FED Friendsgiving: Rena's Kitchen

Rena Joyce of Deer Isle, Maine with Dark Water Cake & Baked Beans

To kick off our Friendsgiving this season, Rena Joyce shares two of her favorite recipes. A favorite cake and a family baked bean recipe. Comfort through and through. The cake’s so versatile that you can do just about anything to finish it for serving, from sprinkling it with powdered sugar to adding a coffee cream cheese frosting.

I love that these recipes arrived the way they’ve been used for years—typewritten on a yellowed index card and handwritten on kitchen stationery—and FED’s publishing them just like that. In addition to the delicious food they promise, these documents remind us of the loving hands who have made this bounty over and over for family and friends.

Family recipes often slip away from us for a variety of reasons. Many cooks wing it as they cook, a chipped teacup for measuring this and a pinch of the fingers for measuring that. Moreover, the artifacts of daily living, like a recipe box, often pass with those who have cherished and relied on them.

To capture this recipe for baked beans, Rena told me that she stood at her mother-in-law’s shoulder, with a paper and pen, and then, had to standardize the measurements to create books of grandma’s recipes for her children to enjoy once their grandmother was gone.

It’s a story I’ve heard from several women, kindred spirits, who like me, have wanted to capture the tastes of home for family and friends, to memorialize childhood flavors and seasonings, and to celebrate slow food in a time of highly processed, fast living.

These homemade cookbooks become family journals, and they do the important work of documenting living from the inside out, from the very heart of things—the hearth—where generations of (mostly) women have nurtured and cared for us, have honored us with their daily labor to feed us and create celebrations, to fortify us every day. These recipes, passed down and shared over and over, remind us who we are by way of what we—and our families and friends—cook and eat together.

So, who’s next? You’re invited to share your own taste of home… Send us anything really that evokes home for you—a recipe, an anecdote, a collection of sounds, a video—and we’ll add it to the FED table, potluck-style. We can’t wait to celebrate and feast with you!

Big love, Ashley

You’re invited to FED Friendsgiving!

Send a recipe, an anecdote, and/or a favorite food plus an image.

We’ll pull what arrives together and serve it all up as FED dishes throughout the season. Yum!

FED is a participant-supported publication and community. Free subscriptions are a gift to all from other readers, contributors, and the editor. Paying subscribers both get a gift and give a gift by first, receiving their free subscription from the community and then, passing the gift on to others, via upgrade, in one great circle of giving and receiving.

All are welcome at the table, and together, we co-create and sustain community.

For more goodies…

For more recipes, be sure to check out FED’s Recipes & Free Advice. And, to learn more about FED’s entire global crew of musicians, artists, writers, growers, gleaners, cooks, and craftspeople check out our Special Guests and the wonderful contributions they added to the FED table in the Spring and Summer seasons.