My (great) granny was a dear, sweet lady. She passed away when I was 5, but I’m lucky enough to still have a few vivid memories of her. One of the most clear memories I have of her was cooking with her in her kitchen (which is now my kitchen). I would walk out to her house and she would let me ‘cook’. I would mix up a bunch of flour, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, eggs-whatever I could find-and then she’d let me bake it in her oven. When it was ‘finished’ I would try to feed my creation to my dog, to which she would take a sniff and walk away. Talk about a confidence booster!
My granny was an exceptional cook. I can remember eating some wonderful things from her kitchen, and now her talent lives on through her recipes. My mom has been making many of my granny’s recipes for years and they’re just doggone good. Broccoli casserole, granny’s rolls, holiday party cookies, that’s the stuff dreams are made of right there.
So you can imagine my sheer excitement when I stumbled on this:
That’s my sweet granny’s recipe box. I love how worn and stained it is. Oh, talk about finding a gold mine. I stole borrowed this from my mom this past weekend and had a field day looking through that old box. I started digging around in it and found some real gems.
Sybil’s buttermilk rolls, coconut creme pie, 6 loaf bread, woop, woop! I love the simplicity of all of her recipes. No fancy ingredients. No recipes printed from a computer. No colorful, pretty pictures. Just simple, handwritten recipes on plain index cards, weathered from time, and stains from use in her kitchen. I was born in the wrong generation. I’m a granny at heart.
This one is for Mexican relish or, as I thought, Mexican ‘rubbish’. Handwriting analysis is not my strong suit.
I love to imagine how she got these recipes. Like this one:
This one is for Dill Okra. It is written on the back of an envelope, addressed to my great granddad and postmarked 1975. Did a friend share this with her? Did she whip up some Dill Okra and grab the first piece of paper she saw and record as she went? I just love her old handwriting.
And check out this one:
This is for her Italian Cream Cheese Cake. This here is a special cake. I’ve yet to make it, but my mom whips this baby up for special occasions. It’s the ‘special occasion cake’ around our parts. Look at the first ingredient. Oleo!
These sweet recipes are priceless to me. Is there anything better than good ole’ fashioned food, made from old, weathered recipes? I think not.
In an effort to preserve these old, weathered recipes, I’ve started rewriting them. Most of the handwriting is faded, and in some parts, barely legible. It’s my plan to cook some of them along the way and share them on the ole’ bloggarooksy. There may or may not be some buttery, sugary goodness in the near future 😉
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In other notes, I’m going to be making some changes to the blog in the next couple of days, so please excuse my mess. I am beyond technologically challenged, and its very frustrating for me to try and make changes because I have no clue what I’m doing. So, you can expect a very slow process of change. Wamp, wamp.
And FINALLY, the weiners of the Randi Jasmine Photography giveaway!
I used www.randomizer.org to choose the winners:
1st place, receiving 10 edited photos of their choice: (comment # 9) TamsynRiley
2nd place, receiving 5 edited photos of their choice: (comment # 22) Jen B
3rd place, receiving 1 edited photo of their choice: (comment # 15) Adcole
Congrats, y’all! Please contact me at therookieyears{at}gmail{dot}com to claim your prizes! Thanks to all that entered! Be sure to check out Jasmine’s blog. She offers an awesome photo-editing service at a great price!
Have a blessed Monday!
