Yesterday, my great aunt Babe, hosted the annual family "Easter Saturday" dinner at her house in Palm Desert. She cooked a fabulous lunch of ham, green salad, potato salad, and broccoli salad. Great aunt Babe is 94 93 and still goes golfing every week. She is a quiet dynamo.

I had never eaten broccoli salad before and Babe's version was amazing with broccoli, red onion, thin crispy bacon, golden raisins and sunflower seeds in a thin tangy mayo based dressing. Possibly one of the top 5 best salads I have ever eaten in my life. I wanted the recipe. So, I asked for it after lunch.

Great Aunt Babe said, "No."

Me, "No?"

Great Aunt Babe, "No."

Me, "Oh... Are you sure?"

Great Aunt Babe, "Yes, it is for Lynn."

I sat back down on the couch bewildered. My 2nd cousin-in-law, Pat, asked, "Did she give it to you?" "No. She said it is for Lynn," I said. "That way it stays in the family," Pat said. Me, "Hmmph. Well, I will google it. Surely the internets will have the recipe."

I clicked on my Nokia's web browser, opened the bookmark for Google, and typed in "broccoli salad". As I was typing, Pat said, "I always forget about Google. Look, your phone already has all the links."

One by one I read the linked recipes and lo and behold, the first 7 recipes listed were versions the salad we ate that day. I read the recipes to Pat and she said, "That's it, it needs to sit overnight." "Hey, look Elise has a recipe for it with peas." I then sent Pat the link to Elise's recipe from my phone and we were both happy. No one else noticed our conversation, nor my looking up the recipe on my Nokia's browser.

Thirty minutes passed I took the remainder of my dishes into the kitchen when great aunt Babe rounded the corner, picked up a piece of note paper and a pencil to write "1 c. mayo, 2 teaspoons cider vinegar, 1/2 c. sugar" on the paper. She hands it to me and says, "Here is the dressing, use cider vinegar - that is the secret, and then whatever vegetables you want." And walks off.

I went back to the couch and told Pat what had happened. We laughed.

I am of the internet generation. Why not share your favorite recipe? A version of it is most likely already up on the 'net, so no reason not to. But when you are 94, maybe the open source world that I am so used to is not what Babe lived or what she grew up with.

Have you had anyone deny you a recipe when you asked?