If you have been reading my posts for a while, you may remember this large pile of my great-grandmother’s recipes that my mother and I went through over Christmas and that I stashed a few gems in my suitcase before flying home. Among all of the recipes for making jellied salads with cold tongue and cookies and desserts with boatloads of shortening, I found this:
This book was published in Canada in 1897. This was before my great-grandmother was even born. Jello and shortening did not exist. Neither did cake mixes, white bread, or any other chemical convenience foods in a box. All of the ingredients were readily available to people who live in this country, without spending hours on a plane to get here. It is the original “slow foods/eat local” book, back when that was really the only option. I love this cookbook.
So here is the project. This year I am going to cook from my great-grandmother’s recipes. I will explore the recipes from the “Handy Reliable Cook Book.” I will also sift through the pile of newspaper recipes from the 1940s and the recipes in my own great-grandmother’s writing. Like this one: (notice the lack of title and directions, anyone know what this might be?)
I am not going to make all the recipes, and I am going to have to adapt many of the recipes (a gill of “morning milk” is not something that is readily available in my neck of the woods) but I am going to do my best to recapture some of the recipes from the past.
So thus begins my first blog project. The good, the bad, and the seriously funny (I am expecting I will make a lot of mistakes as I attempt this…) will all be recorded here for the world to see (or, rather, the parts of the world that actually read what I write on a regular basis – thanks for being here!). These posts will, of course, be interspersed with my ramblings on all of my other projects, and in my “you can never have too many projects going on all at once” attitude I am also going to assign myself a big sewing project, also a bit of a historical one, but more on that another day.
So, with my glass of fresh milk raised high (figuratively speaking, of course, that stuff is illegal here now) I begin a year of learning the art of “commonsense cookery” under the tutelage of the “Handy Reliable” and my very own great-grandmother. I wonder what she would think if she knew.
This is a great idea – what a treasure you’ve got with that cookbook! Can’t wait to see how it goes.
I don’t know what your mystery recipe is, but it sounds like one of those gross things old ladies bring to wedding and baby showers!!!!
sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that seriously looks like a recipe for fruit cake, or a variation of. good luck with your project. sounds like a lot of nostalgic food fun.
Dear Andrea,
I have just browsed through several of your blog posts and I am impressed by your personal, thoughtful and sentimental writing style. I like how you include artistically-arranged photos with your posts. I like your idea of cooking your great-grandmother’s recipes. I hope your cooking project goes well. Maybe you really should have been born in the 1800s, Beatrice! -Jennie (aka Matilda)
Thanks, Jennie! Sometimes I do think I should have been born a century earlier, and then I remember how often I use Google in a day….
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