Cooking Recipe Cooking Articles >>My Mother's Recipe Box
by Rachel Paxton
Remember the days when cookbooks weren't so readily available, and you or your mother relied on only one or two different cookbooks for cooking all of your family's meals? I still have my mother's old cookbooks, as well as my grandmother's. Each one is worn from age and use--if you flip through the tattered pages it is obvious which recipes were turned to time and time again. These cookbooks will always number among my most precious treasures.
When our mothers wanted to try new recipes, they most likely didn't run out and buy new cookbooks. They often didn't have the extra money to spend, and often there weren't very many to choose from. So where did they get new recipes? From each other.
When I was a child I remember my mother exchanging recipe cards with friends and relatives and bringing them home and filing them away in her recipe box. I always loved going through her recipes (although she often got mad at me for getting them all out of order!)
All the years while I was learning how to cook I went through her recipe box time and time again, pulling out my favorite recipes and preparing them again and again.
Seeing who the recipes were from made them all the more special. I also love looking back at all the recipe cards I prepared myself while I was in 4-H and spent much of my time learning how to cook. I still prepare many of the recipes I used back then. To this day, all I have to do is open my recipe card box, and I am instantly transported back in time.
My mother hasn't exchanged recipe cards with anyone in more than 20 years. I have very few of my own (although I hope to inherit hers someday!) But even to this day there is no better place to find favorite family recipes than in my mother's recipe box.
Twenty years from now, I look forward to going through my recipe box with my own daughter, telling her stories about where all of my different recipes came from.
Going Halfway Around the World: How to Make German Cookies
by Kori Puckett
I absolutely loved experimenting with foreign recipes, especially dessert recipes, when I was in high school. One of my favorite ones to make is German Cookies. I first learned of it after I'd tried a recipe for German Crumble Cake.
Today it's the second most common dessert I make. The cookies themselves aren't really sweet (unless I've been making them wrong all this time), but sweetness has never been a "must-have" factor for me when it comes to a dessert recipe. And you can always experiment by placing icing on the cookies or adding more sugar.
German Cookies is also a real 'hands on' recipe that contains a hefty bit of butter. Hope you enjoy!
German Cookies
4 cups of flour
3/4 cups of sugar
2 sticks of butter
Going Halfway Around the World: How to Make German Cookies
Recipe
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Would You Like to Learn How to Bake Bread?
by Jan Kovarik
Even if you have never baked bread before, I can just about guarantee that your very first loaf out of the oven will be so mouth-watering that you’ll amaze yourself (not to mention family and friends)!
Up until 1990, I’d never made a single thing that called for yeast. In fact, if a recipe did include yeast, I avoided it LIKE THE PLAGUE! I’ve never been a “Donna Reed” homemaker and I’ve been told that I don’t “cook,” I merely “prepare” things to eat. So, when an unusual gift of a cup of Sourdough Starter came my way, I was at a total loss. However, the friend who shared the starter with me had a delightfully documented family history about the origins of the starter and how her family had “kept it alive” down through seven generations. Who was I Would You Like to Learn How to Bake Bread?
Recipe
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Harvest Apple Pie With Cheddar Crust
by News Canada
(NC)–Apples partner well with cheddar and here the cheese is built right into the crust. For another variation, use your favourite crust recipe and top with apple crisp topping.
Cheddar Crust
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 550mL
3/4 tsp salt 4 mL
1/2 cup vegetable shortening125mL
1/4 cup cold butter 50mL
(cut into small pieces)
1 3/4 cups old cheddar cheese 425mL
5 to 6 tbsp ice water 75 to 90 mL
Apple Filling:
6 cups Ontario Apples 1.5 L
sliced peeled (Such as Cortland, Crispin (Mutsu), Golden Delicious, Jonagold, McIntosh, Northern Spy, Russet, Spartan)
1 tbsp lemon juice 15mL
1/3 cup granulated sugar 75mL
1 tbsp all-purpose flour 15mL
1/2 tsp cinnamon 2mL
1 egg yolk 1
1 tsp milk 5m Harvest Apple Pie With Cheddar Crust
Recipe
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