The Downside Of Gathering Family Recipes

CURATING | by MOLLY MARTIN

PUTTING TOGETHER A FAMILY COOKBOOK seemed like such a good idea.

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And it was, really, considering everything.

How else would I have known that:

• The trick to our mother’s German/Irish/Bohemian Potato Salad was to use Miracle Whip and not mayonnaise?
• The rice she used in my favorite Pilaf was Uncle Ben’s?
• Commercial Italian salad dressing was the key ingredient in both P.J.’s Potato Salad and Michael’s Ceviche?

The process went smoothly, with contributions from siblings, nieces and nephews, and even cousins and friends.

I discovered that an electronic cookbook I’d already installed (and whose name I’ve long since forgotten) on my computer also allowed me to add recipes. The format was standard — title, number of servings, prep and cook time, ingredients, directions — and the inputting was routine, until I came to that fateful decision:

“Include Nutritional info?”

I didn’t even think. Or maybe I believed it would be a good thing to include. But that one click revealed details we had lived so happily without for all those years.

Brad’s Atomic Pasta? 834 calories per serving.

That yummy Pesto Chicken? 47 grams of fat.

Mame’s Honey-Lime Salmon? 1,386 milligrams of sodium.

Next year will be the 15th anniversary of our family cookbook. There’s been talk of making a second edition, adding all the new favorites we’ve collected since then.

I’ll have to find a new way to format them, since the original software is lost inside a dead hard drive.

Nutritional calculations not required.