First, I looked in the big, messy (I mean really messy!) three-ring binder where I stick newspaper recipe clippings and appliance instructions. No luck, although a lot of stuff fell out on the floor. But I knew I had a printed recipe, so I kept thinking about it, and eventually I remembered my little recipe notebook.
Lo and behold, there it was on the kitchen shelf, hiding in between cookbooks!
I hadn't looked at this in years!
What a treasure! It's filled with typed (on my old Smith Corona, no less) recipes, some from family and friends, others I must have read somewhere.
Here is my friend Franny's recipe for oat scones. Yum. I'd completely forgotten about those.
There was my aunt's mushroom pate, our old neighbor's Velvet Black-bottomed Cupcakes, my mom's Seafood Gumbo, and so many more.
In the very back of the notebook, I found the recipe for Schi, the cabbage soup. Eureka! But it calls for boiling beef, which these days sounds very unappealing. How our taste--and my cooking--has changed. (I'll probably make a vegetarian version.)
One recipe had a note that read, "Similar recipes in the February 1986 Gourmet," which places the little notebook in time--about three years before I started my first novel. How, I wondered, with a small child and a job, had I ever found the time to type up these carefully curated recipes and put the little book together?
Then it occurred to me that my daughter doesn't even own a cookbook. She's a good cook, but she gets Hello Fresh every week, and everything else she finds online. No newspaper clippings or hand-typed recipes!
Were we less busy in those days, before the Internet and social media? We're certainly spoiled for choice now--with a quick Google search we can learn how to prepare just about anything. But the little notebook has charm, and connections to people and a certain time in my life. I'm glad I kept it.
What about you, dear REDS and readers? Do you have a time capsule?
How lovely to find such a treasure, Debs. I, too, have cookbook treasures, mostly hand written rather than typed, and filled with family favorites from my mom, my grandmother, and other relatives. Often a recipe brings back a memory of enjoying that particular dish when I was a child. The same is true for photograph albums . . . everything’s digital now, but it’s lovely to sit down and look at photographs saved in an album . . . along with the cookbooks, they are treasures beyond price . . . .
ReplyDeletePhotographs are the best, Joan! But there's something so visceral about the food memories from those old recipes...
DeleteI can certainly time travel with recipe cards. I have recipes painstakingly written (did I really write that tiny?) on index cards from college days. Recipe brochures Dad brought home from a New Orleans utility company downtown near his office. A barbeque sauce recipe that came our grill in Austin. Recipes clipped from newspapers in El Paso, Lubbock, Faribault MN. More pamphlets from NE Ohio. I feel like I can trace my life and travels looking through my recipe stash. And it is interesting how some recipes that were once favorites haven’t seen the light of day in years.
ReplyDeleteWhat a journey, Pat! And isn't it interesting to see the things we used to cook? There are half a dozen recipes with pine nuts in my little book. I still like pine nuts, but they must have been really big in the 80s!
ReplyDeleteOOOh, I want the pine nuts recipes. My cousin gave me a 2 pound bag of pine nuts!
DeletePesto with pine nuts! Just use it instead of whatever other nuts (usually walnuts) they recommend)
DeleteJudy, I toast them in a dry pan, and add them to anything pasta. They give the dish a little crunch, and make it look pretty too.
DeleteThey are especially good with sundried tomatoes in pasta.
I don't have anything like that regarding recipes but I have a couple of photo albums that have pictures from when I was younger. Various shots of my youth and such, early attempts at taking photos at concerts (ones dating all the way back to 1986) and other things. I look through them at times, usually when I'm looking for a specific photo.
ReplyDeleteA few months back a woman I knew back when we were in elementary school contacted me on Facebook. It was funny because I never even knew she was on there because I'd actually not heard word of her since we were kids.
When she reached out, I ended up digging through the photo albums and sure enough I found a photo that I'd take of her when we were in the 6th grade during field day. When I sent it to her, she was amazed that I had it and that she was ever that young.
The other kind of time capsule I have is the photo booklets that I use to display the concert ticket stubs and set lists from the shows I attend, again stretching back to 1986. It lets me keep track of the shows I've gone to and what songs were performed. I can keep track online these days but the physical notes are always more fun because you can see how my record keeping has evolved over the years.
