Last night I was writing my blog post for my blog and trying to decide what to write about today that would fit in with the Real Food Challenge. Then I realized that what I was writing about was real food.
This past summer my grandma died. I was talking to my mom about making a cookbook with a collection of family recipes that everyone remembers or has fond memories of. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but haven’t had the chance to gather some of the recipes. During a trip down to my grandma’s house last week I gathered some photos of a few of my grandmother’s and my great grandmother’s favorite recipes. I love that many of them are in their own handwriting, or they were typed on their old typewriters.
I was thinking how many of our memories revolve around food. We remember our grandma’s famous rolls, or aunt Edna’s cake. My mom and I were chatting with my uncle about one of his favorite dishes my grandma made when he was a little boy. One of his favorites was a simple casserole.
So many of our memories revolve around food, real food in particular. I doubt I’d have fond memories of my grandma’s famous rolls if they were brown and serve rolls from the store. I wouldn’t be taking photos of her pickle recipe if she always bought pickles from the store. On those days when you’re struggling to think of something to make or don’t want to make some real food, remember that real food is the stuff that memories are made of.
What’s your favorite real food memory?
Susy can also be found over at Chiot’s Run where she blogs about gardening, beekeeping, maple sugaring, eating locally and everything in between.
Hello! I don’t have a food memory to share (though I have plenty!). Instead I wanted to thank you for reminding me about my Mom’s recipe drawer. She is religiously organized in every corner of her life except for in this drawer. The recipes go in and out as needed and used and they look like the ones in this post. She’s promised to leave me the drawer in her will, but until then, not one of those recipes leaves the house, in case they don’t come back!
Too many food memories to share! I’m such a sentimental (fool) person that I adore my grandmother’s handwritten recipes. I can actually smell her kitchen and think of her hands working the food when I see her recipes. Thanks for sharing this not so foolish attribute.
I was born in 1966, my Vavoe(Grandma ) died in 1974. We would visit every Sunday for dinner. Once each month all the ladies/ Voe Mom , Auntie …would sit around the table and roll, fill and fold tortallini with pork and fill baggies. Each lady would take home enough to feed the family. mmm
This is pretty much what my blog is about– our family recipes. It’s so wonderful that you found your grandmother’s recipes; my family’s are lost, except as I can reconstruct them. The story is here: http://washhands-settable.blogspot.com/2010/02/recipe-box.html (I know one is not supposed to do that, but it’s so apt, I felt I’d be forgiven).
One of the things that Eat Real Food has given me is the tastes of my childhood. Buying real ingredients, and making especially breads from scratch, using humanely-raised meat; these things now taste like my memories of food from the 50s and 60s, before our food chain was exported and industrialized.
Thank you for that thought provoking post. I typically just lurk, but was inspired. My Mom died in 1998 and many of my best memories of my childhood happened around her kitchen table – cooking or eating or just living. The table was the heart of her/our home and I hope that someday my kids will say the same of that same table around which we still cook and eat and live. Specific memories include Italian Wedding Soup, rolling pie crusts, the best dill pickles EVUH, potato soup and dumplings…. But my most vivid sensory memory is the smell of fresh tomatoes cooking down to be canned – there truly is no better smell in the world.
print it with the original recipes as illustrations
I love love love love old family recipes.
In the sweet pickle recipe, what is “1/4 pkg of sac.” ?
I’m guessing it’s some king of sugar, since the recipe is for sweet pickles and there is not sugar listed in the recipe. Perhaps this was my great grandma’s shorthand for sugar? Or maybe a brand of sugar from the time (early 1910′s)?
Maybe it’s saccharin? Was that around in her time?
Not sure when saccharine was introduced for use in cooking, this was one of my great grandma’s recipes (and she dies before I was born). I’ll most likely use sugar, I’ll compare this recipe to a few in my old Farm Journal Cookbook and use a similar amount from one of those recipes.
saccharin’s been around and available for home use since the ’50s. It was what the original tab was sweetened with.
Yes, I was reading about the history of saccharine earlier today and it was used widely during World War I during a sugar shortage (according to the article I was reading). Since I don’t use artificial things in my kitchen, I’ll amend the recipe and try using sugar and add the changed to the cookbook. Should taste better than using saccharine!
My grandmother’s homemade egg noodles. She made them every Thanksgiving and we would fight to get at the front of the line to get plenty before they were gone. (Our family is so big we always ate buffet style.) She died last Nov. and I’ve been trying for years to duplicate her noodles. They are never quite right. I guess Grandma just had that special touch!
Chipped beef on Toast (also known as S.O.S. – or Sh*t on a Shingle) – that is one of my all time favorite comfort foods and one that reminds me so much of Gram. I only have a few hand written recipes from her – The things she made the most and the things that were most memorable were all kept “upstairs” (in her head) and I don’t know how to make those thing (other than SOS! – and now that goes on mashed potatoes, toast, baked potato – YUM!). Emily
My grandma and grandpa were farmers. The funny thing is they hardly every ate anything fresh. They cooked the heck out of it, added their home made butter, and tons of salt and pepper. You know what? I loved her food!
For lunch granny would go out kill a chicken, fry it up and serve it with mashed potatoes, gravy, white bread, maybe some fried okra and either fresh milk or tea.
The best part is both my grandparents lived to be in their nineties and ate like this till the day they died.
Also when I was a little kid, only at grannies house could I ever drink my own big bottled soda. Good Ole’ Texas!
I have only a few memories of my maternal grandma, but one special one is seeing her cooking down strawberries for jam, and taking home a cooled jar topped with paraffin wax. I really enjoyed prying off the wax and spreading the ruby colored jam on an English muffin.
Funny, the things we remember.
My grandmother’s cinnamon bread – the smell of it always lingered in her house, so much had been baked there. Many childhood breakfasts were spent unrolling the layers from a piece of that toast. Even now, when I spread it out on the counter and sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar on, I hear her voice in my head counseling, “well, maybe just a little more than that”. It’s funny how those recipes change with the times. The white flour bread and processed sugar has slowly been replaced by whole wheat (or gluten free flour mix) and unrefined sugar but the smell that fills the house whenever I bake it takes me straight back to that time. http://www.moderncrafter.com/2010/03/making-cinnamon-bread.html