I've been meaning to post about this since April, but one thing and
another and I kept forgetting :-)

Shortly before school let out, I went to check my "mailbox" in the
teachers' lounge and found a spiral notebook, the cover decorated with
cutout pictures of cooking implements and food (yeah, it sounds tacky
and fourth-grade collage-ish, but stick with me for a few moments
more). I quickly glanced at the other mailboxes and realized that
there was a spiral notebook in each one (about 50 staff members in
all).

So, I opened the notebook and read the first page. I'll paraphrase the
letter that was included inside the front cover, but essentially it
said, "my mother is 87 years old this year, and she lives on a small
farm in Idaho. For years, she's been collecting interesting looking
recipes from the local newspaper, church bulletins, and magazines, but
given her age and that she lives alone, she no longer does very much
cooking. About 15 years ago, she began creating these 'cookbooks' to
give to friends and neighbors. They're created in such a way that the
recipes can easily be removed if you find you don't care for one, and
there is always plenty of space to add more. All of the people in her
community now have one of Grandma's books, so she's begun making them
for my friends and colleagues. Please accept this as her gift to you."

I began to look through the book and discovered that she'd created a
blank index on the first few pages, then she'd numbered the pages in
the rest of the book. The first 50 pages of the book were full (4-6
recipes on each page) of recipes cut from, as the initial letter
mentioned, newspapers and magazines and cookbooks and various other
sources. Each one was tacked on the page with small pieces of tape at
the corners so that it was secure, but could easily be removed if so
desired. The recipes were generally different and fun -- there were
very, very few "ordinary" recipes that you'd find on the back of, say,
a soup can.

We'd never met the woman who made these, and it took us a full day to
figure out who her daughter was (it turns out that she'd substituted in
our building twice early in the year and had enjoyed her time with us).