Thursday, June 30, 2011

The Recipe Project

A few weeks ago, when I was writing about my Grams' hankies, I started to mull over the idea of putting together a book of family recipes. Rather than just making photocopies and stapling the lot together, or typing everything into a Word document, I want to try to recreate the feeling of poking through the actual cookbooks and recipe cards.



I asked my mom to get some things together for me, and she presented me with the pile you see pictured above. To put it mildly, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I've already called my mom three times to ask questions about the recipes and clarify things, and I'm more overwhelmed and confused than ever! "Where are the pierogies?" I asked. Her reply? "In that spiral bound book, only I don't do them that way." "What about caraway seed soup?" "That should be in an envelope." To get this right, we're going to need to sit down and do this together with everything in one place!



Just to give you a taste of what's to come, this is a recipe for barbecue sauce, written by my Aunt Betty:

Fry onions and celery in some grease. Chip the beef into it. Add catsup and worcestershire sauce, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper.

But, my mom says, this isn't the GOOD recipe for barbeque sauce. That's in the green cookbook which she didn't give me. So stay tuned. Someday I may actually get this all straightened out!

3 comments:

archmom said...

4 years ago after my Grandmother died I was gifted her recipe box. I made cook boos for everyone in my family by taking her hand written recipes and copying them on a color copier. Many of her recipes looked like the one you have for barbeque sauce.I am still getting calls from cousins asking how much of things and how long to bake things. But I am really glad I did it for everyone, we still talk about it when we all get together.

Anonymous said...

Good luck.
I'd love to see your finished product.


Kelly

Paula Jo @ Home and Garden Decor said...

LOL, they look like some of my old recipes that was written many years ago. My son and his wife took all of mine and made me a really nice cookbook. They even used stencils, and they turned out really cute and big.