Saving Breakfast and Other Recipes For Holidays And For Students And Second Homes

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.\

To be sure I could find mother's book in a hurry, and to ensure the book was not thrown out or given away by my family after I died, I pasted a photo of my mother on the cover.

Angela's Mother Netta's Recipe book. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

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.

Cooking Vine Leaves, Greek style Dolmades (stuffed vine leaves)

Vine leaves on the kitchen table. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

In England we association vine leaves wrapped around rice with Greece, but from the internet I learn that they are also popular in other countries, such as Lebanon. You can make the filling from rice and meat, which is more of a filling main course dish.

Greek Dolmades
I remember going to Greece for the first time and being surprised that every meal seemed to start or continue with rice wrapped in vine leaves. Not being a fan of rice, my favourite food being the potato, I did not take to dolmades, as the Greeks call them, but I certainly remembered them. In fact, I was glad to get away from them. But now things have changed.

Trying and Enjoying New Foods
You travel just as much when young, but don't like the new foods. Why? Firstly, one advantage of growing older is that you start to like olives and sour foods, and savouries.

Secondly you make an effort. You expand your willingness to try new foods and persist. Why?

Apparently your metabolism changes. But also as your history of health mishaps increases, so do your aches and pains. And your discovery of side effects, hence the search for natural remedies and prevention rather than cure.

You gain knowledge of healthy, another generation going, the swings and roundabouts of health fashion bring one food then another into the list of food you must eat to cure your lack of vitamin whatsit. This new discover accounts for either your energy or lack of it, and will cause you to lose your hair and your life if you don't eat much more, preferably three times a day, every day.

Vines Around The World
But, I digress. Back to the subject of vine leaves around rice. Where can you see vines? Europe, America, Australia and South Africa, Lebanon, Israel, France and England. You can visit vineyards which are ready to receive tourists in America, France, England, South Africa and Australia. About 50 or more countries within 30-50 degrees latitude grow vines, and apart from Greece and Lebanon, most countries don't make a great thing of gathering vine leaves, just growing grapes for eating or making wine. What a waste of edible leaves.

Photo by Dr Avichai Teacher, of sculpture in Petah Tikvah, Israel. 

Supermarket and Garden Grape Vines
After we brought dolmades back from the supermarket, I looked out of the window at the vine leaves growing in the garden on our vines planted last year and thought, 'We don't yet have enough grapes to harvest for making wine, but what about the leaves?'

One year after planting in the garden, vines ordered from an online catalogue. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

How to Harvest
My first question was, is it safe? I'd heard that some plants have poisonous leaves, although you can eat the fruit. For example, rhubarb. I found no reference to any dangers.

Wild Vines
As usual Google is the encyclopaedia, with wikipedia and the whole world keen to tell us their knowledge. I read through pages of Americans reporting how they harvested vine leaves from wild vines. So Americans who don't have home vines can look for wild vines. Now I have the opposite problem. I have a garden vine, from a nursery, but no wild vines. But since the leaves are edible, and not used for anything else, and it is not damaging the plant to remove them, we shall use our garden vine leaves.

Wild vines which produce little or no fruit are best, they say. Meanwhile we are experimenting with our garden vine. I've never seen a wild grape vine in England. On the other hand, I wasn't looking.

Legality
Another factor in the UK is, would picking a wild vine be legal? You are not allowed to pick flowers planted in public parks nor along motorways, however profuse they seen to be. Nor is it legal to pick wild flowers and deplete the stock or wipe out the last of rare flowers.

Oddly enough, from what I've read, you are supposed to ask your neighbour and get their permission even to take fruit on branches hanging over your land. However, in the UK, apparently it's legal to pick an occasional fruit on either private or public land, so long as it is for home use and not commercial (which would be on a bigger scale, and more frequent).

Currently none of this applies to us. We are just looking at not wasting the vine leaves, and the fun of finding out how dolmades are made.

Our leaves look a pretty pales green, not the dark colour of the ones served in restaurants and now bought from supermarkets (Waitrose) in the UK.

Picking Season
We have already missed spring. Apparently, the secret is to pick the leaves spring to summer. The Americans say from this American holiday until that, which leaves me puzzled as I can never remember which holiday is when. Luckily, with July 4 being today, and we picked the leaves yesterday, we were just in time.

Leaf Colour
The leaves, interestingly, can be green with red stalks. You pick them with the stalks, which are discarded later.

We found that the leaves turn darker after you cook them. We found recipes on the internet.

Cooked vine leaves turned dark. Fresh vine leaves. Rice with herbs for stuffing. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Blanching and Washing Leaves
First pick your vine leaf. Then blanche it. This means wash quickly with boiling water, then cold. Why? Apart from removing surface dirty or poison, you soften the plant.

