Sunday, December 15, 2013

The Joy of Cooking and finding old cherished recipes

This morning hubby and I were discussing our upcoming baking day. A day that we really look forward to. We do really well in the kitchen together, which is probably why we look forward to it. We had planned on making nuss torte (nut tort) a recipe passed down from his grandmother. The kind of recipe that when people try it for the first time you can almost see their eyes roll back in their heads from the amazingness of it. It is not a complicated recipe but there is definitely some time put into it. So I was a bit surprised when hubby announced he also wanted to bake some cookies not just any cookies, German cookies. I think we are going to end up spending two full days in the kitchen between cookies and the nuss torte.

I spent today's 'quiet time' going through a box of my mother-in-laws recipes. For those of you that do not know, my mother-in-law passed away a few months prior to my hubby and I meeting. I have all of her recipes packed away, and occasionally peak in there to find particular recipes that hubby might be craving. It saddens me that we no longer keep recipes the way other generations had. Such pride was placed in writing up their recipes on the the cards. She not only had multiple recipe boxes but she also had these amazing notebooks. Granted they are all in German which means occasionally hubby has to translate for me. I do o.k. with key ingredients but when the recipes deviate from the basics I get lost.

This is out of her 'Menu" notebook.you will see it is on graph paper and she even has columns for the price of the item, and then the total price.

While digging through the box I was surprised to find these three gems. I do not remember ever placing them in the box, but let me tell you I was excited to find them.

My first discovery was  JOY of Cooking, circa 1961. So cool, I have a cookbook that is over 50 years old! I cant wait for a bit of free time to explore this great cookbook.

Then came my other two finds. Two pocket sized Julia Child cookbooks. It appears that they were given away when you purchased Dove soap around 1970. Not that old, but fun to have.

I need to make it a priority to make nice recipe folders for my girls. I hope that one day they will be able to go through them and be filled with joy as they reminisce about their baking and cooking times with mom.

For now,  I cant wait until next weekend, the aroma in our home from two days of baking ought to be pretty amazing.

2 comments:

  1. so glad you inherited the "cooking gene'... ILY

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  2. Good for you Meri. I have a dessert cookbook my mom & dad bought me when I was 12. It's over 60 years old. I still use it. Aunt Linda

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