Nobody cooks like Grandma Willie Jean anymore.
In DeQueen, Arkansas, there was always something cooking at my grandma Willie Jean's. My favorite was chocolate gravy and biscuits, after Grandpa had buttered them. At Thanksgiving, or really any day, she laid a spread across the table that I have never found anywhere else.
I was raised in Arkansas, and I've watched cooking like hers slip away so slowly it was easy to miss. Each generation cooked a little less like the one before it. The dishes didn't disappear all at once. They thinned out, one skipped Sunday dinner at a time, until the only people who still knew them by heart were the ones who had always known them.
Nobody cooks like her anymore. What she knew lived in her hands and her memory, and that kind of cooking only survives if someone writes it down, in her words, the way she'd say it.
That's why I started Pass the Plate. It's a deck of blank recipe cards that travels from kitchen to kitchen by mail. Someone writes down a dish they love, signs it, and sends the deck to the next person. The handwriting stays handwriting, and the story stays attached to the dish.
If we wait another generation, we lose the chance. So I'm starting with mine, and I hope you'll start with yours.