Follow the Recipes for Sisterhood

She has been living here for six years now, has lost touch with most of the friends she made back in Chicago. But she can resurrect those ties in an instant just by opening her recipe book.

There, in the tidy handwriting of her neighbor Helen, is the recipe for avgolemono, the Greek chicken soup that her family loves. “Kimberly--you can use canned broth, but the lemons must be fresh!” it says. And Kimberly cannot make the soup today without hearing the rhythm of her friend’s Greek accent in her head.

That recipe was later shared with me, delivered by Kimberly--with a pot of the soup she’d made--on a night I was too sick to cook for my family. In five years, I have never made the soup. Still, it evokes tender memories. Because each time I sift through my recipes, I recall the kindness, passed friend to friend, that sent avgolemono to me.

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The accordion file on my kitchen counter bulges with hundreds of recipes . . . too many to be contained in the tiny recipe box I bought before my collection grew. There are scraps torn from newspapers, recipes mailed in birthday cards, handwritten cooking instructions scrawled hastily on the backs of grocery receipts.

Back when I was married and childless, with hours of free time to spend in the kitchen, I worked my way through the toughest of them . . . recipes that ran several pages and took an entire day to make. Mementos from women I knew who considered cooking their craft, their license to create.

Now I am single, a mother of three kids whose tastes run to pasta and grilled hamburgers. There is not much call these days for Bean-Zucchini-Rice Casserole. There are recipes in my file, I know, for dishes I will never make.

Still I hold on to them not because they might be part of my future, but because they link me to my past by reminding me of all the women who have passed through my life and managed to leave their mark on me, sharing themselves through the food they made.

These recipes are about more than the words on the page, the meals they might make. They are about the message that giving them carries, the love implicit in the sharing.

My friend Elise remembers her youth in the Midwest, when the passing along of recipes had significance beyond mere kitchen help. It was tradition then at bridal showers for the hostess to prepare a collection box and every guest to bring her favorite recipe. It was more than a gift; it was women banding together to arm their comrade as they sent her into marriage.

The tradition may have changed, but the meaning hasn’t. It is such a simple yet generous gesture, a ritual that bonds us, sister to sister, that connects us across continents and generations, transcending color, age and class.

And I cannot leaf through my collection without being awash in memories, without succumbing to the sense of time and place that every recipe recalls.

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This is the time of year that sends us rifling through our recipe collections. The season invites us into the kitchen to meet holiday demands for traditional dishes and the cool weather’s call for ambitious fare.

This Christmas, as we do every year, my family will make Rosemary’s Sugar Cookies and Mrs. Bucka’s Chocolate Chip Butter Delights . . . favorite recipes passed to us by the woman who once baby-sat for our neighbors, and the kindergarten teacher my 14-year-old had nine years ago.

Then there’s the Noodle Kugel our baby-sitter made when my girls were small. And Aunt Ida’s Never-Fail Pie Crust, which has, indeed, never failed in the 15 years I’ve followed her handwritten note.

It is barely legible these days, smeared with oil stains and bits of melted butter--creased from the handling it has endured. But I will not discard it or copy it over. No computer printout would evoke her image or substitute for this heartfelt note in her graceful hand:

“Sandy, I’m sorry I didn’t get this to you sooner. I have been so busy cooking. . . . It’s 1 a.m. now. I’ll have to get your address from your sister in the A.M. and mail it then. Hope you have a happy holiday season. We love you. Aunt Ida.”

No stains could obscure the love that carries. And as I roll through this holiday season, that’s as important to me as how much butter a good pie crust needs.

And I know when I take to the stove this Christmas, there will be a passel of women in the kitchen with me.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.