These days, Facebook serves as more of a time capsule for me but it is still more of a tactile thrill to do so with memories I can lay hands upon.
Kind of like the notion of signed books too as they let me remember when I got them signed and where.
I love this, Jay! And you are so organized! I started scrapbooks when I was first published, but never kept them up...
DeleteYes! I have my recipe box filled with 3x5 cards. These days the only ones I use are for the four or five kinds of Christmas cookies I make every year. I have my mom's recipe box, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there are the scrapbooks from my childhood, and the high school annuals. I'm going to my fiftieth reunion in September and have to dust off some of my clippings from writing for the Rampage (newspaper) in high school and the local paper.
Ah, and I should have mentioned that one year, after both my sons had become interested in cooking, I solicited recipes on 3x5 cards from family and close friends and gave them each a starter recipe box for Christmas. Do they )now 33 and 31) still have/use them? No idea!
DeleteEdith, it's my 50th, too. But I haven't kept up with anyone from high school, and have no memorabilia. Your high school career was definitely more successful than mine!
DeleteI have handwritten recipes in a variety of notebooks and card boxes, and a file on my computer of recipes I've saved but never actually tried. In fact, the computer file is divided into "dog recipes" and "human recipes" because sometimes I cook for my dogs. I guess I mistrust my ability to tell treats from cookies?
ReplyDeleteI wonder, though, if digital recipes will get passed down the way the ones on cards were. Same for photos. If all your photos are on your computer, will your kids go through all your files when you pass? Or will they just wipe the disc and donate the machine? Will we store everything on the cloud, where it never dies, but never gets accessed either? Will some future algorithm just wipe it all after a certain time and take vast swathes of history with it?
About those digital pictures, Gigi, I recently read somewhere that we should print out a few actual pictures from time to time just so later generations have them. Also make sure to note names of people and the dates on the pictures. Maybe the relationship too.
DeleteI wonder about this all the time, Gigi. I wonder if Kayti is saving Wren's cards? (My daughter sends cards with photos of Wren to friends and family half a dozen times a year.) All those put together would make a wonderful record of Wren's childhood.
DeleteWhat a great idea! An album of Wren's cards would be a wonderful record of her growth, the family vacations, changing fashions, all the stuff!
Deletehave a binder filled with recipes clipped from newspapers, copied from or given by family and friends--tons of photos which I've scanned and posted in albums on facebook. The photos get responses every time I put a new one on from my many cousins--many of the younger ones have no photos of those early years when everyone gathered at my parents' house. In the basement are three boxes--one for me and each of my nephews--time capsules for each of us.
ReplyDeleteChanneling your inner archeologist, Flora!
DeleteI have a similar notebook with handwritten recipes. When my kids ask for a recipe, I either make a copy and mail it, or retype it into a word doc and send it. Lots of eye rolling. They use a tablet for recipes. But they ask...
ReplyDeleteI’m not much of a cook, but my mother’s recipe box is filled with memories. She has typed up all the family favorites and sent them to all her children and grandchildren, but I prefer the handwritten ones she still uses every holiday.
ReplyDeleteMy time machine came up unexpectedly a few months ago. I found the notebook where I had copied song lyrics from my favorite songs back in the pre-Internet days. I spent hours picking up the arm of my record player to replay a bit of a song to try to understand the words, then picking the arm up again so I could write them down. Having lyrics available online is nice, but I do miss the excitement of finally “hearing “ the lyrics and getting it on paper. Somehow reading them made the words more real.
Cindy, I did that, although if I wrote the lyrics down they've long since disappeared! And what a great time capsule!
DeleteCongrats Debs, on a successful hunt and find. Yes, true tales here; I have recipes stashed in all sorts of finders, but I do still have the small 3 ring binder that took cards. It must date back to the '70's and has cards with friends recipes in their handwriting as well as my mum. I wanted to make toffee bars, that stY of the PTA bake sales, the other day. Lo and behold there was the recipe. Maybe Julia will let me share with you all. Great for grandchildren or anything really. Like Jay, I still have my first photo album. Well it's over 50 years old. I had a Brownie 127 camera, tiny photos, but there they are. Photos of my sibs, photos of the holiday I took with my parents before I left Ceylon for boarding school. We went to the historic sites there which are older than most of the history we visit in the UK. Probably dating to the very early dwellers in the America's. I really need to get the all scanned and sorted with my new scanner.
