The Recipe Box by Viola Shipman

The Recipe Box is the tale of the Mullin’s family women who prove that hard work, perseverance, luck, and love of family and baking can conquer any hardship and bring great joy.

The Mullin’s family have owned an apple orchard in Michigan for 100 years.  The Mullin’s women have been creating recipes and baking for the same amount of time, with each generation adding to the substantial recipe collection.  On a daughter’s 13th birthday, she is given a key and a recipe box filled with all the collected recipes.  The cards, stained with flour, oil and chocolate also holds the love which has been passed down over the years.  On that same birthday, they bake with their mother and grandmother as the story of the creation of the recipe is told.

When Sam Mullins suddenly quits her baking job in New York she heads home to the orchard, the place she has always loved, but was never quite sure she wanted to make her permanent residence.  While baking once again alongside her grandmother and her mother, she realizes she too is part of the history of this land. But with a new prestigious job prospect in New York, and a love interest she has tried to ignore for far too long, she must finally decide where her heart really lies.

As a celebration of the orchard’s 100 year anniversary combined with her grandmother Willo’s 75th birthday which will take place over Labor Day weekend comes closer, Sam must decide what her dreams for her future really are and what would make her most happy.

The book, which is filled with mouth watering recipes with an afterward which gives the reader the true stories of how the recipes really came to fruition is itself just another reason to love this story.

Because as Willo says, “There is nothing more important than family and food.  Food represents how we celebrate, how we come together, how we rejoice, how we mourn and how we remain one.”  That, I believe, says it all.