Recipes from your Mom and Grandmothers

I never had a grandmother and my so-called mother was a dreadful cook. That was probably why I had to start cooking when I was 6, but I digress.

Anyway, needless to say, I don't have any family recipes. Everything I have I either wrote myself or I found in books or online over the years.

But I was thinking about the aspect mentioned of trying to replicate and I think there is something to the fact that you can have the recipe and not necessarily come up with something as good as the original.

My husband ex-MIL used to make minestrone from her own recipe that he just loves. One time when he was down there to visit his daughter (he usually stays with the ex-MIL because she's about the only mother he's known since his mother died young) and, as usual, she made the minestrone for him. She gave him the recipe and I tried it once. Now, mind you, I've been cooking for eons so I know my way around cooking. But he said something was not the same. He said it was good and all, but not the same. I never made it again but I always hope that she makes it for him when he goes to visit.

I know she didn't sabotage the recipe or anything because she's a very nice lady and we get along very well. We have the same birthday, so that's always a fun little thing to share.

I just think sometimes there is a 'thing' about the original person making the recipe, that makes it not always come out the same for somebody else.

ETA - geez, it won't take the post if there is a word ending in 's' and then the next word starts with 'ex'. REALLY QVC?? That's why some of it looks stupid. yikes

I have my mother's recipe box that she had for years. She and my grandmother were really good cooks. But like you said, they didn't measure a lot of the ingredients. I'm that way, too, except for baking....that has to be pretty exact. I love looking through those recipes....love seeing her beautiful handwriting...and the funny little side notes she added.

I have Mom's cookbook collection and her own "favorite" cookbook, where my sister and I had written favorite recipes on cards for her. I have it, but whenever my sister needs it, it's always here for her to peruse.

Years ago, I created a similar favorite cookbook for my MIL, typing her favorite, most-used recipes on cards on the computer. She had had one, but it was so dilapidated, it was falling apart. I was able to scan the covers of her old book and re-create the covers for the new one. It was a birthday present for her. She loved it. And, in doing that for her, I also have all of her recipes in my computer. Win-win!

Unfortunately, I do not have many of my grandmother's recipes. Her cookbook went to a cousin and seems to now be lost. We don't know what happened to her cookbook. It was handwritten in an old black composition book. And it's gone; nobody seems to know where it is or who has it. It's a shame; Grandma made the best, absolutely the best sugar cookies ever. Her sticky buns were divine. She was truly a wonderful cook and baker.

After my mom died and my sister and I went through her cookbooks, we found an old cookbook that also had many of her handwritten recipes on index cards, little tablet papers, etc. I saw a recipe for sugar cookies on an old piece of composition paper and, right away, I thought, "Could it be? Could this be THE sugar cookie recipe?" I made the recipe and YES! It was! We were all so excited to get the recipe back in the family....I made copies for everybody in the family, all my cousins and their kids, everybody and we shared the recipe, both in Grandma's handwriting and then I also printed it out from the computer. And every time I make these sugar cookies (and I make them often), Grandma is right there in the kitchen with me.

I remember coming home from grade school and the kitchen table would be full of little squares of dough that my Grandmother made and would use in chicken pot pie. Think it's an old Pennsylvania Dutch meal. Similar to chicken and dumplings. I am pretty much self taught and turned out to be a pretty decent cook considering I had no interest in cooking before I got married. God love my MIL, she wasn't much of a cook, and my husband would agree, she would love something I made and ask for the recipe. Of course I have it to her but she would substitute margarine for the butter, use store brand cream cheese etc and couldn't figure out why it didn't taste the same. You might substitute one thing in a recipe but not all of the ingredients. She was a dear woman and could sew up a storm, cooking not so much.

Legal Secretary: for those of us who have mom or grandma's recipe of something you might be after, maybe if you'd ask for it, we could share with you. ?? Just a thought, lots of great cooks and nice ladies on here to boot that would be glad to help you make your own cookbooks via the ladies here.

Qualitygal, thanks, good idea. I have been reading posts from the ladies here for sometime and agree that these ladies are the best and really know their way in the kitchen. I have gotten some good recipes and ideas here. I am also talking to some cousins to see what they might know. I am retiring in 24 days and I plan on writing down my family's favorites even though my daughter who is 45 has no interest in cooking. Maybe she will be a late bloomer lol. She doesn't get my love of all things kitchen either and is constantly telling me I have too much kitchen "stuff".

Some of you know about the big binder of family favorite recipes I created for my daughter, then made a dup for me. Included in this binder are recipes from both my grandmothers, a great-great aunt, aunts, my grandfather (who brought a few recipes jotted down hastily by pencil on scraps of paper as he fled the Bolsheviks during the revolution) and maybe 3 from my mother, who cut them out of magazines (not good cook).

My paternal grandmother was the one closest to me and like others have said, she never measured anything. As she progressed through her 80s, I begged and begged her to take a few of her favorite dishes and measure the ingreadients, so that I could have a record of them and be able to pass them down. Bless her heart - she really struggle through this process, as measuring was such a foreign thing to her, but I'm blessed to have the results.

I'd recommend that everyone try to create a family cookbook. Mine is nothing fancy. It does take time, as I chose to type each recipe into the computer, print it out and then placed 2 recipes back-to-back into a sheet protector, then into the binder. So easy to wipe off after use.

Each time I open up this binder, as I did yesterday afternoon for my Country Captain recipe for dinner, I am ALWAYS visited by dear relatives who are no longer with us. I'm so glad I asked for recipes and created that binder.

I had exactly one family recipe from my aunt dated 1939. I treasured it!

Without thinking I handed it to a girlfriend who asked for it. A few weeks went by and I asked her to return the recipe to me. Her reply? "Oh, that old thing? OMG......I tossed it but I'll email you what I wrote down".

As some have said here, they don't share family recipes. Now I understand why.