Blanche: Her Life, Her Kids, Her Food

Many adults struggle to find ways to thank their mothers for giving them life, for demonstrating how to navigate life’s difficult times, and for being in old age a joyful, grateful human being, someone whose love still warms your heart and whose spirit you want to emulate.

Author, Mary Van Kempen Nilsen, came up with one way–preserve her recipes, not just the recipes, but the actual well-worn cards on which they were written, cards that were, in some cases yellowed with age and spotted with a stray ingredient.

Her brothers and sisters agreed. And as the energy built, so did the scope of the project. Not just recipes (a metaphor for all that their mother gives them that nourishes their lives), but old pictures too. Not just recipes and pictures but their mother’s own words about her life. Not just recipes and pictures and writing, but a tribute to the man she loved, the man who died much too soon leaving her with nine children to care for, nine hungry mouths to feed.

This book is the result, a way the children of Blanche Van Kempen found to say to their mother, now a ninety-one-year-old, grace-filled matriarch, Mom, thank you!
Mom, we love you.