Family Mellmann

Today’s favorite recipe find, in my little project of digitizing part of my grandmother’s recipe collection, is this recipe for Cashew Yummies. Not only does it have a fun name, on the back it says “3-25-76 Bren and Amber’s Shower".  Many of the recipes have a note of some kind indicating when they were used and what it was for.  This adds so much depth to the history that these recipes have seen. Mental note.  From now on, record, on the recipe, fun events that the recipe gets used for.

As my recipe project continues, I am struck by the kinds of things they took for granted when writing out recipes.  I just completed a recipe from the 50s that had all of the instructions written out, and at the end it said “top with meringue”.  I have made meringue before, but not so often that I could just pull it out of my head and top a pie with it.  The women who used these recipes would have learned, from a very young age, how to cook the basics of their every day menu, from scratch and from memory.

I'm rockin' my way through (one of) my grandmother's recipe boxes.  I received the box when she moved to a nursing home and no longer needed them.  There are many recipes and some of them are quite old.  My plan is to enter all the recipes into a recipe program I use and then print a cookbook that I can share with my cousins...and whoever else would like to have one. To further get into the spirit of this retro and historical project I brought out one of the teacups from her collection.  Cup and saucer sets were occasionally given as gifts "back in the day" and my grandmother had a hutch in the dining room specially equipped to hold them.  These duets were given to her by friends over the years, many whom I even knew from my summer visits to her house.  Unfortunately, I don't know which cup came from which friend, but I can still enjoy my tea while work on the recipes.