secret was causing them to pull apart.
Grace was so exhausted she fell asleep for most of the ride home, but she didn’t miss anything. Neither Ken nor Emma felt like talking, so the ride home was quiet.
Grace’s apartment in Venice Beach was one of Ken’s finds. Four years ago, when her marriage had blown up, Ken realized how shattered Grace was and began pushing the idea that this was the perfect opportunity for Grace and Emma to move to LA. One of the crew members from a comedy he was working on happened to be moving to New York, and Ken overheard him saying the landlord, a producer who lived in France, was looking for a new tenant. Ken had been at parties in the apartment, so he was sure it would be perfect. The apartment was on the first two floors of a charming three-story building that backed right onto the canal. Like most of the houses in the area, it was small, but it was ornately trimmed, with pastel-painted wood, and sandwiched between a mix of other cottages and the occasional modern overbuilt designer show house. And the area, dotted with sun umbrellas and walking bridges, was enchanting. The apartment even had a small yard framed with multicolored flowers that looked like confetti from afar, but the water view was what made it really special.
“This place is a jewel,” Ken insisted. “We can do so much with it, even on a budget. The Shabby Chic look—we can make slipcovers, and a few cracks and chips will only make it better. Emma’s going to love living on the canal. And you’d only be a fifteen-minute bike ride from my boat in Marina del Rey. We can ride our bikes up and down the beach and borrow cups of sugar. You’ve got to take it!”
So Grace had, and with Ken’s help they’d made it homey and even stylish. The first floor had an open kitchen with white scalloped cupboards and trim. The living area hosted a big overstuffed couch and chairs and white painted rustic tables, and ornately framed mirrors that Ken had scored as castoffs from the set of a cancelled sitcom. They’d made slipcovers with plain white sailcloth he’d gotten cheap in the boatyard and painted the drab wood floors white with waterproof high-gloss boat paint. On the second floor were two small bedrooms and a shared bath. When Grace first moved in, Ken donated a small collection of antique milk glass vases that he then placed throughout the living room to hold the roses they’d pick up on outings to the Santa Monica floral market. “Roses, roses, everywhere!” Ken exclaimed, and the effect was indeed lovely—when it happened. Recently, though, the vases stood empty; maybe this week she’d find time to get to the market. The third floor was Grace’s studio—a work in progress. So far there was just a sheet of glass propped on sawhorses, and rolling racks for clothes that didn’t fit in the tiny closets downstairs, but there was potential.
“I’m calling for sushi,” Ken announced. “Roberto can bring it when he picks up my car from the studio lot.”
“I am begging you!” Halo squawked. Emma’s cockatoo always had an opinion, and tonight was no exception. Sitting in his cage on his perch, Halo was part lord of the manor and part resident court jester. His head tilted sideways as he gnawed on a miniature rawhide dog bone.
Emma went straight to Halo’s cage and the large, snow-white bird stretched and dipped when he saw her. “Come here, Halo baby,” Emma murmured, opening the cage door and scooping him out. She clutched the bird to her chest, and he clung there like an infant. Together they dropped into one of the big, overstuffed couches. Emma sat silently stroking Halo for a minute, but soon she started to cry. “I’m so sorry, Mom, Uncle Kenny. I’m so sorry.” Halo hopped up onto the back of the couch, tilting his head, observing with his black button eyes. The cockatoo could articulate a dozen phrases, but even he was at a loss for words.
Grace rushed over and held Emma, soothing her as she had when Emma was little. “It’s OK,” she whispered, smoothing her daughter’s faux-black hair. “We’re a family. We’re here for you.”
Ken, who could never handle tears, sat at their feet, silently stroking Emma’s hand. “We’re here, baby,” he said.
“I didn’t mean it. I thought it would be fun.” Emma choked out the words between sobs. “Now Suki is in the hospital. Oh, God.”
“Suki is going to be OK, but a broken clavicle is no joke. Em, you have to see this is not good. These kids are dangerous,” said Grace, trying to keep her voice soothing and supportive.
Emma sat up as if jolted by an electrical current. “They’re my friends! Suki is my friend!” She pulled away. “You just don’t get it! You never get it!” She scooped up Halo and ran up the short flight of stairs to her bedroom.
“Well,” said Ken. “I guess we just don’t get it.”
“That’s an understatement,” sighed Grace.
