Recipe ramblings

There’s something unique about flipping through old cookbooks, ones that go back a generation or two. The worn pages used and studied by grandmothers and mothers’ years ago contain recipes that sometimes beg to be cooked just once more. Occasionally, I come across a page with a spot or three of grease, a splatter of batter and once, the remnant of what I hope was flour. From these pages, I can’t help but wonder, which recipe did they try.

There is something special about these recipes. All contain simple ingredients and more than likely, many do not have very good explanations when it comes down to directions. Back then, you were taught these things. You knew, just as your mom showed you, how to mix up ingredients and in what order, how to beat the batter and how to cook it without much written direction and you knew how to tell when it was done. Today, we write recipes for the challenged, inexperienced cooks.

There is something significant in teaching our youth and handing down recipes and cooking methods to the next generation. It is something that, in this hurried lifestyle, we must do. There is something special about these old recipes, something that bonds me to my family and something, like trying them, I must do.

Today’s recipes are a few that I have on my list to try. To undertake in making, to use my knowledge from which my mother and grandmother taught me and to enjoy the rewards of these recipes from generations ago.

See Gold & White Anniversary Cake and Mason & Dixon Cookies that go along with this post.