Your grandma’s recipe card has stains from fifty years of cooking. Stains are what love looks like on paper.

Wear is proof of use. A clean card means nothing was ever cooked from it, while a blotched, softened one records fifty years of meals that actually got made and eaten by people who were hungry. The damage is the achievement, which is a fair way to think about most well used things.

Resist retyping or laminating the stained one. Keep it as it is, somewhere safe, and photograph it so it cannot be lost completely. Then cook from it and add a stain of your own.