Roberto arrived with the sushi and Ken’s car. Emma refused to come do
wn and have any food. How was Grace going to connect with her when Emma ran out on all of their conversations?
After Ken had left, Grace lay in bed staring out at the canal and the reflections on the water. She’d been almost the same age as Emma was now when she’d lost her way. It had been the end of a very hot summer, one of the hottest on record in Wisconsin. Like Leeza, Ken, and all their friends, Grace had been counting the days to her senior year. Grace’s father, Derek, had died three years previously, and since then it seemed to Grace that their tiny house felt even smaller. Her mother still seemed lost without him. Grace had turned to Leeza, Ken, her boyfriend, Brian, and baking. She started by baking the family recipes from her childhood. Cinnamon buns, gingersnaps, saffron bread, and lingonberry pancakes. Grace knew she didn’t have her mother’s talent, but she tried her best and hoped it might also bring her mother back to earth. Maybe even bring the two of them closer.
One afternoon, Grace made a German chocolate cake. She decided to try something different, and added fresh local Door County sour cherries to the batter. When Ken tasted it, he’d fallen on the floor, exclaiming, “I’m dead, but at least I went to heaven: Death by chocolate!”
“Watch out Wisconsin State Fair cake competition,” Grace had laughed, wiping the counter and taking aim with the sponge.
“What!” Leeza said, grabbing her. “Of course! You’re entering. She’s entering, isn’t she, Ken?”
“Absolutely. That’s an automatic blue ribbon.”
“I was joking,” said Grace. She had no intention of entering the Wisconsin State Fair. The people who entered were practically professionals. But once Leeza had an idea in her head she made sure it happened.
Ten practice cakes later, two weeks before school started, Grace Holm found herself at the Wisconsin State Fair, standing in front of her Door County German Chocolate Cherry Cake, holding a blue ribbon. Her mother had said how proud she was, and Brian took pictures from every angle. A reporter from the Green Bay paper even interviewed Grace and published the recipe.
For the first time since her father had died, Grace started to feel better about things. She had actually won something! Carefully, she hung the blue ribbon in her room, in a place of honor. Everyone heard about Grace’s big win and stopped her in the street to ask her for the recipe, even Claire Howard’s mother. Grace imagined she was poised to enter her senior year as a celebrity of sorts. She was truly in a mood to celebrate.
DOOR COUNTY CHERRY GERMAN CHOCOLATE CAKE
FOR THE CAKE:
1 pound Door County sweet cherries, stemmed and pitted
4 ounces German chocolate
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups buttermilk
FOR THE FROSTING:
1 12-ounce can evaporated milk
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups brown sugar
1 cup butter
2 cups flaked coconut
2 cups toasted pecans, roughly chopped
1 ounce German chocolate, grated
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and line 3 9-inch cake pans.
MAKE THE CAKE: Pit and stem the cherries. Put them into a strainer to drain. Reserve 8 beautiful cherries for top of cake. Toss the remaining cherries with 1 tablespoon flour.
Melt the chocolate and let cool a bit.
Cream the butter and sugars. Add eggs, vanilla, and chocolate. Whisk together 2 cups flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Fold in the cherries. Pour batter into prepared cake pans. Cook 20 to 25 minutes and cool.
MAKE THE FROSTING: Whisk together milk, egg yolks, and vanilla in a large saucepan. Turn heat to medium high and add sugar and butter. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is golden brown and has thickened. Remove from heat and stir in the coconut and nuts. Let cool.
Frost the tops of the cakes and stack them up. Grate chocolate over the top. Decorate with reserved cherries.
That Saturday, Lorraine had been at the local food pantry, where she often volunteered on her days off, and Grace was alone, bored in the empty house. Later that night, Leeza’s family was having a welcome party for her cousin Von, who was coming from Switzerland to live with Leeza’s family for his and Leeza’s senior year. This was the perfect time, Grace had decided, to stretch her wings and make something really special for the party. After thumbing through cookbooks and magazines without success Grace decided she’d like to make one of their special Swedish family recipes, but not something she’d already made. She wanted to find something new to try. Her mother had the recipes memorized, but on the rare occasion she turned to a very special family heirloom. The plain, weathered, reclaimed-wood recipe box had been given to Lorraine by her grandmother in Sweden and was one of the very few things Lorraine had brought to America when she’d come over as a young woman. When she was younger, Grace had liked to read the family record of all the places the recipe box had been, only to end up in their kitchen in New London. The recipe box was of little value in itself, but, to Lorraine, it was precious—too precious to even keep in the kitchen, so she stored it on a shelf in her closet. Grace wasn’t supposed to go in there, but tonight was an occasion, and her mother wasn’t around to ask. It wasn’t as if Grace were a little kid who might wreck the box or spill something all over the cards.
