Problems Of Lost Recipes
1
Mother's Recipe Book
After my mother died I wished I had had her recipes.
2
Granny's Recipes Never Written down
I never had the recipe for my paternal grandma's crispy biscuits. She would not have needed to write it down. She would have had a standard recipe When I was a child and a teenager I visited her every Sunday afternoon and the biscuits were always the same.
Answers
A
Many months after mother died, at the back of the kitchen utility cupboard, I found a battered old recipe book (the classic Florence Greenberg). Old newspaper cuttings of recipes were folded inside the back cover. On the notes pages and flyleaf were recipes written out by hand by my mother, spidery almost Italic writing. She had compiled the recipes for herself, not for me. However, it was very useful and nostalgic for me.
B
Classic Biscuit Recipe
When I described my granny's 'crispy biscuits' to a friend, Gene, at a book group, she said that like British scones, crispy biscuits were a staple of Poland or Eastern Europe. Therefore I could probably find two or three recipes online.
Biscuit Oven Temperature
The recipe must suit my oven temperature and type. I have a fan assisted oven.
Biscuit Texture
My friend, Gene, pointed out that I would have to try them out until I found one which was right. I could adapt it to the right crispiness and brittleness to suit myself.
What texture would suit me now? I don't like chewy biscuits because I think they pull out fillings. Crispy items which don't melt annoy me because they stick in my teeth. A biscuit which is crisp at first bite, yet melts in the mouth would be right.
Biscuit Ingredients
I imagine the biscuits would be made with butter, not margarine. Being poor, my maternal granny would have bought food at the market, not in a shop. (Aside. I remember eating waxy chocolate, which my paternal grandparents bought in the market. I now know how the recipe would have been different from the milk-based chocolate I was used to, made by Cadbury's.) However, I imagine her recipe would probably be from her mother or mother-in-law and pre-date margarine.
Saving Your Recipes
The question now arises, how to save the recipes from the major cook in your family. In our case, it is my husband who cooks. When he is in one country and I am in another, how can I reproduce the recipes and pass them on to our son, and our yet unborn grandchildren?
Compiling A Family Recipe Book
I have asked my husband to collect together his recipes and make them into a book for me for my birthday and for our son for his birthday. This involves collecting together all the recipes. Add a photo of the family eating, or my husband at the stove or oven cooking (on the front cover), and bringing the food to the table (back cover).
He has agreed, but he agreed last year. He was too busy writing a technical book requiring research. It never happened.
Making Notes
The answer is for me to do it. If he hasn't time, I must ask him questions and surreptitiously make notes. I shall do it the way I wrote my mother-in-law's life story for her 90th birthday.
For a year in advance, each time we met for Sunday lunch or dinner, or Saturday night or Friday night dinner, I would ask her a question. I would dash to the toilet and write up her answer on a piece of paper. Later, at home, I stapled the notes into my diary. If possible, within 24 hours, I wrote my notes out neatly. Then, within a week, I typed them up. When my diary got too full, the written recordings went into a notebook. (You could also do a video recording each week of your granny, grandad, mother or father cooking.
Alternative, a son or daughter or student grandchild can show a widowed grandparent how to cook simple meals. Wouldn't you think anybody can cook a boiled egg or a piece of fish in a microwave oven?
Who Needs Your Help?
My stay at home mother had done all the cooking for my father, her working husband. After she died, aged 89, my retired father, also aged 89, kept phoning me asking how to cook.
'How do you boil a soft-boiled egg? The first time I did it in a saucepan with water and got a hard-boiled egg. The second time I put it in the microwave and it exploded and made a mess."
"How do I cook a piece of fish in a microwave oven?"
You might not yet know who is going to need your family recipes. By the time you discover that a widow or a student grandchild wants a recipe, it might be too late. Your parent or spouse or friend may have moved away to a different time zone or passed away.
Collecting Spoken Records
I shall do the same surreptitious collecting as I did for my mother-in-law with my husband's recipes.
Today I got the home made Museli-style breakfast fruit, nuts and cereal recipe.
My husband said:
(Answering, 'What are the ingredients?) "The ingredients are porrige oats, apples, sultanas and milk. (I asked, "How do you make it?) The night before you take porridge oats, 25 grams, the same as you would cook in the morning, not 25 grams each, 25 grams for two. Add in two good (heaped) spoons (dessert spoons) of grated apple. Then sultanas. Finally, some milk. Leave overnight in the fridge.
Hot or Cold Breakfast?
A soaked oats breakfast takes time to prepare the night before. However, it saves time and energy in the morning.
Slow Mornings and Quick Starts
Good for night owls. Good for both slow and quick starts. Good for a lazy start, no work making breakfast. Also good for a quick departure - if you are self-catering on holiday and need to rush off for a coach tour or day out.
You are using porridge oats, but unlike porridge, no need to heat it up. (Good for summer, or hot countries such as Singapore, maybe in Florida or the south.) Good when you are happy to eat a cold breakfast, and don't want cooking making your hot kitchen even hotter.
Mixed Fruit Breakfast
This is a filling breakfast we devised with fresh fruit as a recovery diet after cancer when with a compromised immune system we could not risk meat products and preservatives. No more bacon and eggs nor full English breakfast with sausages at home nor at hotels.
Fruit and Cereal and Yogurt Breakfast
Chop bite size pieces of apple. Add small segments of orange fruit such as madarines or s , two prunes (plate on one side for the stones), apple chopped into bite size slices or cubes. Add yogurt. Sprinkle on top small nuts such as almonds, flaked almonds, broken walnuts, pine nuts, hazel nuts. On weekends or when you have time, or failing all else, halved fresh brazil nuts (time and mess from breaking them open).
I add milk as well as yogurt, for extra water, extra calcium, and teeth whitening after prunes.
Nuts or Not Nuts?
Obviously, but worth a reminder, you leave out nuts if anybody is allergic to nuts. So if you don't know your house guests, leave off the nuts until you have checked they are not allergic to nuts.
Cereal or Porridge
Either add half a piece of Weetabix or follow with a plate of heated up (in a saucpan) salted porridge with milk. (We add an 'unhealthy' teaspoon of maple syrup.) You could add
Mail Recipes
If you have a child such as one at boarding school or university, or at home when you are away on business, or living as an ex-pat, and your offspring who likes to receive recipes, or whatever you send, you could email a recipe every week. At the end of the year make a collection.
Time For Compiling, Proof-reading, Printing, Posting twice
Allow time to sort out the book structure and cover and for the book to be mailed back. Also, allow time for the proof-reading. If the book has a mistake, such as a blank page in the middle, you might keep that copy for yourself as a spare and send off for another correct copy as a gift.
So you should start compiling a month earlier for a birthday or anniversary, two months earlier for Christmas, especially if you have Christmas recipes to use at Christmas time, or want the gift in time for Christmas and not delayed in the post arriving just in time for New Year!
If the book is posted to you, then posted by you to the recipient, or recipients, that is another double postage time. As they say about vines and trees, "The time to plant a vine/tree is twenty years ago. If that's not possible, start today."
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