ReplyDeleteCelia,in my notebook I found a recipe for Christmas Pudding, with a parenthetical note reading "Old English recipe, circa 1700. Source, Shona Crawford Poole, The Christmas Cookbook." Now I have no idea who Shona Crawford Poole was, but I know I did make the puddings, at least once. I wonder if I still have the pudding molds?
DeleteI have a drawer so jammed with recipes some days it can't be opened at all! I've made lots of my best recipes and tried out many new things on Mystery Lovers Kitchen, but I also love cookbooks and search online. I asked for the new Allison Roman cookbook for my birthday--the roast chicken is to die for!
ReplyDeleteAh, nostalgia. I worry that with all this possessions sparking joy and Swedish Death Cleaning we are throwing out too many of this type of treasure from the past.
ReplyDeleteI have my mother's oilcloth-covered booklet of recipes from my grade school PTA fundraiser from 1961. It has favorites from parents, but also recipes from our sainted lunch ladies. Their sour milk Hungarian coffeecake was my go-to Christmas morning baking for decades (until one daughter decided she likes Pillsbury's Cinnamon Rolls better). And the ancient file box has my much-thumbed recipes for piecrust, chocolate chip cookies, and macaroni & cheese at the very front.
Another time capsule is the ambitious scrapbook I put together in my early teens. It is organized by time, so it starts with photos of me and my family before I went to school, then by every school year, up until high school graduation, with that year's school photo on the first page of each year. The poignant part of this record is all the postcards family and friends sent me. While I myself never went away.
And of course my time capsule of old garments, some I bought and some I made over the last 40-50 years. I started to throw these out or donate them, but my middle daughter asked me to save some treasures for them to find someday. I kind of love that idea.
Karen, your scrapbook is a real treasure. And I'm so glad your daughters want you to save some of your garments.
DeleteI have a notebook full of handwritten recipes from my mother and grandmother that I collected at the beginning of the 70's before getting married and then completed with favourites after. I rarely use it but it is precious and I keep it.
ReplyDeleteTime capsule central here: scrapbooks filled will miscellany, a couple of photo boxes, one 'memory box' filled with childhood travel diaries and family letters, and a few cookbooks that evoke fond memories -- The Joy of Cooking that my mum gave me more than 40 years ago and that I still reference for basic techniques, and also a couple from mum's shelf that I got when she downsized out of the family home five years ago. I only need to look at or through these time capsules and the memories flood my mind...
ReplyDeleteOMG, those scones sound good, but what is "1 T. b.p."?
ReplyDeleteWhen we first got married (1986) and bought a computer, my mom didn't understand that it was for writing grad school papers. To show her it wasn't a toy, I took all her loose recipes, some family hand-written and some cut from newspapers, and compiled them all into the Akers family cookbook. Everyone in our family has a copy. I was thrilled when my nieces and nephews each wanted their own copy when they grew up and moved out on their own.
The memory part for me is seeing the recipes handwritten by my grandmother, my mom, and my uncle.
1 T. b.p. = 1 Tablespoon baking powder
DeleteYes, thanks, Flora! Some of my directions in these recipes seem a bit odd now...
DeleteI only have a few hand copied recipes any more and even if I never make them I enjoy seeing the actual handwriting of the people who gave me the recipe! I give recipes to my granddaughter but they aren't handwritten. Although when I copy the recipe it will include all of my handwritten notes and suggestions that I add to many recipes I make more than once.
ReplyDeleteI'm also going through some of my mother's old cookbooks and making copies of recipes I knew she made then I add that info to the copy: This is the recipe Great Grandma always used when she made gingerbread. She served it warm with whipped cream.
This is a great idea, Judi, making notations. My sister-in-law actually made a cookbook with many of my mother and grandmother's recipes and gave a copy to everyone in the family. I still have mine, and now my mom's copy as well.
DeleteOne neat little box of recipes from the early '70's, then loads of cookbooks, and cooking magazines stashed all over the house and several folders split out into Chocolate, Berries, Pumpkin, Soups and Salads, Meat and Chicken...you get the picture. Who in the world would want all this junk? Why keep magazines for years without going back through them to find the little nuggets you saved them for in the first place?