Growing up, Grace had always loved the kitchen, with its speckled linoleum floor and buffed wood table. Paintings and cards she’d made as a child were framed and hung on the walls. Although unused now, her dad’s collection of beer mugs still sat on a shelf. Grace poured herself a glass of lemonade and sat at the table. She opened the recipe box. It was crammed with bits and pieces of paper, scribbled notes, and the occasional birthday card. She pulled out a receipt for her mother’s wedding ring and smiled. She loved that her mother had saved the receipt. Her mother and father had adored one another. They both really missed her father.
The recipe cards were faded, their edges fraying. Most showed grease-spattered evidence of loving use over decades, but they were like a family album. She pulled out a card, turned it over, and read “Astrid’s Herring.” Astrid was Grace’s aunt back in Sweden, whom she’d never met, and never would, because her mother hadn’t spoken to her sister in over fifteen years. Grace didn’t know why, but Astrid was a closed subject in the Holm household. This card was as close as Grace was going to get to her aunt. Sometimes sisters just didn’t get along, she supposed. Anyhow, herring was not what she had in mind. Grace recognized Grammy Marie’s handwriting right away on the meatball recipe card. This had to be the recipe for her mother’s legendary Swedish meatballs. Of course, Lorraine didn’t have to look at that recipe. Grace had only met her mother’s mother once, as a baby, and couldn’t remember her at all. She scrutinized the pale, faded ink and faint but still elegant handwriting.
She continued rifling through the box, through the recipes and papers, and then she’d found it. How stupid she had been, Grace thought later. She’d just always assumed that her mother kept the recipe box on the back of the top shelf of her bedroom closet because it was a treasured and irreplaceable family heirloom. Now she knew better. And after what she’d found in the recipe box that afternoon, things were never the same, and were still not the same after all these years.
In shock, Grace had stuffed the cards back inside, slammed the wooden lid shut, and returned the box to the top shelf of Lorraine’s closet. She’d never made the Swedish specialty and she never again made anything else much beyond a toaster waffle. When people asked about her sudden aversion to cooking, Grace would make a joke of it. “I retired at the top,” she’d say. The truth was, whenever she set foot in any kitchen that wasn’t a stage set, Grace came down with an instant migraine. The only reason she
could tolerate the kitchen in the Venice apartment was that it was open to the living room.
Grace looked at the clock: 2:00 a.m. She wanted to be on that vice principal’s doorstep when the school opened, so they could throw themselves on the school’s mercy. After all, she was a single working mother raising a daughter. The school should be able to offer some solutions. They’d turn things around. She’d have to miss another day of work, but Ken said she could work on some proposals to make up for it. As these thoughts raced through her head, Grace thought about taking a sleeping pill, desperate to stop tossing and turning and get some much-needed rest. She’d need to be up in four hours.
A phone that rings in the middle of the night is always frightening. Even half asleep, Grace got a pit in her stomach as she reached for the bedside phone. Outside, the sky was turning pink, and the bedside clock said 5:00 a.m. Her first thought was, “Oh my God, Emma has snuck out of the house and gotten herself into trouble!”
“Hello!” she said hesitantly.
“Grace, it’s—it’s Jonathan.” She could barely understand him. He was crying and nearly incoherent.
Grace was instantly wide awake and overcome with a sense of dread. Leeza. She’d meant to call when she’d landed, but with all that was going on it just slipped through the cracks. “Is everything OK?” Grace was already ticking things off the packing list in her mind.
“No,” Jonathan’s voice cracked. “She—she fought so hard, Gracie, but—she didn’t make it.”
Didn’t make what? “What are you saying Jonathan?” she asked. Her hand was shaking.
“Gracie, Leeza died a half hour ago,” he whispered, choking out the words.
Grace dropped to the floor and curled her knees to her chest as if to protect her heart. This had to be a terrible nightmare.
“She had a heart attack. The treatments—they took so much out of her.” He paused, trying to catch his breath. “She was so strong, strong for all of us. But there was so much stress on her body. Grace? Can you come? Sara will need you. She doesn’t know yet, but…”