Miscellaneous

It’s always in the back of the cookbook, right before the index of recipes and kitchen tips: Miscellaneous. They are those how-tos and recipes that don’t quite fit a particular category. Aunt Martha’s  Red Hot Hot Sauce, Great Grandma Sue’s Apple Cider Punch, or Homemade Honey Marshmallows: all great recipes, but where to place them in the cookbook? Maybe they’re the only recipe of their kind submitted for the church or family cookbook, so they get shoved to the back.

This twelve months of waiting has been my Miscellaneous Year. Life has been the tab in the back of the book, where nothing really jumps out at you. Great family experiences have taken place, but there has been a shadowing over them or maybe I’ve watched them through a scrim, like the dream sequence in a play. Each event has had meaning and value, but where they will all come together in my life as puzzle pieces to form the big picture, well… Insert shoulder shrug and nonplussed expression.

This morning I put together my favorite midmorning, work-week snack. If included in a cookbook, it would be placed behind the miscellaneous tab. Trail Mix.  There’s no cooking for this one. The only seasoning comes from the dry roasted cashews and that flavor is a great compliment to the sweet raisins and chocolate covered craisins. Maybe one day the pieces of my life in transition will come together and I’ll see the bigger picture and taste all of the trail mix- the savory and the sweet in one big mouthful.