Family Recipes | pad patter 8.9.18

As I mentioned in my "kids and the stove" thread, I didn't learn much kitchen-wise from my mom. When my mom did cook, it wasn't fresh ingredients and it wasn't from scratch. It was microwavable frozen foods or canned goods filled with preservatives. She hated the kitchen. A crock pot with a can of soup and some pork...that was a "homemade meal." Anyway, she did pass down her mom's applesauce recipe and her mom's goulash recipe--it's not like the traditional Hungarian meal. It's pasta with ground beef, diced tomatoes, and covered in cheese and seasoned with oregano. My DH's Hungarian grandmother would probably faint if I called this casserole "goulash" lol! Anyway, there is a brownie recipe from my dad's aunt that I love to make. It's NOT healthy, but when I make them, I think about visiting my aunt and my cousins and sneaking bites of these yummy brownies while we ran around playing.

And that brings me to my final point. Your daughter has something to share with the next generation: spaghetti and cheese night. It may not be a written on a note card and it may not earn a Michelin star, but the recipe itself isn't what's important. The feeling of togetherness and love is what you're passing down.

 

I think in any Jewish family it's a rite of passage to make Chicken Soup with Matzah balls. Around holiday time, it's almost a competitive sport - who makes the best soup? which grandmother is making the soup? whose matzah balls are better? If I had to pick the perfect soup I'd put my grandmother on my father's side's matzah balls in my mother's chicken soup, but that's just me. Now a days in my family, my brother's mother-in-law generally makes the soup for the holidays, and I have to quietly not be a fan. Anyway, here's the recipe for my mother's chicken soup, with a little family chicken soup history thrown in - I made a this mini book for my niece when she was four or five, and she always called it Grammy Makes the Chicken Soup. http://barbaraschickensoup.blogspot.com/ It is extremely work intensive, and not for the feint of heart. I made it once, and I would make it again . . . accept when my mom makes it she freezes it in containers for me so I have enough for all winter.

 

@TeaWithLemon What a fantastic book for your daughter! I'm going to have to think about this family recipe idea.

 

My mom made me a small scrapbook one Christmas of family recipes. There is nothing in there that I actually make or would eat but I've got it just in case!

 

Hmmm trying to think of some...
My mom made cube steak fairly often and I do as well, but I do mine much differently than she did. I do it in the crock pot and it comes out so tender.
Making cream of chicken soup and serving it over toast is a pretty simple one that I do from time to time that she did as well.
Ohhh..her fudge recipe...that one has been handed down for awhile.
And her chili recipe! It's the best!! And vegetable soup!
But my favorite recipe of hers that I use is her Bloody Mary recipe! Yummmm!

I have scrapped the story behind the vegetable soup, but not any of the others. Adding to my list

 

Ah, the very first digital album (book) I made was a family recipe and memories book. I asked my siblings to give me their favorite childhood memories without telling them why I wanted them. I already had a recipe box from when I graduated from high school; my grandma gave it to me filled with her favorite recipes. I also included stories of our grandparents in the book. So I took old pictures, the memories, and the recipes and put them altogether into a book. I did digital since I knew I wanted to print 6 copies of it, one for each of us.

Lots of tears when my family read it - my parents even found out about a few bad things my siblings did that they had never known - not me of course - I was a good girl. My mom even gave me a couple of school assignments that my brother (deceased at age 26) wrote in high school. One was on "fixing a complete meal", so of course I included those along with a tribute page about him.

Favorites: carrot cookies, snickerdoodle cookies, Christmas cut-out cookies, large family casseroles, potato soup with rivals, pies, etc. Of those, the one I make on a regular basis is the potato soup which came from my dad's mom, who had German roots. I have been wanting the carrot cookies recently, so I think we need to make those next week.

 

Had a little walk down memory lane... A few of the pages from that first album. Almost all of the pages in the book were pre-designed ones, except the snickerdoodle one. I was so proud when I figured out how to make that spoon appear to be in the cookie batter. Book was made in 2008.

 

Mom didn't let us in the kitchen when I was growing up except when it was time to do the dishes. Then my two sisters and I got the "glory" of washing, rinsing and drying the dishes. I hate doing dishes to this day. LOL

She was a wonderful cook, though, as was my grandma. When we grew up we didn't know how to boil water and I remember calling Mom and Grandma a lot and they'd talk me through things I was trying to make. The BEST cookbook I ever owned was called "Cooking For Two" and I totally learned how to cook from that book.

