Memento Nori

In memory of Nora — “Aunt Nora” to her friends, “Mama San” to her son.

Nora fed people. Every Thanksgiving she cooked for days — turkey in the oven by 1 A.M. — and filled her Arkansas table with the Filipino dishes of home for the friends she had gathered from fifty miles around, because she wanted them to taste home too.

Her recipes are here, in her own handwriting, free for anyone who wants to cook them. And if you have a moment with her that you carry with you — a meal, a laugh, a kindness — this is the place to leave it, so the rest of us can carry it too.

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Nora and her friends behind her Thanksgiving table
Nora (second from left) and friends, Thanksgiving.
From her kitchen

You Can A-Smell It: Thanksgiving

Cover of You Can A-Smell It: Thanksgiving

Every recipe from Nora's three Thanksgiving notepads — 68 recipes, her handwriting on the left of every page and a faithful typed copy on the right. If an amount isn't written down, your guess is as good as ours: she didn't cook by numbers.

Asked how long to cook something, she always said the same thing:

“You can a-smell it when it's done.”

And her secret, which she gave freely: pray the whole time you are cooking.

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Cookbook page
Page 1 of 116
Moments with Nora

The Memory Wall

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If Nora ever fed you, teased you, prayed for you, or made you laugh until it hurt — yours could be the first story here.

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Share a Memory of Nora

A photo and the story that goes with it — the moment, the meal, what she said. Every memory is read by her son Casper first; once he approves it, it joins the wall above for everyone to read.

One photo is plenty — pick the one that holds the moment.