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah, this was about a time capsule. Well, to be sure, some of it does make me nostalgic. My aunt hand wrote all of my grandmother's Passover recipes. I'll keep those for sure.
Some recipes I'll continue to make. Other recipes, like Deb's boiled beef, will either be modified or forgotten again. One day, no, one week, I'll clean all of this out and just keep the recipes that would work today. One week. (Sigh)
Judy, all my magazine and newspaper clippings are in my OTHER notebook, the big binder that is stuffed full of junk.
DeleteYes, this is so great! I put up the pictures of mine a couple of months ago here, and realized it’s not as much just the recipes as really… a time of our lives, right? Having fondue sitting on the floor, spending hours making the elaborate Julia Child onion soup. Dinner parties, with chicken Kiev, I remember served alongside fettuccine Alfredo. Such a different time. And I am so fond of the little gravy splotches and wine blobs on the pages.
ReplyDeleteThe most splotched and blobbed recipe in this little book is for Oatmeal Peanut Butter Raisin Cookies. They sound so good I'm thinking I might actually make them again.
DeleteYum! I make a cookie similar to this, but add in dried cranberries, walnuts, and chocolate chips... and only at Christmas!
DeleteFlora, one of our local bakeries used to make a big chocolate chip cookie with walnuts, oatmeal, and dried cherries. I think they called it an "Everything" cookie, and it was so good.
DeleteI have folders and folders of recipes - some handwritten, some torn from newspapers, and weirdly just last week I went through them to cull the ones I'll never make. And JULIA'S ONION SOUP! So fabulous and so worth the trouble. As long as it's the only thing you're cooking that day (start by roasting beef bones and slicing a gazillion onions.) I'm still looking for a recipe for peach pie as good as the one I grew up with. I think it must have been the peaches. AND sponge cake. SPONGE cake. Springy. Light. Anyone??
ReplyDeleteAnd how sweet is it to recognize the handwriting of the people who've given me recipes. My friend Ann's sour cream cake. My sister's beef borscht. My friend Linda's roasted peaches stuffed with macaroon filling. And my own handwriting from when I was just starting to cook (roast beef, chopped liver, fried onion rings)
ReplyDeleteI know, Hallie. I have hand written cards, too. Seeing my mom's handwriting always gets to me.
DeletePeaches with macaroon filling? Yum!
DeleteThe permanence and portability of written recipes is a definite plus. My niece was complaining about a recipe online with pages of narrative, "I just want the recipe!" I reminded her that written recipes also don't disappear from a site, and that one can add notes and substitutions. I have given away some cookbooks to the just starting out family and friends, but Julia Child and a few others will stay with me.
ReplyDeleteA friend made a book of family recipes, stories, and photos, a treasured memento to share with family and friends.
I have the old recipe boxes of my grandmother - love seeing her handwriting - and a handwritten collection from my mom but I also get All Recipes magazine to help keep up with the times!
ReplyDeleteI didn't know All Recipes had a magazine, Jenn!
DeleteI found Robert Redford's Whole Wheat Quick Bread. Where on earth, I wonder, did I get that one?
ReplyDeleteAnd the recipe for Figs Poached in Red Wine with Oranges and Marscapone Cream. That sounds absolutely fabulous, but I don't remember ever making it!
When we emptied my Dad's house we found a two by three foot library style cabinet filled with my mother's receipts. It weighed more than 50 pounds and I was unable to ship it. I skimmed through for recipes I remembered from my childhood and took those cards, but I wished I could have sent it on from Florida to Maine and really taken time to go through the cabinet. Most recipes were hand-written and old family ones were annotated (Aunt Mary adds a pinch = 1/8 t). Mother used only certain measurements. It was a trip down memory lane, and I have kept all of the recipes in card form in her handwriting.
ReplyDeleteRecipes and pictures? I have both, lots of both. Earliest memories are Mom making bread and Saturday pancakes, both out of the same Good Housekeeping Cookbook. The pancake recipe, which are called grilled cakes, is so embedded with grease stains that if you put the book on the table, spine down and let go of the covers, it would open automatically to the pancake recipe. I always thought the book was special because it was mom's but no, seems grandma gave it to dad when he went away to college. The added attraction about the book is that there's a center section for World War 2 food rationing or substitutions with some very interesting items. Since I found a copy of the book in an estate sale so I let my sister keep mom's.
