Good morning, Fare companions. This week you hear from two readers, one who goes back to the recipes of old, another who finds her 2025 specialties in a recent New York Times supplement. As to the former, it does seem there is a recipe or two in any household that survives the changes of culinary life; it becomes the family’s emblematic recipe. Take Queenie McCallie’s family of many descendants, for example. It just may be her Dijon chicken, printed more than once in this column. Or in the extended clan of Sadie Hodge, there was a chosen recipe from each branch, it seemed, when her caramel sticks began the Fare Exchange conversation among them.
Perhaps you would choose a food you all always carry to others. A Chattanoogan named Julia shared her family’s recipe they privately called “Funeral Cake.” When there is a loss anywhere, it’s comforting not just to see Julia or one of her kin coming up the walk, but even more comforting to know she’s bringing her family’s favorite comfort food.
What is the emblematic recipe among your people? The rest of us would like to know. And as we consider what foods define a household, shall we define household? It refers to one place and the one or ones who occupy it. A household can contain just one occupant, or people not bound by kinship. It’s you whom your house holds … and that holding sounds comforting, too.
This last sentence reminds us to remind you that we are hungry for recipes and ideas prepared for one — or your week’s worth of ease and variety.
Here’s another installment on the gracious plenty of recipes shared by a former Nashvillian, who filled her growing family’s summer meals from a New York Times cooking supplement. This one calls for mint, broccoli, Parmesan and walnuts combined with pasta shells or other pasta of your choice. Our reader substituted sunflower seeds for walnuts.