Saturday, February 13, 2010
On Family Recipes
I haven't blogged about food in a while, so if you came looking for hiking pictures or Pre-March-Madness Predictions, feel free to move along.
Culinary Santa Clause was good to me this Christmas - an immersion blender, a cast iron dutch oven, a book of herbs and a book of seasonal recipes. But my favorite was a cookbook compiled by my cousin Danielle including traditional family recipes.
Some recipes were written or clipped from newspapers; others were transcribed by Danielle according to my grandma's description (some of the most fun are recipes with few measurements, just statements like "add olive oil until you think it's enough." I recently wrote to my grandma and asked her a question about her dumplings. She wrote back explaining some different recipes, then finished her letter by "This is clear as mud. But if you fail, you will learn something. Grandma"
I have had so much fun in the last few weeks recreating the recipes that embody warmth and love to me - chicken and dumplings, apple spice bread, and many more in the works. For a long time, I've hesitated to ask my Grandma for any recipes because they hold some sacred un-re-creatable ideal in my mind. Especially with Buckeyes, little balls of peanut buttery goodness covered in chocolate. But the super bowl and my affinity for spherical foods brought on the perfect opportunity.
When I mentioned to Doug I might try making buckeyes, he looked at me solemnly as though I were taking on a great a wondrous quest. And it was. They were not great. But they were tasty and fun to make. And as my grandma predicted, I learned something.
Culinary Santa Clause was good to me this Christmas - an immersion blender, a cast iron dutch oven, a book of herbs and a book of seasonal recipes. But my favorite was a cookbook compiled by my cousin Danielle including traditional family recipes.
Some recipes were written or clipped from newspapers; others were transcribed by Danielle according to my grandma's description (some of the most fun are recipes with few measurements, just statements like "add olive oil until you think it's enough." I recently wrote to my grandma and asked her a question about her dumplings. She wrote back explaining some different recipes, then finished her letter by "This is clear as mud. But if you fail, you will learn something. Grandma"
I have had so much fun in the last few weeks recreating the recipes that embody warmth and love to me - chicken and dumplings, apple spice bread, and many more in the works. For a long time, I've hesitated to ask my Grandma for any recipes because they hold some sacred un-re-creatable ideal in my mind. Especially with Buckeyes, little balls of peanut buttery goodness covered in chocolate. But the super bowl and my affinity for spherical foods brought on the perfect opportunity.
When I mentioned to Doug I might try making buckeyes, he looked at me solemnly as though I were taking on a great a wondrous quest. And it was. They were not great. But they were tasty and fun to make. And as my grandma predicted, I learned something.
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3 comments:
That gives me a really fun thought for a project. There are certain recipes that have gone down in our family as family favourites or down in the archives for some gastronomic failure but bring back memories of much laughter, like the time one of my sons added a tablespoon of ginger instead of a teaspoon because he didn't know the difference in the abbreviations. Like your grandma said, he learnt something that day.
It would be fun to make a book out of it. Hmmm! I feel a summer project coming on
Mmmmmm....spherical food.
"But if you fail, you will learn something"--that, my daughter, perhaps captures the ethos of the Stulls and Hillmans more clearly than anything else.
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