Fairyland Cookbook Small

In the dark recesses of a cabinet, inside a plastic bag tucked inside an old box, I discovered something I hadn’t seen in years: our family recipe file box. It was pink, faded with age, and softened at the corners from generations of loving hands. The old recipe box had lived in our family kitchen for as long as I could remember, carrying recipes, newspaper clippings, and memories from one generation to the next. But there was something else inside that cabinet. A black book. It was larger than a diary, with an old-fashioned lock and key on the front. I remembered the book from my childhood, although I hadn’t thought about it in years. Written across the cover was a faded secret message. One that required a password to discover where the key had been hidden somewhere in this very house. And then I remembered Granny Pat’s song. At least, I almost remembered. It had been many years since I had thought about either the black book or the strange little rhyme she had taught me, and I had to dig deep into the dusty corners of my memory before the words finally came back: