Mom's Recipes

[5lakes]

As usual, I went to my Mom's house for dinner today. We got started talking about her recipes. At 87, she doesn't really cook a lot any more and gave me her recipe box. She also explained some about how things were done way back when. My Grandpa must have had a smoke house on the farm as some of the recipes call for smoked this or that.

Quite a few are from the Depression era. They had a garden and raised some beef, pigs and chickens. Although times were tough, they ate some really good food. The farm was primarily corn. Meat was raised for personal use. Grandpa would butcher the animals himself.

Pumpkin pie made from the Halloween pumpkin
Rhubarb wine, pies, jellies
Smoked ham hock and bean stew
Noodles
Home made mac and cheese

My Grandma never kept recipes. Most things she had memorized, but a lot of things she did "on the fly". My Mom wrote down as much as she could, but I'm sure many are lost to time.

I'm going to be cooking some of these. I'll be keeping them all, but the ones I like the best will go into my own recipe file. There's several hundred. Some I remember well, others not at all. My thought is to start with some and take them to her for our Sunday dinners. I'm sure there will be more than a few trips down memory lane for her.

[font=&quot]I see her several times a week and talk with her on the phone almost every day. As I write this, I dread the day when I no longer will be able to do that. I'm trying my darndest to make this time the best of her life.[/font]

 

[hookup]

Great philosophy. My grandparents are long gone, but before my Grandmother passed, I made sure to sit down with her and get her crab-cake, shrimp salad, corn flake potoatoes, and a few other receipes.

My Mom's fading now, so everytime we chat, I get some of her stuff.

I figure if I can't be with my grandparents any more, or one of these days my parents, cooking what I grew up with is my connection back to them.

 

[pineywoods]

Thats very cool that she gave you all the recipes and even better that you are going to make a lot of them for the Sunday dinners to share with her

 

[erain]

5lakes, i am in the exact same situation as you. i make em up, call her when i need and then have her sample and she will tell me what i forgot or need a littlw more/less of. one thing i do is keep track of measurements though... and record... you wont regret it and in the end you spend a lil more time with your mom!!!!

 

[meatball]

Very cool. A couple years ago my wife's great grandmother passed on (she was almost 100). I felt lucky to have the opportunity to meet her a couple times (we lived more than 1,000 miles away) and the first time I met her she made us her homemade noodles and pot roast. I have never tasted anything like that, before or since. What a blessing for you to be able to have her recipes. Life is short and you have to embrace every moment while you can.

 

[squirrel]

That is soooo awesome. I have the recipe to my grandma's butter pound cake that she wrote down years ago, I had it framed. It's really neat. Cherish these times my friend, the memories are priceless!

 

[mythmaster]

That's awesome! One thing that my grandmother was famous for was her buttermilk biscuits. I asked her for the recipe once before she died, and she told me that it was the same as the one on the White Lily flour package. I can only assume that White Lily STOLE HER RECIPE!

Here's a great write-up on making buttermilk biscuits from scratch if anyone is interested, BTW: http://pinchmysalt.com/2007/09/18/ho...-from-scratch/

Anyway, I hope that you'll be sharing some of those recipes with us in the future.

 

[eman]

one of my grandmas didn't cook the other did but never used a recipe.
my dad couldn't boil water w/o burning it ,so my mom made sure thet as soon as us kids were tall enough to reach the stove that we learned to cook.
then i married a good country lady and she is a great baker and cook.
after a bunch of years i found this place and have learned to cure and smoke.
My DIL just told me that my smoked wings w/ my own buffalo sauce recipe was the best she's had . I know that's a good thing as she will tell me if she don't like my cooking . She's BRUTAL when it comes to food.
Thanks folks for all the help!

 

[bill in mn]

That's great.My mother is 86 and a young old ,I have a hard time keeping up with her.I think our mothers are who all other cooks are judged by.I remember making scrambled eggs and then French toast as a kid and we just thought nothing of it.I always say "Cooking way to important to leave up to someone else"
I call my mom everyday and it makes both of our days.Nice work.Bill

 

[5lakes]

Thanx everyone for the great comments. I will be sharing the recipes, along with qview, as I make them. She already has next Sunday planned, oyster stew. I'm torn between the ham hock and bean stew and a recipe for stuffed cheeseburgers. Then there's the stuffed potatoes, chicken hot dish...

Decisions, decisions...

 

[5lakes]

Well, I decided on the bean soup with ham hocks for the main course for tomorrow. I got my ECB working great and will be doing the hocks and beans in it. For desert, the apple cinnamon muffins. I'll take some over to my Mom for supper tomorrow night and give the leftovers to a cousin.

Every Memorial Day, we decorate the graves of my Grandma and Grandpa, along with all the others that have passed. Today, my Mom wanted to see if we could find the farm place she was born on and grew up. We did find it. We took the chance and drove up the lane and the current owner was just coming in from the field in his tractor. We stopped to talk to him, spent more than an hour chatting with him and his wife. The house is still there, and the current owner is the third generation of his family to live there, in that very house! Turns out, his Grandpa bought the farm just seven years after my Mom's family sold the place. The smoke house is no longer there, but the foundation is. It was never used after my family left the farm. The brick chicken coop still houses this family's chickens! The house is in incredible condition for being well over 100 years old. All of the barns and even the corn cribs are still in use. Mom told us of playing hide and seek in the buildings with friends and family. One old building, now used for storage, no one knew what it had originally been built for. Mom to the rescue! After the meat was smoked for the coming winter, it was stored there, along with all of the stuff Grandma canned. Therein is still the wood stove they kept running through the winter to keep things from freezing! This family now has some bits of rich history about the original owners and builders of the place.

The current owner's family grew up on this farm, just as he did, and will be taking it over when their parents choose not to farm any more. They will move into the house and carry on a great family tradition. I was so happy to find that house in such great shape. My Grandpa built it along with the brick barns and other buildings, all still in great shape and ready for another 100 years. My Mom was nearly in tears after the visit, she was so happy.

This will be a Memorial Day that I will never forget. It's been a long time since Mom has been in such good spirits.

May the Great Spirit bless all humanity this weekend and forever.

 

[mballi3011]

Now that is one of the best stories that I have ever heard. It was nice of you to take your mother over to that house to. It is really a good deed that you did. Now you can fix her some of her own recipes to. That us a great thing you have there and you can get her to help you fix the too. My grand father did something like that one time when he was in Ireland. He went to the house where he was born in and found a family that has lived there for about 40-50 years. When they found out who he was they told him that he could own the house. So Poppy went to the township land place and paid the back taxes and got the deed and he went back and gave the house to the folks that have been living in it for all those years. It's stories like this that make you miss the way that the world was so many years ago. I only wish that we could go back to those times where everyone helped each other and took care of themselves too.

 

[5lakes]

Now that is one of the best stories that I have ever heard. It was nice of you to take your mother over to that house to. It is really a good deed that you did. Now you can fix her some of her own recipes to. That us a great thing you have there and you can get her to help you fix the too. My grand father did something like that one time when he was in Ireland. He went to the house where he was born in and found a family that has lived there for about 40-50 years. When they found out who he was they told him that he could own the house. So Poppy went to the township land place and paid the back taxes and got the deed and he went back and gave the house to the folks that have been living in it for all those years. It's stories like this that make you miss the way that the world was so many years ago. I only wish that we could go back to those times where everyone helped each other and took care of themselves too.

Thanx for the kind words. Your Poppy did a great thing and I agree completely about missing the way things were back then. I would so much love to live in those times. Granted, it was hard work, but the rewards meant so much more. I feel truly blessed to be a part of my family and to be raised the way I was.

 

[gnubee]

My Mom gave me my Grandma's old recipe box. Her recipes and tips were hand printed on 3x5 inch recipe cards. Her handwriting was exquisite.  It has things in it you'd never find in a cookbook of today. For instance a tip written in the margin of one recipe for baked chicken. When killing a chicken if you tranquilize it by putting its head under its wing and swinging it around in large circles then gently laying it on the chopping block stretching out its neck and chopping off the head quickly the chicken will not flop around wildly like they usually do. This makes for a much tenderer chicken when baked. They are also easier to pluck using this method.

Beaver tail or Porcupines soaked in milk overnight will not have the harsh bitter taste of poplar trees when made into soups and stews.

(on the farm milk was in great surplus and the excess was often fed to the baby pigs to fatten them up )

Rattlesnakes should be kept in a box or cage for several days after they have eaten something, before killing them for the pot. ( It didn't say why )

Recipe for Mudhens ( American coot ) Written in my Grandfathers hand. Get campfire roaring hot. place flat rock on coals. When rock is red hot place Mudhen on rock. Cover with another flat rock. When second rock is red hot, throw away mudhen , eat that flat rock.

There were tips on how to recognize the good mushrooms from the bad ones. There was a note about a small White mushroom that killed a neighbor of my Granddads, Charlie Riley, when he ate some of them in a soup.

After reading all the warnings about the deadly mushrooms I never picked wild ones again. My Dad always picked and ate Shaggy Manes and the Giant White puffballs.

I asked my Grandma once how you could tell for sure they were safe. She said if you get them from the supermarket or out of a can they are usually safe, otherwise she wouldn't eat them.

For sea cucumber ( a really ugly giant sea slug ) clean out the innards, boil carcass in water 5 minutes, throw away water, boil again, throw away water , boil again for third time. take out animal. slice thinly and saute in butter and tiny bit of tarragon. ( I always meant to try this but never got around to it )

There were three haggis recipes, The Duncans, The Murrays, and the Stewarts. The Murray's and the Stewart's recipes tasted like boiled grass to me. But I really liked the Duncan's recipe.

All of these great recipes and tips were lost when My Sisters apartment building burnt to the ground with the loss of 6 lives. Luckily my Sister and a visiting niece escaped with only minor burns.

My Grandma grew up on a farm on the prairies then moved to Vancouver Island so there were many diverse recipes in her recipe box from sea slugs to prairie chickens and even some tips on butchering farm animals.

I sure wish I had copied down the things she had so carefully saved from all those bygone years.