One of mom’s shelves in the kitchen that hasn’t been touched or picked over much since she died. It doesn’t really change aside from the cookbook covers getting more and more sun-bleached. ☀️ Mom’s kitchen has amazing light. If you’ve been to the house, you know that entire level of the house does. Especially this time of year when it finally becomes spring - the sun just streams into those windows. And you can see the prairie acreage and tree rows just outside. I love mom’s kitchen. She always called it a “one butt kitchen” because it’s smaller. But it’s the place where my cooking really took off, and especially baking. Mom let me handle after-church desserts and sides among other things. For some reason I connect mom’s kitchen with spring and sun more than almost any other time of year. More than Christmas when we’d crank out sweets upon sweets. More than fall when we’d have bonfires and snacks. More than late summer when she’d try her newly grown Swiss chard fresh from the garden with a little onion and butter and declare it delicious. Or patty pan squash. Or when she’d spend days harvesting and canning and freezing produce and tomato sauce and salsa and jams. It doesn’t make sense - why spring? When the light comes back and the grass is brown and green and things feel new. I don’t know. But I spent a moment today sitting there leafing through a vegetarian cookbook and an old notebook that she’d probably kept to record recipes but instead my brother and I had scribbled all in it when we were young. She treasured our crappy kid art way more than recipes. So it stayed full of kid art and no recipes. I’m lucky these shelves have mostly stayed the same for 8 years. Not everyone who has lost a parent (like my husband) can always return to these familiar places. I’ll continue to treasure this space while I can. ☀️ #outhereontheprairie #memories #daysgoneby #lossofaparent #ovariancancerawareness #inthepast #nostalgia #cookbooks #kitchen #kitchenmemories (at North Dakota) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2jCKRgyL5/?igshid=ck8m5euqwfrd