As for family recipes, we have several. Mom's peanut butter fudge is a family favorite and not easy to make. I make her chocolate fudge regularly - you have to have a candy thermometer for both (at least I do). I still have the old, battered, and smudged recipe cards. Fortunately, their church assembled a cookbook of "family recipes" many years ago and Mom and Grandma put all of theirs in that book. I'm the only one who still has that book (it's quite falling apart and I keep saying I'm going to take it and get it rebound). My sisters, sister-in-law and niece hit me up for the recipes a lot - especially when they start their Christmas preparations. Last year, it was for Mom's hot chocolate recipe. She used to make it every Christmas morning along with her homemade cinnamon rolls.

 

I have several cookie recipes and one Easter soup recipe passed on down to me from my mother (in her handwriting) who was given them by her mother. Since I don't eat grains anymore, the cookie recipes, kruschiki and kolacky, are something I don't bake for us, other than making a small batch of kolacky for my brother every year at Christmas. But I try to make the Easter soup recipe during that holiday, Bialy Barszcz, otherwise known as white borscht, a Polish tradition.

 

What a great keepsake! You are definitely way more ambitious than I would be. I had thought about doing a layout for a few of my mother's recipes, but it never came to pass. Mostly because I wouldn't have had photos of her preparing the recipes, but I still remember her making them. I also remember my grandmother making kluski noodles, and those noodles hung to dry from a clothesline she had temporarily strung from one end of the kitchen to the other, along with the surplus hanging on the backs of the kitchen chairs, on the beds, etc. etc. Oh, and apple pies, and pierogi.

 

My husband's mother shared a few recipes with me when we got married. One was for spaghetti sauce and the other that we love is for a tuna ball. I've shared the tuna ball recipe many times with friends, but have not shared the sauce recipe. My daughter kids around when people ask for that recipe that "we could give it to you, but then we'd have to kill you!" Or maybe we'd just leave out one of the ingredients instead! lol!

Yeah, I can't remember the last time I bought spaghetti sauce in a jar.

 

What's a tuna ball? I'm picturing a cheese ball made of tuna....

 

From my dad: Air-popped popcorn. And Creamed Eggs on Toast. And thickening milk (for upset stomachs, nausea).
From my mom: Canned Peaches, Swiss-ghetti, and All-Day Chicken (Which, thanks to hotter crockpots, is no longer all day). And we joke about her chocolate chip cookies. It's the back of the package recipe. But thanks to the constant distractions, it takes a long time to make at her house, and they always taste better than the package anywhere else.

I do remember my mom making bread as a kid, and my paternal grandma used to make bread and cracked wheat cereal. I make a different bread recipe, and would rather do cream of wheat than cracked wheat cereal.

So....No real passed down recipes. But, definitely "Show you love someone, feed them" has been passed down to me. And I'm passing it down to my kid.

 

Yes, basically.

8 oz. Cream Cheese, 1 large can of tuna, 1T. lemon juice, 1/4 t. hickory salt, 1t. grated onion, 1t. horseradish (optional) I leave it out.
Mix all ingredients and form into a ball. Roll in chopped parsley. chill before serving.

 

I'm probably the only one in my family who can make tacos like my grandma used to. I remember the little things she taught me, like dressing the lettuce in red wine vinegar, topping with radish, & sprinkling parmesan (I don't know why) cheese when plating.

I still make potatoes like my Grandpa Al did & he taught me how to make some army food.
My Grandpa Bob was known for his carrot cake & his macadamia nut ice cream. My uncles dug out that recipe for me when I bought an ice cream maker.

It's not the same, but I also have a bunch of cookbooks handed down from my aunt. My favorite might just be the Dinah Shore cookbook.

 

I make a lot of recipes handed down from my mother and some from my father who was a baker at one time in his life. One recipe that has been passed down from my mom, through me, to my children is for chruszchiki.

 

My mom has put together a cookbook and had it printed professionally. No fancy graphics though. It is actually in its second printing.

Some recipes you just have to learn by doing though, and for me those are
Graham Cracker Pie
Gma Meier's Pie Crust
Grandma P's Rice

I also had to learn the canning technique. (5 jars of tomato juice in the canner now- go me!)
We do tomato juice, whole tomatoes, beef, chicken, etc.

And then there is my Dad's World Famous chicken noodle soup. No chicken in it, and it probably isn't world famous either. We loved it though.

Another family favorite is chocolate cake and chocolate frosting.

We have lots of family favorites, I guess!

 

Um, no, no family recipes in the sense that my mother's cooking usually involved a jar of sauce and some diced meat in a pan with rice or pasta - to this day, i can't stomach the thought of beef stroganoff and most of the 'family recipes' i use now in our everyday routine come from pinterest!