No one likes to think about losing their loved one. And we certainly don’t realize what they did for us until after they have passed away.

Mine came in the form of helping my family clean out my grandmother’s house. Every piece of paper seems important, there’s so little you want to throw away. Trust me, I know. It took me a good five minutes to throw away that torn envelope that said “Knock Loudly. I’m in back,” in her handwriting.

I also came to realize my grandmother was nothing short of a hoarder when it came to recipes. Boxes upon boxes I sorted through with my sister and brother-in-law today: newspaper clippings, handwritten recipes, sticky notes in recipe books. and please don’t get me started on the tiny paperback books you can buy while standing in line at the grocery store – I think she had every issue of those since before I was born stashed away in hidden nooks and crannies throughout the house.

We’ve settled on one large “keep” box and about 8 large “give away” boxes. And that doesn’t count what’s in her basement. The ones I kept had “peanut butter balls, p. 82” scrawled in the front in her very recognizable handwriting, or a sticky note that lead you to a taco pie recipe in the church cook book.

That’s when it hit me. I will never eat my grandmother’s cooking again. She will never again make me chicken and dumplings. I won’t be able to enjoy her peanut butter balls every Christmas. And she certainly isn’t going to make me “chicken stuff” (the best recipes don’t even have names, guys) on my birthday.

So I kept some of the important books aside: the sloppy joe recipe, the book with the peanut butter balls recipe written on the front, the sticky note filled church cook book with her famous pizza burgers, the one that contained her favorite lemon bar recipe, and one special one that just had the following scribbled on the inside: This has family favorites in it.

I decided then that I’d never be cooking with Grandma again. Instead, I’d be cooking without her. But only in the physical sense. So, feel free to take this journey with me. I’ll start trying out the recipes through the cookbooks I kept. And attempt to take this from: cookingwithoutgrandma to cookingwithgrandmainmyheart.

Peace, love, and peanut butter balls. And maybe some pizza burgers.