Preserving Treasured Stories in a Family Cookbook

When I was young, my grandmother made the best date-nut cookies. They were a dark chewy blend of sweet and nut, and always around and available in a ceramic cookie jar in her kitchen. My father’s mother, she was a renowned and seasoned cook in this small farming community. She didn’t need to measure, knowing just by eyeballing the mixing bowl exactly how much of each ingredient was needed. Sadly, no record exists of this recipe. My sister recorded some of my grandmother’s other well-known dishes, but nobody sat down to document how she made the date-nut cookies. I experienced the same problem with my maternal grandmother concerning a particular pie. The lesson: without some kind of a guide, these recipes are almost impossible to re-create and are lost to future generations.

I’ve vowed to fix this problem, and what better time to do so? Create a family recipe book. While it may be too late to make it a family-wide Christmas gift this year, why not get started? Experience has taught me that it will likely take significant time to gather the best of family recipes. But, trust me, it’s worth the effort.

Suppertime stories

Here’s a suggestion. In the process, don’t just make it a run-of-the-mill cookbook. Make it instead a collection of family stories centered around the dinner table and the foods you shared together. I have a good collection already, one that I compiled to celebrate a birthday for my mother about 10 years ago. I have not only gathered some iconic family recipes, including some from my grandmother; I also have family stories to go along with many of them. There’s the recipe for my mother’s chicken and homemade egg noodles, my favorite meal back in the 1950s. I also have Mrs. Farmboy’s recipe for Bûche de Noël, along with a short anecdote about how it was my daughter’s favorite Christmas dessert years ago and how it has now become a family tradition. (Editor’s note: It is actually Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer Icebox Cake, which is considerably less complicated than a real Bûche de Noël.)

The best parts are the stories that capture and encapsulate a time past. My son Ben described how, when visiting his grandmother on the farm in the summers of the 1990s, he would pester her to have at least one taco night. Now, we have an elaborate family taco recipe along with instructions on filling the tacos. But Ben also points out: “Make sure you wipe your mouth clean and don’t spill. Tacos are messy, and you know how Grandma hates messes.” My nephew Todd inserted a recipe for egg and olive sandwiches that ends with this description: “Egg and olive sandwiches are the perfect lunch to enjoy with chips after a morning of working in the fields. It’s probably best to avoid enclosed spaces and/or open flames for the next 24 to 48 hours.” In his recipe for barbecued beer-butt chicken, he notes that if “one of us” forgets to buy lighter fluid for the charcoal, a half pint of gasoline works just as well. “However, I highly recommend having a cold Schlitz on hand to soothe the skin where your eyebrows used to be.”

Kitchen memories

Some of the best descriptions belong to Todd’s mother, my sister Ellen, including her recollections of growing up on the farm in the 1950s where she loved riding horses and making forts. She lovingly described the local town of 350 souls where she attended grade school. “I loved the town of Creston, a sort of Wild West in the Midwest. When I later settled in California, I sought out places like Creston: Bellville, Randsburg, Cerro Gordo, all gold and silver renegade towns. Ghost towns where there were no churches, twenty-some saloons, and thirteen brothels.” And, thankfully, she also included not only recipes from my grandmother, but also remembrances of the times she spent cooking with my mother and grandmother. To accompany the sour dough starter recipe, she noted that the recipe came into play when she was de-tasseling seed corn. Grandmother would babysit her two sons while she worked, and then she and Grandma would make cinnamon rolls with dough created from the starter.

Once collected, these stories and recipes make a family treasure that can endure for generations. Think about the children and grandchildren who would appreciate this collection in the future to explain their shared past!

Family favorites

I suggest that you begin by assembling your own favorite recipes, and include the ones that the rest of the family likes and requests for gatherings. And think about what they talk about and encourage them to write down their own recollections. Be sure to insert some of those old recipes passed down from your own parents and grandparents. And amp up your presentation with old period photos of those cooks and locations you feature. For example, the photo from the 1950s in this blog features, from the left, my cookie-making Grandma, my mother, and my great-grandmother, sitting at Grandma’s kitchen table.

With modern digital techniques, it’s easy enough to print, collate, and assemble a book by taking your digital files to a place like a Staples print shop. You can also spend a little more time and create a hardcover book. Sites such as Blurb offer an attractive way to self-publish, along with the various digital editing tools that you’ll need. Can you imagine a better use of your spare time?

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