It might seem hard to believe, but there was life before internet and no matter how vague any memory of that place might have become, it did exist and I was born into it. 

In that world on the verge, but with no anticipation whatsoever of the future drowning in culinary blogs, food-tubes or mouth-watering instagram feeds, right around the corner, food was still a thing - just like it had been in many worlds before – and the recipes were finding their ways through communities. 

I remember them flying around the town on fatty papers of all sorts and sizes torn out of notebooks, even handkerchiefs, written in unrecognizable handwritings, being exchanged at casual get-togethers, birthday or holiday feasts and often after funerals. Some being more reliable than others, the recipes were passed on, forever burdened with their shady names, making themselves comforable and well accepted in their new families as if it were their own.

By 1997 my mom had a pile of those randomly collected recipes in one of her kitchen drawers. Needless to mention, there was no beginning and no end and certainly no system to her stack so lacking other entertainment that would satisfy my creative OCDC, i decided to take care of it. She protested for a while, but I persisted: they were all re-written or glued in a little black book, categorised – savoury, sweets and such – the best way I could at the time, and with credits to people who made them or passed them on in the upper right corner. In the end it turned out to be a beautiful document of an era we had no idea would end so quickly. The little black book still exists and is being used on regular basis - just a week or two ago, I consulted it to make some savoury kiflice by my mom's friend Mira for the first time.