Recipe Retrospective

The history of women simmers away on the back burner of time—largely forgotten. Some foremothers left lingering traces in treasured recipes passed down from generation to generation but not mine. My great-grandmothers’ kitchen chronicles can never be retrieved. My grandmothers—one gone twenty-two years before my birth, one by the time I reached two—are nearly as ephemeral. Preserving and cherishing keepsakes was not in my mother’s repertoire. What remains is the merest wisp of what was or might have been. For the generation of women born just after World War II The Recipe Retrospective has captured in time and preserved what otherwise might have once again been lost. Roberta Allen is currently auditioning a bunch of recipes that feature batches of bacon as the main ingredient in her Oak Bay, Canada kitchen. If heaven is personalized, hers includes a celestial kitchen with more than manna on the menu.