But what dirt can be on a plant in the garden, if it's not the part of the plant in the soil.

Somebody in my family once said there's no need to wash fruit or vegetables, because boiling it or cooking it will kill anything living on it. However, another reason for washing is to remove chemicals from pesticides.

 In your own garden, where you have no pesticides, you also want to wash off any urine from dogs.

But we don't have a dog. What about foxes, cats, bird droppings, flies? Have you ever had in your garden a fox, cat, stray dog, bird or fly? Even if you have not, in daytime, you don't see what goes on at night, when 90% of animal activity takes place. Yes, I think washing would be a good idea.

Leaf Colour
Which leaves can you pick? What if the leaf is not dark green on both sides?

Some leaves have white undersides. The French phrase blanc de noir means white wine from black grapes. A famous wine comes from a vine with leaves which are white on the underside.

The five lobed vine leaf, with points and tooth-like edges and V-shape veins. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

How Many Leaves?
Apparently you need to pick extra leaves to put in the base of the cooking pot.

Rice Filling
After washing the leaves, you have to prepare the rice. We took a trip to the supermarket to buy the herbs to add. Mint. Two more herbs. Parsley. Onion to chop. I wanted to buy herbs as whole plants, not just leaves, to grow in the garden.

Which Rice?
Which rice? We could not see any advice. The chef in the family decided the rice had to be the sticky stick-together for that makes rice pudding, so that was what we used. The end result was a solid mass. The long grain or Basmati rice gives separate grains with a crunchy bit.

Herbs For Filling
We used to have flowers in flower pots. Now I keep herbs in flower pots. That way I can find them easily and not get muddled up with flowers and edible plants. The traditional kitchen garden has a large area for each vegetable. Unfortunately, my garden started out with flower which now invade vegetable areas which are not fenced off as it's a small garden. The herbs I planted have also expanded.

Rolling up Vine Leaves
The most entertaining part was learning how the vine leaves are rolled up to make neat little parcels. If you were wrapping a Christmas present such as a rolling pin or column shape tin of biscuits you would cut a neat oblong of paper. A vine leaf looks a most awkward shape.

First we unwrapped a supermarket dolmades to see what they did. They used two leaves. Why?

We soon found out. How do you wrap the first leaf?

Dollop your rice mixture into the middle. Roll up the vine leaf half way. The filling squishes into the shape of a cigar. To be politically correct for myself and other health conscious people, I suppose I should think of another image.

Anyway, having rolled half way, falling away from yourself, (because you grab the nearest piece of vine leaf) you then fold in the leftover edge of vine leaf from the outside left and right into the middle.

Third stage, continue rolling away. So the second half of the rolling away wraps around the left and right pieces.

The second vine leaf sticks to the first, makes a more solid wrap so it doesn't break up. From a nutritional point of view, two leaves gives you more vine leaves and thus vegetable per serving of rice, and uses up more of the huge numbers of vine leaves you have collected.

Storing Leftover Leaves In Freezers
Leftover leaves can be stored in the freezer, ready for hewn you want them. Store in separate smaller bags inside a larger zip lock bag so you can take out half of them and use on more than one occasion. To prevent the love getting crushed in the freezer drawer, put in a Tupperware or sealing plastic box. If you are short of boxes of the right size, you can use a shoe box. In our little fridge freezer in London we would not have room for this.

I remember visiting a family on a remote farm in Canada. They went into the city only once a month. They stocked up with huge quantities of frozen food, as well as freezing food from their own land. They had two or three giant freezers. They would use a shoe box.

Eating Dolmades
The end result was rather bland. We needed more onion and salt and pepper.

Now you know what to do, so you can do the same. If you can't, you can enjoy reflecting on how it's done, which adds to the pleasure of looking at vineyards and vines on your travels. You can also think how the dolmades is made, when you see the dolmades on your plate and other tables at Greek restaurants in Greece and around the world.

Buying Dolmades
You can buy stuffed vine leaves in supermarkets in the UK. You can even sign up to a comparison site and get money off an online shopping order.

http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/morrisons-price-comparison/Fresh_Ready_Meals/Delphi_Dolmades_Stuffed_Vine_Leaves_4_per_pack_150g.html

See my previous posts on vineyard visits in the UK and other countries and wines in this blog. What do you drink with the stuffed vine leaves if you have them as a meat main course? Perhaps a Greek wine, such as retsina.

For dessert I prefer a sweet muscat grape wine from the island of Samos. (See one of my previous posts.)

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.