Cooking up Memories

Growing up, many of LIZ MENDONCA’s happiest times were spent with her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. “Everyone congregated in the kitchen, because that’s where all the fun was,” she says.

Mendonca grew up outside of Annapolis, Maryland, and her parents are from North Carolina. She completed her graduate degree in English at North Carolina State University, became a teacher, and taught in Maryland and Florida. In 2020, Mendonca returned to North Carolina, settling in Wilmington as an Upper School English teacher at Cape Fear Academy.

When Mendonca’s grandmother passed away in 2022 at 97 years old, she wanted to preserve those memories. “She led an extraordinary life, was the matriarch of our family, and was a phenomenal cook,” she says.

Mendonca found two boxes of her grandmother’s recipe cards. “Some were handwritten, others were typed,” she says. “Then, I found three of her most used cookbooks – duct taped together. Flipping through those, I realized the dirtier the pages, the more times my grandmother cooked those recipes – and those were the better ones.”

Mendonca wanted her family to have a copy of recipes they always enjoyed on birthdays and holidays. “I mainly wanted to digitize everything,” she says. As she began organizing the recipes chronologically, she found foods that spanned five generations. Mendonca’s family has lived in northeastern North Carolina, primarily Bertie and Pitt counties, since it was a colony. “I didn’t realize how regional these recipes were,” she says. “My husband is Brazilian and many of these, like Brunswick stew, were so foreign to him,” she says with a laugh.

Mendonca transcribed the recipes, and the list swelled to more than 1,200. “I talked to my mom and uncles, and we culled the list down to what the family remembered my grandmother making,” she says. “When my family found out what I was doing, they said others would want these recipes too. I didn’t believe them, but my husband convinced me to turn it into a book.”

The cookbook is divided into a timeline spanning three centuries through the lives of more than a dozen cooks. It begins with stories about the women in Mendonca’s family. “I started with a photo of each woman and rather than a biography, I wrote about the recipe she was most known for,” she says.

And the title? “It’s Butter, Size of an Egg,” Mendonca says. “It’s one of the ingredients in the lemon chess pie – one of the oldest recipes in the book. We joked about this recipe because none of the ingredients have measurements. The amount of butter is ‘butter, size of an egg.’  We estimate that to be about two tablespoons.”

Cheese straws and chocolate chess pie are Mendonca’s favorites. “We ate cheese straws every Christmas and only at Christmas because they are a pain to make,” she says. “My family used a 1960s copper crank cookie press. You can’t do it with a modern cookie press. It just doesn’t work. And the chocolate chess pie is just so simple and delicious.”

Mendonca’s collection is a joyful celebration of the kitchen and family – a way to make us feel like we’re with those who are long gone. “It makes me feel so connected to them,” Mendonca says.

To view more of photographer Daria Amato’s work, go to dariaphoto.com

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