Cooking With Old Family Recipes

Cooking is a necessity of life and for some, like Jaguar Julie and Chef Keem, perhaps, cooking is is one of those great enjoyments of life. I certainly admire that. And I wish I could muster up the same enthusiasm. But I'd rather go dancing!

I am one of those fortunate ones whose husband does all the cooking. And I do not take that for granted. I admire all of his meals and thank him for every one.

If I had to cook, I would. And I have.

Especially if I wanted to invite people to the house, I would consider the menu very carefully. The meal would be full of vegetables, even though I am no longer a strict vegetarian.

I inherited a box full of recipes that have been in the family for several generations.

I went to dinner with my cousins the other night and we had a discussion about old family recipes. My cousin's wife, Eleanor, said she has a similar box of precious ancestrial recipes and she wants to create a family cookbook. She says she has a classic Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Pot Pie recipe passed down from her grandmother, that she hasn't tried to make yet, but that she remembers eating it as a child. She remembers the food tasting so exquisitely that it literally seemed to melt into every taste bud.

She also mentioned Aunt Ella's Cinnamon Flop Recipe. As, yes, that one is in my recipe box. too. Everyone raved about that dish!

In two weeks, I will be going to my Aunt Helen's 100th birthday party and I know that the Cinnamon Flop Dish will be the topic of conversation more than once.

Aunt Ella was my Aunt Helen's Aunt and my Great Aunt. When I knew her, she lived in a nursing home, but in her day, was a spirited and loving woman. She never married, so everyone referred to her as the Maiden Aunt.

The Ike Eisenhower Eggnog recipe was there, and I made a lens about that, just before the recipe crumbled to pieces forever. That particular recipe was passed down from then General Eisenhower to my Uncle Earl, who played bridge with him in WW2. Earl was a Military Chaplain, at the time, later to become Bishop of the Episcopalian Church.

Family photos will also be the subject at my Aunt's 100th birthday party. My Aunt took up painting at age 99, so I know we will have an art exhibit of her work. She sent me a painting, which I also made a lens of. Grandma Moses took up painting at age 77. My Aunt has her beat. She took it up at age 99.

So I continued to look through the box. I discovered that different recipes brought up different memories.

For instance, all of my Mother's christmas cookie recipe recipes are in that box. I remember both of my parents making at least ten different types of cookies, I kid you not, and staying up all night every night for three nights, to bake forty dozen cookies, at least. My mom was obsessed by making these cookies. Then we'd have them and eat them, until Easter.

Many people stopped by to eat a few cookies. My mom had an open door policy--drop in anytime, and you'd get a real treat, far beyond any of those cookies!

Finally, I came across the Cinnamon Flop recipe!!

Cinnamon Flop

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3/4 cup of sugar

2 heaping tbsp crisco

1 egg

1 cup milk

2 cups of flour

salt (pinch)

3 tsp baking powder

put in pan

1 cup brown sugar packed, sprinkle over top--put butter in holes, then sprinkle with cinnamon Bake 350 degrees for 30 minutes? (here she has a question mark!

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Perhaps Eleanor and I can get it together to write a family recipe book. I wonder if it would be more interesting if each recipe had a story behind it?

Perhaps interviewing different family members to get their memory of the dish or a memory about the person who created it.

As Joan wrote in her comment below, the handwritten recipe is a thing of the past. Did it go out with handwritten letters? Or handwritten notes to people? Or reading a book?

Is it possible to bring back these wonderful practices from the past, and slow down life so that "time" doesn't feel so fleeting?