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About 20 years ago, my father's mother passed away. My Grandma was a wonderful woman, a nurse and a teacher, who raised up ten children (nine of them boys!) in a very small town outside of Holbrook in Northern Arizona, moving there from Southern Illinois when the older children were still quite young. A woman of remarkable verve and wit, she was amazingly strong, capable, thrifty, funny, faithful, and hardworking. I got to know her pretty well when I was a child, and many of my earliest food memories came from her table and her kitchen counters. She was a fount of knowledge about all things edible and knew all the secrets of cooking, which I suppose was necessary since she was cooking not only for her own gigantic family but for the army of friends and hangers on who were always swarming about. Late in life, she compiled what was to be her magnum opus, a proper cookery book. She typed up the entire thing, indexed it, had sections for high-altitude conversions and expected yields from various sizes of bags and amounts of raw foods, etc. Unfortunately, it was never published, and it has existed only as a single copy - her original hand typed copy - in a gigantic three ring binder that my dad has kept since she went to see the Lord. My dad, all of his brothers and sister, and then myself and all of my generation have been cooking the recipes out of this book our whole lives but Grandma always deserved to have her book published, at least for the family. So I've taken on the task, with the family's blessing, of digitizing the book and printing at least some copies for the family. Maybe I'll send it out to the wider world, but that's a secondary concern. In this thread, I hope to introduce you all to some of the really great stuff that is my family's cooking. Admittedly, some of it is 1950s.txt, but a lot of it reaches back to the Depression and further to my family's Scottish and German roots (especially German on Grandma's side, as she was a very proud Illinois Kruze, and has a zillion confection recipes to prove it), and there's also a lot of uniquely Southwestern food as well. Grandma made the best Prickly Pear Jelly ever, for instance. I'll be cooking the recipes from time to time, as I remember to have the camera in the kitchen, and also simply posting some recipes. Any requests, let me know, and I'll post away. Anyway, to start with, I've excerpted the introduction that Grandma wrote for the book. quote:Introduction
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 00:26 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 14:50 |
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This is A Great Thing and I can't wait to see recipes and more stuff!
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 02:23 |
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Grandma recipes are awesome. Did you know you could freeze donuts? These fuckers will last for months in a freezer and still taste great with a glass of milk for dunking.
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 04:47 |
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I don't have much to add except I am on the edge of my seat for more of this thread.
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 05:12 |
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This is already my new favorite thread. That intro was awesome and I love that list of food, so many familiar things and "retro" things and new things. Can't wait for recipes. I'm getting my grandma's recipes when my grandpa passes (my grandma already passed a couple years ago). It was the one thing I told my dad that I Must have of hers. She didn't put anything in a book or organize them, though. That side of the family is huge though and people have requested recipes already from the collection. Maybe I should organize them all and make a book too.
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 05:54 |
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bookmarked I have one recipe of my grandmother, and it's awesome/easy/weird, the whole family still makes it (she's still alive at 96, but she probably wouldn't know how to make food anymore) the other grandmother is dead, but didn't like the whole cooking thing to begin with, so no recipes there.
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 07:53 |
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First recipe. Below is a truly great cookie recipe. As my grandmother notes, it's not her original (well, the volume is), but it's listed in the above Open House menu and it really captures the spirit of the quantities she often cooked in. These cookies are terribly good, and I hope that some of you make them.
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# ? Aug 15, 2014 17:46 |
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Mr. Wiggles posted:First recipe. Below is a truly great cookie recipe. As my grandmother notes, it's not her original (well, the volume is), but it's listed in the above Open House menu and it really captures the spirit of the quantities she often cooked in. These cookies are terribly good, and I hope that some of you make them. Gonna cut that by about 1/6 and try it tomorrow if I can get off work at a decent time. It looks a lot like a no-bake cookie recipe only without milk and with eggs and baking powder so I guess they come out nice and chewy?
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# ? Aug 16, 2014 04:55 |
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Chewy crispy, if that makes sense. Basically peanut butter oatmeal cookies with stuff in them. And come on you should totally make a batch of 300.
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# ? Aug 16, 2014 06:10 |
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Thanks
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# ? Aug 16, 2014 08:07 |
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No lie, gonna make those eventually. Roommates love it when I quit being a bitterly depressed rear end in a top hat and instead get back to being a drunken pastry cook. Need to run to the restaurant supply store, though. These cookie sheets suck rear end, I need some half sheet pans. Edit : Nevermind, car died on the way to the farmer's market this morning. No baking for me. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Aug 16, 2014 |
# ? Aug 16, 2014 12:17 |
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Fresh out of the oven they're slightly crispy and pleasantly chewy. I quartered the recipe, used a little extra peanut butter (both to finish the jar and because I love peanut butter) and simply used a full bag of chocolate chips, effectively doubling the chocolate:dough ratio of the recipe. Maybe it's my fault for being too greedy with the chips but they didn't fold in very well due to the greasy texture of the dough. Next time I'm using chunky peanut butter and I'll drizzle the finished cookies with melted chocolate.
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# ? Aug 18, 2014 04:46 |
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They look really good though! And since they have oatmeal they're perfectly acceptable for breakfast!
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# ? Aug 18, 2014 06:27 |
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Those sound amazing, I'll have to try them sometime. I assume not, since it's not mentioned there, but do you happen to know why they're called monster cookies? Thanks for this thread either way - I love things like this. My family is very small so I have to enjoy these kinds of traditions vicariously.
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# ? Aug 18, 2014 17:21 |
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Making these now, my place smells awesome.
