The card is so stained you can barely read it anymore. Tomato sauce, butter, a pinch of sugar in her handwriting, faded under thirty years of thumbprints and olive oil.
I cook from it every Saturday. I cater from my apartment, actually. Small jobs, mostly. Fifteen plates, maybe twenty. Word of mouth only.
It started the year I lost the office job and the apartment in the same month. I had an extension cord running from my neighbor Sal's outlet to my hot plate because ConEd had shut me off.
That was also the year Diane's mother came by to pick up the last of her daughter's things. She saw me cooking, asked what I was doing with myself, and I told her the truth. I wanted to cook for people for money.
She looked at me for a long time. Then she sat at my counter and wrote out her sauce recipe on a plain white index card. She said, 'You'll never make a living this way. But you should do it anyway.'
She was half right. I do make a living, though not the kind that comes with a retirement plan. The card stays in my wallet now, not the kitchen. I don't need to read it anymore. I just need to know it's there.