Way back when, in the months leading up to our wedding, I was blessed to have friends and family throw me many bridal showers. It was a lot of fun and amazing to feel so much love. One of the showers was food/cooking themed. We had a cooking class by a great local chef, drank wine and laughed, and they all shared with me a booklet of favourites recipes.
My recipe book is simple. Handwritten recipes on seemingly old fashioned recipe cards. Each one tucked into it's own slot in a photo album. No graphic design, no fear of getting things dirty. Handwriting to treasure (and decipher) and favourite recipes from their family or secrets that no one would share before then. Still, when I ask my Mom or my Mother In Law for a recipe they give it to me on a card to insert. Or I tuck their hand written notes into a sleeve.
When I'm bored with my own cooking, looking for a little extra comfort from the kitchen, or a memory overcomes my tastebuds, this is the book I pull from the shelf. I have almost 100 cookbooks, but this is my go to resource.
This morning I pulled it out to make cupcakes. Grandma Arkison's Wacky Cake was waiting for me. I should know this recipe by heart, and probably do, but I love to see my sister-in-law's writing and smile at the thought that this was a secret family recipe. (It's not, it is a standard, Depression era recipe.) And that day, at my bridal shower, I was let into the family when this recipe passed over to me.
Do you have a family recipe book?
8 comments:
Oh how nice! i treasure my Grand'mere's old recipes that she wrote out longhand in a regular notebook. I especially like her salmon loaf and her piccalilly recipe is to die for. My best friend and I both collect old recipe books--we particularly like the ones from fund raisers for churches and other groups....hugs, Julierose
I love family recipes. When my sister got married I sent recipe cads to all the relatives. I loved getting all those notes back withe cards handwritten. I even gave her the notes for the sweet stories they told.
I don't have an official family recipe book like yours on cards but I do have my own version with many recipes I've culled over time. A fee of the most special are ones handwritten by the person who made them, like my Oma's German cookies or my mom's pumpkin dessert. It's not just the recipe that is meaningful, but the script that I associate with them. They evoke so many memories.
I keep promising to compile and publish our family cookbook - my kids keep after me to that - we have so many wonderful dishes that we've found and love over the years. I really need to get on that! a lovely lady from Australia mentioned a dish on her blog recently and I asked for the recipe and she took a photo of her handwritten recipe from her recipe book and sent it to me. It's in her handwriting and she sent it in color so I can see the pretty border on the edge of the page. I love that she sent it to me like that and didn't just type it. Makes it much more special! o:)
Oh Cheryl, what a sweet memory and thank you for sharing it with us. I can appreciate all the sentiment contained in that one little cookbook and hope that when the time comes for your children to take a partner, they will likewise receive the family secrets to pass along.
I loved this posting.
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My Aunt made a charity cookbook one year, but since she was new in town/country (she moved to the southern US), she didn't know anyone and asked our family for recipes. My Mom wisely bought enough copies of the finished book that all the grandkids would have a copy. It is weird to see the favourite dishes from our childhoods mixed in with the few local Southern recipes my Aunt could get!
I also have a photo album filled with recipes I copied out in university, either from the food network, or over the phone from my mom. No titles on most of them, and they are copied out on the back of receipts, class notes and magazine ad cards. I go though it all the time looking for our pancake recipe, or those really good brownies.
I have both my grandmothers, mothers and mother-in-laws cookbooks. Probably my favourite recipe is for oatcakes. My mother-in-law lived in Glace Bay NS. Her recipe for them is in the church cookbook minus a key ingredient. I know because I have the real recipe in a scribbler of recipes she wrote up for when my first child was born. The only person who makes her oatcakes as well as her is my husband. I also remember her coming up and staying with me (the only time she ever travelled without her husband) for a week when my first child was born - she sent me to bed and cuddled Sarah singing to her in Gaelic.
Oh Nancy! Would you share the oatcake recipe? I am forever searching for just the right one. With jam season approaching the cravings grow. After my years living in Nova Scotia it is one of the foods I truly crave at times.
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