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# ? Aug 22, 2014 16:17 |
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Grandma cookie recipe cards are the best! Every Christmas we get together and have 3 straight days of baking cookies. Although we've found some of the recipes need tweaking here and there (ingredients seem to be different these days) they're still loving incredible. This is a good thread.
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# ? Aug 22, 2014 17:21 |
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My grandmas are unfortunately not that great for most cooking inspiration. One's a booze-soaked 90 year old pile of passive aggression propelled forward in life solely through fear of (and spite for) the reaper, and she had my mother do most of the chores in the house when she was young. Even if she had cooking advice to impart, she just sucks the life out of the room like a vampire, so I doubt I'd seek it out much. My other grandma, fortunately, is - the sweetest old woman in the entire world, loves everybody, spoils her grandkids and great-grandkids rotten, and every once in a long while, when we've nearly forgotten the last time, she makes a dirty joke that gives everyone in the room heart attacks from shock. Sadly, she grew up on a farm in the Great Depression, and her parents taught her that the only way you know meat is safe is when it is bone dry, has a cottony texture, and resembles either charcoal or boot leather. Spices are not to be trusted, either. Desserts though? Holy poo poo, all the grandma talent she should have in meals went to compound the grandma talent at dessert. Her pies have been known to spark arguments in the extended family over who gets the last piece, and her snack mix was a secret recipe for nearly 20 years before we wheedled her into letting us help make it. Turned out to be almost disappointingly simple - turned out to be a tweaked version of an old recipe on the back of a Chex box a few decades ago. Still delicious, if loaded with probably entirely too much sodium and butter.
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# ? Aug 22, 2014 19:37 |
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More please! I am very curious about "THE GREAT COOKIE"
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# ? Aug 27, 2014 18:34 |
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Heh, I'm getting there. Hopefully this weekend I'll get a thing cooked and posted.
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# ? Aug 27, 2014 18:45 |
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I made a 1/6 batch of Monster Cookies and they're pretty great. The balance of chocolate and peanut butter is good, the texture is interesting, and I'm already thinking about playing around with the recipe a bit. (Grated coconut? Cinnamon and raisins? The variations are endless.)
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# ? Sep 1, 2014 22:05 |
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Yessssss. Totally gonna pass the monster recipe on to my pastry friends and keep the dream alive.
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# ? Sep 3, 2014 04:47 |
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I am so glad you decided to go ahead with this. I love how on the monster cookies recipe your grandma wrote down "cooky". Charming as all hell.
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# ? Sep 3, 2014 16:50 |
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This weekend we made something else out of the cookbook, since we had all the ingredients on hand (from the garden). It's not haute or anything, but it is a tasty homey sort of thing. For the peppers I used some of the jalapenos that I'm overloaded with right now, and for some reason I was out of tomato sauce so I used some of the fresh tomatoes that I have too many of (not as a paste, but just chopped up and roasted in the pan.) I just used some cheap malbec as the liquid in the pan, and it does the job beautifully. Trying to get rid of a garden full of green beans and potatoes, too, so I took my grandma's suggestions for sides. The beef ends up well done in this recipe, but very tender and unctuous. The plating leaves something to be desired, I know, but I was very interested in serving dinner to my family at the moment. This is a good recipe for serving to families.
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# ? Sep 8, 2014 23:29 |
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Mr. Wiggles posted:"The children loved it, except the time I...used venetian blind cord instead."
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 01:07 |
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Please please almond cherry balls, they are one of my husbands favorites!
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 04:00 |
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Aery posted:Please please almond cherry balls, they are one of my husbands favorites! I'm very sorry, but she had no such recipe in her book. The closest things are "caraway cherry rounds" (which are amazing) and "almond fruit slices" (which are also amazing).
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 04:54 |
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I'd vote for caraway cherry rounds, mostly because I use caraway for baking and Central European dishes and not much else. Seeing it used in a fruity context could be interesting.
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 13:32 |
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Drooling for Easy Oniony Steak and Potatoes now!
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 14:43 |
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Wish I could go back to when my grandma was alive. We just have a box with her recipes in it, maybe I should scan them all in.
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 14:51 |
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bartolimu posted:I'd vote for caraway cherry rounds, mostly because I use caraway for baking and Central European dishes and not much else. Seeing it used in a fruity context could be interesting. These are super tasty. A modified old school German thing from her side of the family, as I understand it.
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 17:08 |
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What does it mean by "wrap and seal"? Do you enclose the cherry into the center of the dough like a surprise in the middle? Or is it pressed on top and baked?
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 17:18 |
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Like, wrap the corners up to the center over the cherry, like little purses, I believe.
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 20:03 |
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What a thread. I'm definitely looking forward to more.
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# ? Sep 9, 2014 21:34 |
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This is a cool thread. I wish my family had a book of recipes to pass down. The one thing I really wanna get from my grandmother is her sunday sauce. Unfortunately, she's convinced that she'll drop dead if she shares.
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# ? Sep 10, 2014 00:00 |
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I call bullshit Good recipes, but that type of two column typing is difficult
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 20:53 |
aswert1223 posted:I call bullshit Maybe difficult for you.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 20:56 |
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I love that the monster cookie recipe makes allowances for the kids eating the raw dough. She knew what was up.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 23:11 |
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aswert1223 posted:I call bullshit Hahahahahahaha awwwww...
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 23:24 |
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People actually took typing courses as part of high school back in the day, and many many women worked as typists. Its not that hard if you've been doing it for years.
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# ? Sep 23, 2014 16:25 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 14:50 |
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Oracle posted:People actually took typing courses as part of high school back in the day, and many many women worked as typists. Its not that hard if you've been doing it for years. Plot twist: Daisy wheel printer and Wordstar
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# ? Sep 23, 2014 16:40 |