Oh, Gram. I’m so sorry that I’m not giving your tradition of good recipes a fair shake. I have so many of them, and I do treasure them, but you see, I’m just not very GOOD at this cooking thing.
For decades, an old composition book lay in my Grandma’s kitchen drawer. You know the ones, with the black and white speckled pattern on the cover? This one is similar, but the cover was probably a light tan at one point. It is now a dark sepia, and the pages are dark and thoroughly stained. My mom has it now, and it contains many of my gray gramma’s most-used recipes from her first decade in Wisconsin as a young wife and mother. I currently have a copy, as mom had the entire thing professionally scanned and copies given to several family members.
My daughter and I have tried a few of the entries: Vanilla Pretzels (really a cookie) - Delicious! Brown Bread - maybe try that one again. And a family favorite, which I’ve made for many years (particularly birthdays and holidays) ‘Nana Puddin’ Yes, Gram was from the south. Green beans and bacon grease didn’t make it into the book, likely because you don’t need a recipe. Sadly, my mom bemoans that no one ever recorded her fried chicken recipe. As lost as KFC is secret.
Due to my lack of cooking ability, or maybe just because I’m a history nerd, some of my favorite pages are in the back of that book, where Gram kept track of household expenses. Even the deposit to set up the electricity, which tells me this was recorded in the mid to late 1920’s.
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