Recipes handed down with love, given back with hope.
My patient wouldn’t eat. His frail body was shrinking more by the day, his trays of hospital food untouched. As his nurse, I had to break the news to his wife.
She walked in carrying a casserole dish: his grandmother’s recipe. He perked up at the familiar aroma of sauerkraut, taking his first bites in days. She beamed with pride.
Deeply moved, I began collecting family heirloom recipes that have comforted an ailing loved one in the hospital, a nursing home, a hospice facility, or even at home to compile into a heartwarming cookbook.
As a hospital nurse, I have repeatedly witnessed the unique power of these foods to bring nourishment and cheer to seriously ill patients. It may be the chili that evokes a long-ago family garden, the date pudding that always lit up Christmas, or the Hungarian doughnuts pulled from bubbling oil with a young granddaughter who, decades later, turns to the sweet morsels to perk up her ailing grandmother.
When these favorites arrive, I often watch relatives crowd tightly around the patient’s bed, forming a cocoon, feeding the patient a spoonful or two. For a few minutes, the hospital bed transforms into a place of food and family, recreating happier times.
I continue to seek recipes and your own family story to be included in this very special cookbook "My Loving Spoonful". Please submit the recipe name and story for consideration.
