Barbara's Cookbook

It's a recipe for nostalgia. Here is how to make a family heirloom/cookbook using a sheet of printer paper, a smartphone, and a dusty bin of photographs. Well, you might need to move home, too. Or at least visit your mom a couple times.

It turns out my family is from the South. Even if this book isn't free, I'm still basically giving away my mom's secret recipes for perfect cornbread and collard greens (The secret to the cornbread is in how you heat the pan, the secret to the collard greens is how you cut them). The next day, you can turn the cornbread into the Best Thanksgiving Dressing Ever (recipe included) or just pour milk over it in a tall glass like my dad does.

You don't necessarily need to buy this book. I'm all good because I'm on the sweet end of a mid-life crisis and I never have to worry about my parent's house burning down. Something is preserved for my great-great-great-grandnieces/nephews of the flavor of those days. It was during the Age of Barbara: pre-computers, post-Weird Al, pre-mask-wearing, circa 1980s Wichita, Kansas in the cul-de-sac near Cherry Creek, by way of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Even after we're all gone and they're all vegan, I can still Airdrop it from the cloud.

This cookbook is digital only, only on Apple Books.