I have an old "Desk Calendar" from 1961 that belonged to my Great-Aunt Lizzie Ballard. She used it to write down recipes people gave her and she copied them into the book. She also pasted recipes she cut out of magazines and newspapers. What I love about the book is her hand written recipes and the notes she wrote about who gave her the recipe. I never have used this book as a source for recipes because most of them are ones I already have in some version or other. But I love looking at her beautiful handwriting. Lizzie Ballard, or Lallie as my brothers and I called her, was a school teacher for most of her life. As was the case for many women of her day, she started teaching school pretty much right out of high school. And she taught for probably 50 years. Mostly she taught 7th grade or at least that's what she was teaching when I came along. Lallie never married. She lived with my widowed grandmother -her sister-, helped raise my father and was our next door neighbor throughout my childhood. We shared meals together frequently, both at her house and ours. She also was a built-in "babysitter" for me and my younger brother. I think I got my love of crafting with paper from her. She made her own "library paste" and scented it with cloves. She would have little projects for us to do when I would spend time with her and she taught me how to make snowflakes and paper dolls out of folded paper. She also would repair books that had started to fall apart. She made projects of paper mache.
So, for various reasons I decided to cut up the desk calendar and try to preserve the best thing about it which is the beautiful hand writing and the names of family and friends and food that were loved by all of us. The flag book I made is able to stand open on a table and so it's easier to appreciate the treasures inside. I hope Lallie forgives me for cutting up her book but I'm sure she and my mother can find all the versions of the recipes they need from the many other old-fashioned cooks hanging out with them in heaven.
I'm writing this a couple of days before Mother's Day. Lallie was a mother to so many even though she never gave birth. Happy Mother's Day!
