Pg. 51-French Goulash

Back in 1975 the oldest of my grandmother's six daughters undertook a project that still brings smiles to those of us who have followed. This aunt was quite creative. I remember her making Christmas candles using discarded milk cartons and serving the best sloppy joes ever. But it was that project years ago of sitting down with my grandmother and collecting her most treasured recipes and then putting them in order in a handwritten cookbook that takes the cake-pardon the pun. You have to understand. Many of my grandmother's recipes weren't written down or found in another cookbook. They certainly weren't on line. The only on line back then was a clothesline.Her recipes were in her heart-her mind. Many didn't have exact measurements. A pinch of this-a thing or two of that were used to define teaspoons and tablespoons. How long to bake something was often not told in time but how something looked or smelled in the oven. "Until it looks cooked" was a favortie line used by my grandmother.

So for my aunt to assemble the recipes and then record them for others to be able to use with exactness was a mighty task. But she did it in style-breaking the cookbook into seasons and telling stories of each season as they grew up on the family farm. It is an anthology of sorts of a time that has long since disappeared-including their one-room schoolhouse, telling how my grandfather would harvest ice with his team of horses and flatbed sleigh from a nearby river-to the lighting of candles nestled inside little tin candle clips on Christmas morning after breakfast, those candle tins sitting on tips of branches of a Christmas tree put up on Christmas Eve. Besides the recipes, those memories are reason enough to cherish the cookbook-to keep it for generations still to come-offering them a glimpse of relatives and a way of life they will never know.

While I have copies of the cookbook given to me be my cousin that have never been touched I chose to show the cover of that cookbook I've used over and over. The stains-the tape holding it together show how much I treasure it-how much I go to it for not only a recipe but to reread the stories. The line illustrations by yet another cousin add the perfect touch.

Of all my favorite recipes in, "Mom's Farm Kitchen", a favorite is on pg. 51-"French Goulash." I've made that goulash so many times and every time the smell of the bacon cooking, along with a pepper and onion, as spaghetti is cooked and drained in wait of being added-brings me back to my grandmother's farmhouse kitchen. That's what family recipes do. And when I make her rice pudding on page 79 and her Banana Nut Bread on page 108 I'm in heaven!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Those Small Milk Cartons With Straws

Image
I can't remember what elementary grade I was in when taking a morning break to enjoy a small, sometimes cold and sometimes not so cold small container of whole milk with my classmates. The Milk Break was part of the daily schedule. I do remember how good it tasted. The milk didn't come in flavors. Not even chocolate. There was no fat free or calcium enriched or soybean milk. Just whole milk in individual cartons.  The cartons were either opened by the teacher and then the student put a straw into the milk or there was a sealed hole in the carton and either the student or teacher pushed a straw through the hole. Straws were not fancy or colored. They did not have brand names or licensed characters on them. They did not have loops, making it possible to watch the milk go around the loops as a student sucked on the straw. They did not come wrapped in cellophane attached to the carton.  Instead, the teacher would walk around each table full of students, stopping beside each studen...
Read more

National Sewing Month

Image
 IN RECOGNITION of SEPTEMBER BEING NATIONAL SEWING MONTH I have written extensively about my mother’s fabric shop which was attached to our home out in the country where I spent many a school evening ‘designing’ outfits instead of doing homework, especially math. When I was in my preteens my grandmother taught sewing on Saturday mornings during the winter in my mother's shop. That is where I learned about darts and inseams, marking, and pinning patterns and secrets on how to cut patterns out. While it took me forever to trim a pattern, pin it to the fabric, and cut it out, my grandmother did it in lightning speed. And when she was not the instructor, she would be in her home, in her sewing room sitting at her little black Singer sewing machine with a tape measure around her neck, pumping the foot pedal and turning out one beautifully sewn item after another. She had the eye for her artform and when you have the eye, creativity is the driving force. My mother also had the eye. She w...
Read more

A Kitten In the Old Barn

Image
 My son  Brian & I had been thinking about getting a kitten for the longest time but there was always a reason why we put it off. Truth is those reasons were just excuses. My excuses. The thought of bringing a kitten into our home exhausted me. I did not welcome the responsibility. Besides Brian wanting us to get a kitten, so did my two grandchildren, ages 11 and 14. I would keep telling them "Pretty soon." Then they would get busy, or I would get busy, and it never happened. Until this past week. Another summer was quickly passing by and soon, I told myself, they would not bother to ask about going for a kitten. They'd have more important things to do. And so, late one morning this past week, after telling Brian what I was up to, I picked those two grandchildren up. I said we were going to lunch and then maybe Alex Bay for the afternoon. After having our lunch, I told them I had to make a quick trip to Walmart. Once inside, I put a few things in my cart. Then I led ...
Read more