Recipe for Forgetting

By [Asghar ali awan]

It was scribbled in neat, looping handwriting on the back of a café receipt:

“For healing a heart:

1 cup of patience

2 teaspoons of forgiveness

A pinch of time, stirred slowly.”

The barista pinned it to the corkboard behind the counter because she thought it was charming. By noon, three customers had taken photos of it. By the end of the week, there were six more taped to lampposts, tucked into library books, chalked onto the sidewalk in front of the old bakery.

No one knew who was leaving them.

But those who lived in the little town of Maplebridge began to notice a pattern: each recipe wasn’t quite for food. It was for something else entirely.

It took a few weeks before someone recognized the handwriting.

“Looks like Chef Mauro’s,” said Mrs. Dempsey, who’d been eating at his restaurant, La Fenice, for over thirty years. “Same curly ‘f’ and everything.”

They hadn’t seen Mauro much since he’d closed the restaurant two years earlier. He’d retired quietly, claiming he wanted to “rest his pans.” But everyone knew it was because of his wife, Lila. She’d passed that spring, and the light had gone out in him.

Now, it seemed, the light had returned flickering in strange ways.

Mauro was seventy-two, his memory fraying like an old dish towel. Some days he remembered every ingredient of every meal he’d ever made; other days he forgot whether he’d eaten breakfast.

But he still woke up at dawn, put on his white chef’s coat, and wandered into town with a notebook in his pocket. He didn’t always remember why.

“Good morning, Chef!” called the grocer one day. “What’re you cooking now?”

Mauro smiled vaguely. “Something sweet,” he said.

Later, when the grocer closed up shop, he found a slip of paper on the counter:

“Recipe for Sweetness:

3 ripe peaches, sliced

A drizzle of honey

And one quiet afternoon with someone you miss.”

The town began collecting them the recipes.

Children hunted for them like treasure. Shopkeepers pinned them near their registers. The librarian gathered a dozen and kept them in a scrapbook labeled ‘The Chef’s Pages.’

They began to wonder: were these random? Or was there a story behind them?

One morning, a letter arrived at the Maplebridge Gazette, addressed only to “whoever cares.” Inside was a recipe written in the same looping script:

“For remembering what you love:

1 photograph

1 teaspoon of laughter

A dash of salt — tears optional.”

The editor, moved by its strange beauty, printed it on the front page. Beneath it, she wrote: ‘If you find another recipe, send it to us.’

Soon, the whole town joined in.

Meanwhile, Mauro’s days continued in a blur of half-remembered streets and smells. He carried his notebook everywhere sometimes forgetting where he’d left it. Inside were hundreds of recipes, some real, most not:

For staying up too late with someone you love: espresso, dark chocolate, and courage.

For saying goodbye: rosemary for remembrance, lemon for cleansing, and bread to share before you part.

For the morning after grief: toast with honey, a window open to light, and patience always patience.

He didn’t recall writing most of them. He just knew that when the words came, he had to let them go.

One afternoon, he wandered into the bakery that used to supply La Fenice’s bread. The baker, a young woman named Rosa, greeted him softly.

“Chef Mauro,” she said. “I’ve been saving something for you.”

She handed him a small envelope. Inside was one of his old recipes for Lila’s Lemon Cake.

The handwriting was younger then, confident. The notes in the margins were hers: “Too tart add zest, not juice.”

He stared at it for a long time. “Ah,” he said finally, “she always liked it brighter.”

Rosa smiled. “She came here often, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said, the memory trembling at the edge of his mind. “Every Saturday. She’d buy two pastries, one for her and one for the old man sitting outside. Said sweetness shouldn’t be hoarded.”

He folded the paper carefully. “Maybe I should write her one more recipe.”

The next morning, the townspeople found something new chalked on the bridge that crossed the Maple River written in looping, uneven handwriting:

“Recipe for Forgetting:

1 memory too heavy to carry

2 friends who remind you who you are

A spoonful of time

Stir until it hurts less.”

Beneath it, someone had drawn a small heart and the initials M + L.

After that, the recipes began to slow.

Some weeks passed without a single one appearing. The locals worried, quietly, the way people worry about things they can’t fix.

Then one morning, a boy found a notebook on a park bench worn leather, pages fluttering in the breeze. Inside were hundreds of recipes, each one signed M.

The final page read:

“For letting go:

Mix one long life, one endless love, and a dash of peace.

Bake until you can smell home.”

That evening, the church bells rang at sunset. The next day, the paper announced that Mauro Ferri, beloved chef of La Fenice, had passed away in his sleep.

In the weeks that followed, Maplebridge filled with the smell of baking. Everyone the café owner, the grocer, the librarian chose one of his recipes to make. Some cooked real dishes; others simply followed the strange, poetic instructions.

The barista who’d found the first note stirred sugar into her coffee and whispered her grandmother’s name.

The librarian baked peach cobbler and left a slice on the windowsill for her late husband.

The baker, Rosa, made Lila’s Lemon Cake just a bit brighter this time.

And for a moment, the town felt connected by something invisible the flavor of memory itself.

Months later, children still find his recipes tucked into library books and under benches. No one knows how they got there. Maybe someone’s still leaving them. Maybe he wrote so many that they’ll never all be found.

Either way, the town of Maplebridge keeps reading them — and remembering.

Because sometimes, the sweetest things are the ones that help you forget,

and the hardest things to forget

are the ones that made you love in the first place.