The first mini prompt for this week was the word "saudade."
I challenged myself and my followers to write something small based on the word and now you can read what I wrote for "Saudade" here!
The secret recipes were handed down to me that year.
I can't quite explain how much pressure that was. It was always a favorite of the family's. She never let anyone else make it, so I had to practice following the lopping scrawl on the little card for a month beforehand.
No one wanted that year to be different. It was an absolute must. My cousin inherited the house, so we were even in the same dining room as always. Like were all in denial that time had moved on without her.
I bought about a dozen different brands of the same ingredients, changed the temperature of the house, experimented with different pan sizes and material, and every attempt turned out different than the last. But none of them was her's.
I panicked all day as I salved away in the kitchen. She never wrote down the measurements. And instead of describing what it should look like or how it should behave, the recipe was riddled with phrases like, "enough seasoning," "add to taste," "until desired."
If I just worked hard enough and persisted through the grueling heat of the kitchen, she would be there with us at dinner. She had to be, so I had to keep going.
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