ReplyDeleteWhen my sister and I were cleaning out my mother's boxes of pictures and recipes, we basically separated them by my pictures or her pictures and every now and then she wanted one of mine and I wanted one of hers and we are not quite sure what to do with our brother's. His daughters really didn't have anything to do with him when he died so do we dispose of them or put them together because the nieces might want them 10 years from now?
Going through the recipes was a bit more difficult because these recipes weren't just mom's recipes, they were grandma's recipes and Auntie Gracie's recipes and Tante Nancy's recipes. All our extended family recipes in those people's handwriting, those are the ones we had to dicker over. "I'll let you have this one but you gotta make me a copy of it" was usually the answer. I haven't got my copies yet by the way.
I have digital pictures on my old hard drive tower, it's sitting in storage, hasn't been opened in a couple years. Distinct disadvantage there but someday I'll get them transferred. I have my yearbooks in my cedar chest but I haven't looked at them in years. And when we were cleaning out mom's stuff we found her's, do we keep Mom's yearbooks? Who will want mine? Hmmm.....
Deana, I would keep the photos for your nieces. They might really appreciate them someday.
DeleteI have a wooden, dovetailed card file with recipe cards from my bridal shower in 1975. Lots of good church lady tried and true recipes! I also added to it. I also have a cookbook compiled for the centennial of Calamus, Iowa in 1976. It's my go to for lemon bars and all things hot dish.
ReplyDeleteWhat a find that was in your little recipe notebook, Debs. The memories of those recipes and of the Smith Corona are so special. I have a drawer where I keep my recipes, which are loose on index cards and various forms of letters, notes, and even scraps of paper. I did put my family ones and my most used ones in a plastic bag finally, but I think I might still get a little book for them. The best ones are the ones my mother sent me in a letter, as I get to revisit what she was doing then as well as the recipe. With her having been gone for 25 years, these are especially precious to me. Also, I have my Shakertown Cookbooks, small paperback volumes, that I received when I married 43 years ago, and those have place of honor, too. They contain some notations I've made on certain still used recipes. I do hope that one of my children, either my daughter or my son, and then eventually my granddaughter considers the recipes in their original forms an essential part of their household. I want the scalloped oysters, the corn pudding, the asparagus casserole, the lima beans, the strawberry cake, and more to continue delighting the tastebuds and hearts of my family.
ReplyDeleteShalom Reds and fans. My father, when he was probably about 80, started going through the stuff in his apartment. Some stuff was mine and he summoned me to find a way to come and take it if I wanted it. Most of that stuff, I ultimately abandoned. I only remember a couple (2) items that had enormous sentimental value that I rue not still having. When he turned 85 he painstakingly put together 3 photograph albums which he presented to us, one for me and one for each of my brothers. I do still have that album and there are pages and pages of documentation of my childhood. I also have a folder, from my dad no doubt, with things like birth certificate, social security card, baby health records, marriage license, bill of divorce that I keep usually in a bank safety deposit box. My birth certificate is a photocopy of the actual original copy that had on it, my name, my weight, the time of birth, my parents ages and races, the name of the hospital and the obstetrician’s name. My dad passed when he was almost 95. It is now a century since he was born.
ReplyDeleteI am a collector like my dad. However he was a.r.neat and I am a.r.messy. However, on the computer, I have it marvelously filed in some kind of order. It might take a while to find something but I usually can find it. But it’s all password protected. And even if I gave someone the master key to the password file box, who will take the time to look through all this stuff?, most of which is only cherished by me. Last year, I did write up two “advance directives.” This year, I plan to make a will. I have no earthly wealth so it will probably just express my wishes for a funeral. I’ve made a commitment to tidying up in such a way as to not leave all this stuff to my brothers or their heirs.
On the computer, I compulsively save photographs, sheet music and recipes. I don’t cook much but I wish that I did. So I save recipes.
https://tinyurl.com/rdq3fz8
this is me pulling my uncle pope's ear with my dad (and grandfather) on the right, my dad holding on to hand so as not to lose me.
Living in my childhood home, I have all the recipes and pictures. Unfortunately there is no next generation to give them to. I plan to keep them as long as I can stay in the house.
ReplyDelete