Everything Old Is New Again
This past New Year’s Day, I met a few friends at a local Einstein’s in Boulder for a quick breakfast before heading to the mountains for a hike. Within a few minutes , though, the winds picked up as we were sitting inside watching an umbrella from one of the outdoor tables get lifted out of it’s base and fly across the parking lot. That was a sign that we should probably rethink our hiking plans. I mean we could have still gone, but there was a very good chance one, if not all of us, would get lifted off the ground and tossed over the edge of the mountain. Trust me, weighing in at around 110 pounds most of my adult life, I have been “levitated” by wind many times.
Anyway, as discussed our other options to do our best to detox from the previous night’s celebration, a woman walked by our table, did a double take and said I looked very familiar. She asked if I was from New York and I told her that I lived there for 10 years after college and worked in the food industry, but she was probably a child at the time and it was unlikely she knew me that way. She opened up the door, though, so to speak for me to do my usual “how many degrees of separation are we” line of questioning.
I think it took all of 30 seconds to connect our past lives.
“Oh”, she said, “You probably knew about The Silver Palate if you worked in the food industry and lived on the Upper West Side. My mother was Sheila Lukins…did you know her?”
“Wait…what?”, I said. “She was own of my culinary idols. Not kidding. I used the first two Silver Palate cookbooks as my food bibles when planning any catering gigs during the years I lived in New York.”
I then turned to my friends and attempted to explain what a big deal this was for me.
They were unfazed.
Hey, I get it. I have had a passion for cooking and baking my entire life. but I felt it was important for them to still understand the significance for me. I mean, if you have had Chicken Marbella since 1982 when the first Silver Palate cookbook came out, then you had to know it was made THAT popular by Ms. Lukins and her business partner at the time, Julee Rosso. And don’t even get me started about their carrot cake recipe. It is still the only one I use.
I vividly remember when their follow up, The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook, came out.
I do believe there was a glowing review in the Wednesday food section of The New York Times. I no doubt read it on my subway ride to work that morning and on my way home hours later, I ran to Barnes and Noble on Broadway and 74th to grab my copy. Ok, maybe walked really fast since running was never possible on any street in Manhattan without getting yelled at for bumping into practically everyone but you get the point. I plopped myself down in one of their cushy chairs tucked away in a corner of the store for the next several hours. Yes kids, this was in the days before there were Starbucks cafes and free wifi inside bookstores and people actually read books there.
I devoured (pun intended) every word and recipe the same way I had when my mother had bought me their original cookbook after I found out I had gotten into The New York Restaurant School about 18 months earlier. It was the first cookbook I truly owned and even though most of the recipes can now be found online, I will never get rid of it no matter how many times I have and will continue to purge my cookbook collection.
(Side note: I also have the 25th Anniversary edition thanks to a friend that bought it for me when it came out the year I turned 45. Nevermind, both copies are in a box I haven’t unpacked since my last move, I still cherish them both)
The original culinary tome has become a classic like the Betty Crocker cookbook I actually stole from my mother when I moved to New York. What? I spent countless Saturdays and Sundays making recipes from that cookbook as a child…how could I not take it with me into my adult life? Or at least that was the story I told myself at the time and have stuck to it ever since. My mother would call me occasionally for one of the recipes from that cookbook for several years so maybe I subconsciously knew stealing it meant our mutual love for cooking would keep us connected despite the miles between us.
Making the decision to go to culinary school straight out of college in the 1980s was definitely not something you did if you had a B.A. from one of the best public universities in the country. But I just felt a deep sense of calm whenever I thought about cooking and baking and, like many big decisions in my life, went with my gut and found myself immersed in the culinary world as it was really started to go through the foodie transformation that ultimately led to generating Food TV Network rockstars and trending hashtags like #instafood. The Silver Palate was undeniably part of the transformation and I was thrilled to be living and working surrounded by the energy that they helped generate.
While my life took me away from New York and my culinary career in the 1990s, food really did remain the center of so many experiences for me especially through travel and family gatherings. And after my mother passed away in 2005, I was able to keep her memory alive for my kids by making her chocolate chip cookies. It became such a “thing” that it ultimately led to starting a baking business in 2011. Of course, The Silver Palate’s carrot cake was also a part of my initial offerings but a somewhat altered version. Sorry, not a big fan of cream cheese frosting so I made it more as a carrot “bread”. Also, the newly formed cottage industry guidelines in Florida didn’t allow me to sell anything perishable so I decided I didn’t want to put myself out of business before I had really gotten started.
I let my baking business go at the end of 2014 after attempting to mass produce one of my signature items was simply not going to work. Well, that’s not entirely true. It would have worked for the contract manufacturer and brokers because they would have made money, but like a lot of food products that try to launch nationwide, the person who actually created it doesn’t always profit in the end.
So where does this story actually end? It doesn’t. That chance encounter with Sheila Lukins daughter led to us connecting on Facebook later that day and realizing we actually have a few people in common from different parts of our respective lives.
Say whatever you want about social media, it is a connector.
And if you are someone like me, and clearly Ms. Lukin’s daughter, you work those connections and then you suddenly find yourself sitting across from each other at that same Einstein’s on a Sunday morning exactly two months later talking as if you have, in fact, known each other for years. So when she tells you that she wants to give you a copy of the last cookbook her mother wrote before passing away in 2009 that is no longer in print, you will choke up.
Or at least I did/do.
After parting ways, I looked at the book resting on the passenger seat in my car and I suddenly decided I was changing my plans for the rest of the day. I knew exactly what I wanted…and, more importantly, needed to do. I headed to the nearest Barnes and Noble, plopped myself down at a table (the only two cushy chairs in the entire store were occupied) and proceeded to do what I did 35 years ago…”devoured” my new book for the next several hours.
The New York Times review was right, by the way, it is a “10”. You can probably find some of the recipes online, but this may be one of those “it’s just not the same” kind of things…or at least for me.
And as I sit here about to finish this blog after hanging out in Barnes and Noble for the better part of a Sunday afternoon, I am going to end this “chapter” of what I know will be an evolving story. Before I do, though, here is my final thought prior to pushing the publish button. I now believe that so called chance encounter was actually divine intervention on the part of both of our mothers. That, like stealing the Betty Crocker cookbook, will be our story and we will stick to it because everything old can be new weagain. Ms. Lukin’s daughter made it very clear in the note she wrote on the inside cover of my gift…we are now “sisters” thanks to our mutal love for life, cooking and Colorado and it is absolutely why both of our mothers brought us together!
