Sara Marberry

My mom was not a great cook, but she was a good cook. Raised by parents who had an extensive garden, she grew up always having fresh fruits and vegetables on the dinner table.

By the time she started cooking for us, it was the era of convenience, with frozen foods, prepared ingredients, and box top recipes. Carrot Jell-O Salad (a fruit and a vegetable!) was a menu staple. Those little carrot pieces always made me gag. The dish was not a family favorite, although Dad clearly put on a good face to support Mom while my sister, brother, and I were choking it down.

But we all loved Mom’s Hot Dried Beef Spread, which she only made for special occasions like Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. It went well with most any type of cracker, but tasted best with Triscuits. When it was coming out of the oven, we all crowded around to get our fill of this creamy, hot, decadent delight.

Sadly, some of Mom’s culinary concoctions, like Sloppy Joe and Camper Stew, were lost when my parents downsized from their house at Lake Bloomington. Mom was just starting to have dementia and none of us realized the importance of preserving those recipes until it was too late to retrieve them from her memory.

I copied Mom’s Hot Dried Beef Spread recipe and put it in my recipe file almost 40 years ago. Although many people in our family are trying to eat healthier, my sister and I still make it for special occasions, not only in memory of our mother, but to carry the family food legacy forward.