MAY 2023
Most of you know that, though I live in New York State, I'm originally from Georgia.
With that comes a love of grits, gummy peach rings, and collard greens; an occasional Southern accent (it came out the other day on the word tailor); and a deep appreciation for time spent rocking on the porch.
Also, a discerning palette for cheese straws.
For those of you who aren't familiar, a cheese straw* is a homemade cheese cracker or biscuit, made with a cookie press or cut into rectangles and marked with the back of a fork. They are typically orange in color, buttery, and sometimes a touch spicy with the addition of a pinch of cayenne pepper.
*Not to be confused with cheese sticks or cheese twists
The recipe is simple—flour, butter, cheddar cheese, and salt—though, like anything, there are many variations.
Several years ago, my 82-year-old next-door neighbor, Ann (also from Georgia) fixed a plate of them as an appetizer for our annual street-wide holiday cookie swap and we sat at the dining room table munching away and talking about books, Georgia football, and the old Marietta Square.
Ann passed away in early 2021, but a few weeks ago, I asked her husband, Joe, if he knew where her cheese straw recipe might be. He invited me over to look through her cookbooks on Sunday afternoon: volumes of neatly organized recipes (handwritten, typed, and clipped from the newspaper), menus from parties they'd thrown, and grocery lists stacked neatly on the shelf just outside their Art Deco kitchen.
I carried a few over to the dining room table and began flipping through the pages. When I opened the third binder, there was the cheese straw recipe handwritten on an index card. She listed the ingredients down the side with five variations across the card—she must have been experimenting. One column was circled and marked with a checkmark ("minus the baking powder," she wrote).
In the end, I found over a dozen new recipes to try—everything from "Jane's Artichoke Squares" to “McConkey's Key Lime Pie.”
There's something special about having someone else's recipe, right? Written in their handwriting, with their notes in the margin. Following their steps and recreating the same thing they made however long ago.
I feel this way about teaching, too: Following someone else's "recipe" for introducing a new musical concept (something I talked about in Ep. 059 - 7 Ways to Practice Rhythm), developing a practice plan, or preparing for a performance (see my review of William Westney's "The Perfect Wrong Note"). Maybe you feel the same connection to the teachers that have guided you when you read a copy of their music—their fingering, breath marks, reminders, circled notes.
It's a reminder that who we are and what we do is built on the legacy of those who have gone before us—our teachers and mentors and their teachers and mentors before them. They're part of you and part of the legacy you're creating.
What are you developing, creating, or experimenting with? What are you learning?
Always remember that you have something worth sharing—something worth writing down—whether it's a song, a story, a strategy, or a cheese straw recipe.
