THE COOKBOOK

Milena didn’t have enough time to mourn her parents because her brother’s wife Anna swooped in right after their father’s funeral.

"Just before she had died, your mom said I get to keep everything I find in the house after her death“, she said with false earnestness in her voice.

Milena looked at her and asked: "And when was that exactly? During her last week in hospital, you never came to see her!“

Anna was far from departing from her predatory ways.

"We spoke on the phone!“

Milena didn't even blink hearing that blatant lie. During her mother’s last week, her phone was in Milena’s hands. She made the calls and responded to them.

Right after her death, her brother let Anna decide what to keep and what to give to Milena. Milena was shocked, as were most people who heard about that later. Since when a brother’s wife gets to keep both the things belonging to her husband's parents and and his sister?

Milena’s clothes and memorabilia were still in that house. When she had moved out, she didn't take everything with her, she always reckoned there would be enough time to sort things out. She had no idea she was dealing with a typical vulture.

Anna was getting rid of Milena's stuff without letting her know about it. Milena's books ended up in a basement which was flooded and she barely saved some of them.

Her first two books in English, "Gone with the wind" and "Young Lions" were stuffed in the garbage bin. She took them out, cleaned them and left. She cried all afternoon.

She was shocked to have found her mom’s vintage Murano bowl there, covered in mould. She took it home, cleaned it thoroughly and put it on display on her dining room table. Its cobalt blue beauty illuminated even the darkest nights.

Anna had no idea what she had discarded.

Milena also asked for her typewriter, a gift from her father when she started high school. Her brother said he could not find it, "it was somewhere around“, just to have Anna place it as a decoration a couple of days later, with the intention of „showcasing her creativity using everyday objects“.

Ha! Creativity my ass, Milena thought.

Milena felt sick to her stomach. Her brother was no help.

Her mother had been gone for six years.

Cancer had taken her quickly when it spread the second time, but not before she'd insisted on telling Milena to "save all our recipes and cooking stuff and crystal."

"The recipes and crystal are family secrets, genuine heirlooms passed on to daughters and granddaughters," her mother had laughed, drinking her own version of Nescafé. "As long as we're alive!"

Milena had believed there would be hundreds more.

She had been wrong.

When their mother died, her brother moved their mom’s crystal sets and the valuables and all those rare things their parents had brought from their travels to Anna’s parents’ house.

"You have no idea what Waterford is, one set for you, one for me!", she yelled at him.

He just looked away.

Then Milena asked for only one thing.

"The cookbook."

Anna snorted.

"That old thing? Sorry, finders-keepers!"

Milena left. Another afternoon spent crying.

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The cookbook wasn't expensive. Milena’s father bought them a copy of The Cookbook to a Dedicated Homemaker - Reminder and Advisor for Everyone when Mina was 12 and her mom 37.

But it wasn’t an ordinary cookbook.

The first part had practical tips on how to use it. Then there were empty pages filled with handwritten recipes by both her mom and Milena.

The third part was how to preserve different kinds of foods and clean the stove and the fridge.

There was even a part dedicated to the environmental protection and energy saving! Milena loved reading about it.

However, her favourite parts were “How to set the table” (the French, English and American way), which wine goes with certain dishes, the types of glasses to be used for different types of drinks, and finally – cocktails, teas and coffees, followed by beautiful pictures!

Milena and her mom spent hours trying to recreate authentic Irish coffee, making the original Tom and Jerry cocktail (and ended up with an almost boiled egg more than once!), practising the art of serving tea the Japanese way...

The best part of their bonding over the cookbook was hunting for the ingredients for all those coffees and cocktails. They would also order teas as gifts from friends who would go to Thailand or Russia or the UK so that they could make them “the right way” and practice serving them in an elegant manner.

They managed to get several beautiful samovars.

Both Milena and her mom would take turns writing down the recipes and trying them out.

“The art of cooking is something you learn from Nana and me, not from the Internet!”, her mom would often say.

She remembered Saturdays best. That was their “together time” – they would go to the farmer’s market to get fresh produce and ingredients, and roam the spice shops searching for the most exotic ones.

She would wake her mother up because the latter loved sleeping more than anything (Libra!).

"Come on, Mom, we’ll be late!"

Her mom would shuffle into the kitchen wrapped in a house robe.

The windows steamed as bread baked in the oven.

Nana had taught Milena how to bake and for her, it was a pleasure, not a chore. Even when she made the famous Baker’s Rolls that took 6 hours to make, she did it between her studying time slots and short walks with her friends. It was pure pleasure to make something that complex for her family.

(She also understood why most chefs were slim – preparing food was far more satisfying and sometimes physically exhausting than the act of eating it).

Cooking wasn't about food.

Not really.

It was about stories.

Every recipe came with one.

"This soup is how your great-grandmother survived the winter of 1923."

"Your grandfather proposed over this cheese pie."

"I burned these peppers so badly once your father ordered pizza."

Her mother claimed laughter made food tastier.

Milena agreed wholeheartedly.

