Deliciously Interesting

Every family has its own dialect. When my husband was growing up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, “ten birds” was his family’s  way of ramping something up, such as “It’s cold as ten birds out there,” or “I’m as hungry as ten birds.” In Boston, “wicked” serves the same purpose: “wicked good.” I don’t think the Farquhars know why “ten birds” meant “very” to them. Maybe the birds in Dorchester flew in gangs — get ten of them together and they make a lot of noise. Who knows? But the silly phrase makes us smile.  

Another of our expressions is “tasty papers.” Tasty papers are something deliciously interesting … like a really great hand in a game of scat, or secret information about someone’s birthday: “Mmmm….tasty papers!”  

Edie Oberg in 1951

I started to think about a food blog when I was going through some boxes left over from cleaning out my Mom’s apartment. Edith Haskell Oberg, who passed away eight years ago today, was a wonderful home cook. She had her tried-and-true family favorites, but she was adventurous to the end. Her stuff was full of recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines, and squares of scratch paper upon which she had copied a friend’s recipe in her beautiful Palmer Method hand-writing. I also found old cookbooks and pamphlets — like Pillsbury Bake Off booklets from the early ’50s. Her “Betty Crocker Cook Book” — a gift from her mother in the 1940’s — and a yellowed copy of “Good Maine Food” — the source of the potato soup she made for us to eat on Halloween before we went trick-or-treating — were never lost. They are precious to me and I had them stored separately.  

So, as the recipes and photos piled up on the bed in my guestroom, I realized that I had some tasty papers on my hands. And I thought, what a great name for a blog!  

For eight years I have intended to scan the best of Mom’s recipes and compile a book for my children and Edie’s other grandchildren and their wives. I never even started, but I think a blog is a better idea. This way I can share her good recipes as time allows. Maybe I’ll even scan a few so you can see that graceful writing.  

I can share some family stories here, too. And because I felt so close to Mom and Aunt Betty — even the female relatives who had passed before my birth — this blog will be about being a woman, a wife and a Mom, in this crazy world. The kitchen, cooking, and our recipes tie us women together across the generations. The food is always full of love, as Mom used to say, and I feel their love every time I make one of their dishes. I hope some of you might contribute, too, because I know this family has great cooks on all sides: Farquhars, Obergs, Haskells, Lanes ….  

Hopefully “Tasty Papers” will be as interesting as ten birds.