Carrot Tea Bread
3 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ c vegetable oil
1 ½ c finely shredded carrots
2 ¾ c flour
1 ¾ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a 9X5 inch loaf pan with greased wax paper. Instead of lining a loaf pan with greased wax paper, you could also use a nonstick bread pan and spray it with baking spray.

With a mixer, blend eggs, sugar and oil in a bowl. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together. Add to egg mixture and mix. Stir in carrots. You can also add walnuts or raisins. Turn into baking pan and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Take bread out of the pan before it has completely cooled. I find that it comes out easier that way. I believe that this recipe is originally from an old Betty Crocker Cookbook.

Note: Carrot Tea Bread is not the same as Carrot Cake. Expect to find this bread to be more dense than your typical cake. It also contains less fat and sugar than cake. You will discover that the top of this bread to be surprisingly crunchy. This simple, tasty recipe may be enjoyed for breakfast, dessert or a snack.

On one particular morning, I had been thinking about trying out a new recipe such as almond scones or chocolate chip pancakes. However, I was feeling nostalgic. I thought of the breakfast breads that my mother used to make such as banana bread, carrot tea bread and zucchini bread. I scrapped the idea of something new and went with something familiar. It only took a few minutes to decide on carrot tea bread; as the bananas weren’t ripe enough and I had another plan for the zucchinis.

The next task was to locate a recipe that I liked. I knew I had the ingredients but couldn’t remember the exact amounts – a requirement for good baking. I began searching the internet which yielded many recipes for carrot cake. I almost fell into the internet abyss where I would learn about volcanic ash, check out Zappos, download that latest Rihanna song and then consider possible Mother’s Day gifts. But, suddenly and thankfully, I remembered my recipe box.

My recipe box was just that, a box where I stuffed a whole bunch of recipes. If you were to open it you would discover that recipes are on everything: yellow legal paper, a ripped magazine page or even a coupon. A few are actually written onto index cards but most are not. Some are crisp and new while others are worn and old. There is a thank you note for a fundraising brunch that I attended while living in New York. The card is in the original envelope, date stamped 20 Sep 1998 from Dorothy, who lived in Long Island, to me in Queens. Inside is her recipe for Fruit Cobbler. A few months ago, while waiting for steamed shrimp, I picked up a recipe for tilapia chowder from the seafood section of my local grocery store. I fixed the chowder a few days later and it exceeded my expectations. Folded several times over is a Cranberry Apple Crisp recipe. My mother copied it from the Baltimore Sun and mailed it to me a couple of years ago. This is a recipe that I plan to make for an occasion. Based on her rave reviews, I assume that it would be dangerous to have it in the house for me to eat alone. Finally, I find the Carrot Tea Bread recipe that I copied onto a 3X5 index card a long, long, long time ago. It came from the Betty Crocker cookbook that my mother and I often went to throughout my childhood. The last time I saw it, it was being held together by rubber bands. It was probably one of the first recipe books that she owned after getting married in 1962. I’m hoping that she hasn’t thrown it away. At this moment, I make a quick phone call to inquire about the cookbook and Mom says, “Yeah, I still have that raggedy cookbook. I still use it. I’ll never throw that out.” I ask her to bring it with her when she visits next month. She agrees and we discuss ways to try to put it back together again during her visit.

Although I could have an organized recipe box, I choose not to. I like going through it and pausing at different moments in my journey, memories evoked by the recipe or the paper on which it is written. They are in no particular order, just thrown into a box.

nos•tal•gia [no-stal-juh, -jee-uh, nuh-]
a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time (dictionary.com)