my mom’s recipe box
this is the food I grew up with
Posted in cookies on Monday 19th September 2005.
I have always loved the spicy, chewy-crunchiness of gingersnaps, and these are excellent!
(I know I’ve been slacking lately, but I’ve recently started a new job, and things have been a little fraught. Hopefully I’ll be back on track soon!)
Posted in breads on Saturday 20th August 2005.
The house I grew up in had a huge backyard, and my mom got my dad to plow up about half of it for a garden. I always hated weeding, but I loved the wonderful, fresh fruits, veggies and herbs we always had: corn, peas, beans, watermelon, strawberries, pumpkin, squashes, tomatoes, onions — you name it, I loved most of it. (And really, until you’ve eaten sweet corn you’ve picked yourself, shucked immediately and thrown straight into the pot, you haven’t lived.)
Anyway. This is about zucchini. I loathed zucchini growing up (still do, although I make a point to taste it every now and then in case things have changed), but I could deal with my mom’s bread.
Posted in breads on Thursday 18th August 2005.
Not every recipe in the box was written by my mom. Some are from my brother and I, and this is one of mine.
Some background: When I was in elementary school, the school would arrange two days of “mini courses” every year: a few hours of instruction in something cool, like painting, or cooking, or making model rockets, that sort of thing. They rocked. I took the cooking one at least twice, and the Puff Pancakes were my favorite: thin, crispy, puffy and just crying out for marmalade or jam — nothing as thin and boring as syrup.
You really do need a blender for this — although, having resurrected this recipe, I’m about to see if a food processor works as well.
Posted in cakes on Monday 15th August 2005.
My mom loves making this cake.
It’s pretty easy to make, super moist, terrifically chocolatey, and always gets eaten right up, so I can’t comment on how long it’ll stay fresh.
Posted in cakes on Thursday 11th August 2005.
Ahh, blueberries. Blueberries hold a special place in my heart.
Every summer (as I related on my blog), my mom, my brother and I would drive to a farm in Indiana to spend an invariably blazing-hot day picking blueberries. They’d put you and a dozen other people on a flat trailer pulled by a tractor, and drag you out to where the blueberries were ripest — although the guy who accompanied the trailer would always admonish us, “And don’t pick the green ones, ’cause they’re sour!”
We’d pick blueberries until my brother and I were cranky and come home with a couple five-gallon buckets of glorious, juicy, sweet blueberries. Some were destined to be quickly blanched and frozen, to be used in pancakes all winter. The fresh ones ended up in things like this cake.
Posted in cakes on Wednesday 10th August 2005.
This is the first recipe I’m posting to My Mom’s Recipe Box, and it nicely illustrates the reason I’m doing this.
First, the card’s so old, it’s yellowing badly. Second, there are no instructions — I’ll be mainly guessing about the process (although I’ll see if my mom can tell me if my guesses were right). Third, well, like the subtitle says, this is the food I grew up with, and I think it’s worth preserving.