What's one family recipe that you wish you knew how to cook?
My Nan's cinnamon cake. I remember going over her rowhouse just outside of Baltimore on Sunday afternoons. We would sit down at her table, covered in a lace tablecloth and she would give us a piece of cinnamon cake and either milk or a glass of her homemade sweet tea. I would eat it and watch her washing her dishes. She always seemed to be standing at the sink washing dishes. I remember how she would wipe my face softly after I finished. Then I would go into her living room and admire all the bisque babies she had sitting on almost every imaginable surface. I was forbidden to touch them, but I would look at them and make up games with them in my head. Nan would be outside by this time, standing at the fence that separated her rowhouse yard from the rowhouse where her sister, Genny lived. They would be smoking cigarettes and talking in their raspy city accents.
Sadly, she never wrote her recipe down. None of us have it. One time, right before she went into the nursing home, when I was visiting her, she rattled it off to me. I didn't have anything to write it down on. Before I knew it, she was gone. So, unless it's hidden in one of the boxes my mom has up in her attic, it's gone for good.
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