The recipes filled every page in her mother's griffonage (illegible doctor’s handwriting, the woman was a pharmacist after all), and Milena’s round letters.

Sometimes there were measurements.

Sometimes there weren't.

"Enough paprika until it smells right."

"Mix until the dough sighs."

"If M is helping, wash the bowl immediately or she'll lick it clean."

That last note had made Milena laugh every time she found it.

She had indeed licked so many bowls and that was another reason she couldn’t eat a bite of what had been prepared. And another reason why chefs stayed slim!

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Anna couldn't cook.

Not badly.

Just without affection. She learned cooking from a YouTube channel which was ok but there was no warmth.

When Milena came for one of her rare visits, she found the cookbook displayed on a shelf beside her mom's decorative jars.

It looked lonely.

Untouched.

One afternoon Milena reached for it.

Anna stopped her.

"Oh, I'd rather it stayed here", she said sweetly.

"I'll bring it back."

"I know."

Anna smiled, with a just a hint of a twitch of her right cheek.

"But it belongs to this house now."

Milena left before saying something unforgivable.

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Milena came to visit on a July evening. Her brother and his family were getting ready to go to the seaside.

They were the only ones in the house. Anna and the kids were at her parents’, as usual.

Milena felt a sudden urge to kidnap the cookbook. It was rightfully hers, part of her heritage, in her DNA.

She almost went home because she thought Anna and the kids would return soon. Fortunately, her brother asked her to stay while he popped out to buy some more things for the trip.

She made sure he had left. The World Cup was on, so the TV was blasting. She went straight to the balcony where there was a bookshelf. It used to groan under the burden of too many books on the shelves, but now there fewer there than on a street stand in the middle of nowhere.

Milena moved the chair and saw it.

The cookbook.

Without any guilt, she took it, put it into her gym bag, zipped it and went to watch the rest of the Egypt-Australia match.

When her brother returned with Anna and the kids, she was glued to the screen.

She said goodbye, wished them a safe trip and went to her training session, feeling as if she was walking on clouds.

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Back home, she took her collagen shot before opening the book again.

Something fell from between the pages.

A photograph.

Milena at 13, proudly holding a beautiful birthday cake with the plastic cake holder melted into it. For God knows what reason, she used the cake holder to place the sponge cake on it while it was baking in the hot oven. It gave it an interesting taste 😊.

Her brother stood behind her, laughing his head off.

On the back, it was written:

"The cake holder melted but the baker stood firm in her resolve to keep it in the oven!"

Milena smiled. They had been scraping the remains of the plastic holder from the oven for a couple of months afterwards.

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Milena texted her friends that she had finally managed to get the cookbook. They congratulated her, saying it was high time to get at least one thing that was hers or her mom’s. They all understood because they knew – they had either gone through the same situation, or had to give up their family’s heirlooms because of their brother’s wives.

Milena finished her evening routine and inspected the cookbook more closely. It was yellowed and stained but it transported her back to the time where she and her mom bonded over so many things in the kitchen and in life.

She had forgotten that every page ended with a quote about cooking and food written by famous writers and public figures while some were proverbs about food from other countries.

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“Nothing brings me back to my childhood with so much warmth as the smell of warm Linzer cookies” – Anatole France (allegedly)

“A man who has an early lunch and gets married young will never regret any of those things”, a folk saying.

“If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked.” Shakespeare

“Do not despise bread because one day you will end up gathering crumbs from the table and underneath.”

She wanted to find her Nana’s recipe she had always made for family celebrations – dry red peppers in olive oil and garlic with a pinch of salt, lemon juice and coated with ground nuts. It was everybody’s favourite and even when she spoke to the two gastronomists about it, they had never heard of that recipe before.

She found the cutouts from the newspapers and magazines in a pocket on the last page.

She cut them out and glued them into the empty spaces left.

The last pages contained the agreements between the man and the woman of the house about their duties, and the one between the parents and kids regarding their family chores “in order to uphold the peace and harmony in the family”.

Milena felt giddy with happiness while she was reading what her parents, her brother and she herself had written and signed.

Milena’s last handwritten entry was the recipe for the Spanish Paella.

Her mother’s last entry was named “Sexy Salad”. Milena was trying to decipher her handwriting and realized it was Nana’s recipe for the dry red peppers with ground nuts!

She had bought the peppers “just because” the previous weekend and she already had all the other ingredients except for two lemons – she had only one but she had to make do with it.

She started making the dish and it was way past midnight when she was done.

She felt relief when she tasted the dish - it was still so good, maybe not as good as Nana's but great for those who hadn't tasted Nana's dish!

She was a bit out of practice with that one but she would get there again.

She packed the peppers in the tinfoil-wrapped bowl and put it on the stove, all rings off.

She made herself a cup of black tea from Istanbul, Çaykur Golden Istanbul, with a bit of almond milk.

It might keep her all night but she had work to do. She jumped onto her lazy bag, found the most comfortable position and started reading the recipes from the beginning.