Back when I was using a different strategy for prompts for this blog, I would often post “Family Recipe Friday” entries, which you can still read here. Now that we are up to the 18th week of the year, it seems like a good time to delve back into some more of our family Recipes. Recipes (and cookbooks) intrigue me anyway – there is nothing like reading an old recipe to get a true glimpse into the day-to-day of a time long past. Hence my somewhat out-of-control cookbook collection (up to 2131 now). And when the glimpse you’re getting of the past is of something as intrinsic as what your ancestors might have eaten, that adds another layer of magic. Here is a sampling.
In one of my earlier posts I recorded recipes sent in the mail to my paternal grandmother, Blanche (Wilson) Montgomery. I don’t have many other recipes that belonged to her, though my dad has told me she baked really good bread. I do, though, have a cookbook that was apparently hers. Or at least it was in her house after she had passed away when I helped my dad clear things out. Naturally, this was one of the things I kept. Betty Crocker’s Good and Easy Cook Book dates to 1954. This version, anyway. Later versions were published in 1974, a paperback version in 1975, and yet another version in 1996. And those are just the ones I know from my own collection.
My maternal grandmother, Velma (Swing) Hoffmann, saved quite a few recipes, so those are easier to locate. I especially like those that were handwritten by Grandma or other relatives, or that have a note explaining the recipe’s provenance. A typewritten page containing two recipes “FOR VELMA FROM PHYLLIS” were saved in Grandma’s recipe binder. My assumption is that the Phyllis in question was Phyllis (Probasco) Swing, Grandma’s sister-in-law.
Another recipe given to Grandma Hoffmann is the following for salad dressing, from another sister-in-law, Pearl (White) Hoffman. I’m not sure what child is responsible for the scribbles on there.
My mom, Linda (Hoffmann) Montgomery, continued this tendency to collect recipes. She had clippings from newspapers and magazines, recipes given to her by others, as well as those she wrote out by hand in the beautiful penmanship I thought would one day descend upon me like magic when I became an adult. Spoiler alert: that never happened. Sometimes the penmanship is the best part of the recipe, as in the case of this one, for “Clockwatcher Salad.” Granted, people who actually like vegetables might like this one.
Another of Mom’s recipes that seems to exude 1980s vibes (or maybe 1950s vibes filtered through the 1980s) is this one, for Fruit Cocktail Cake:
So what about the next generation? My brother makes our annual Thanksgiving stuffing recipe (with help now from my nephew), I keep up the tradition of The Green Jello, and if I could find canned deveined shrimp I’d make Grandma Hoffmann’s shrimp salad again. As for my own recipe maxims, though? That’s pretty easy: you can never add too much brown sugar.
