We’re always looking for ways to save space, to condense. We bought a new scanner so that it would be easier to scan in paperwork and save it on the computer. Today I realized that I could clear out a bit of space by scanning a lot of loose recipes that I couldn’t bear to get rid of when we moved. That brought me to the walk down a memory lane of cooking.
The great thing about the scanner is that I can scan in the recipe card with all the handwritten notes and blobs of food. There’s Agression Cookies, written by Laura with butter stains and oatmeal bits on the card. And Laura’s Killer Chili, scribbled on a note pad with Kanoa Watt’s face on it. For some reason she didn’t give him a mustache and glasses. There are all the special birthday cake recipes, like Renee’s Pistachio cake, Naomi’s Coconut Creme Cake, Jim’s Chocolate to the Max cake and Bryan’s Mexican Cinnamon Caramel cake and my favorite, Black Bottom Cake. For a couple of years I baked everyone a birthday request cake…even made it to Illinois and Montana.
Then I found recipes from friends like Ron’s Swedish Meatballs, Dorothy’s Applesauce Meatballs and Marie’s Sweet and Sour Meatballs. Barb’s Lemon Cream Pie, Alice’s Shrimp Dip and Jo’s Guacomole reminded me of dear friends, now gone. Meta’s Spice Cake reminded me of the time I baked it…I was about 12…and after mixing the eggs, sugar and spice together, I found we didn’t have any flour..so I ate all the batter!
The recipe for Robert’s Ketchup came from a book by Kenneth Roberts about life in the northeast in revolutionary times….saved for old times sake because it wasn’t very good. Then there’s the recipes for pickles and pickled herring. Just reading them brings back visions of cooking them up, then passing out samples to the neighbors back in Lindenhurst.
So all the recipes are saved on the computer in their original form…and for posterity! When the granddaughters get married maybe I’ll give them a disk of “Grandma’s Specials”.
I made Kenneth Roberts’ketchup once. Lot of work and tomatoes and cloves but no sweetening of any kind, and it was so awful that I threw it all out.
I concluded that Roberts was, with that recipe, simply playing a huge, nasty gastronomic joke upon his unwary, trusting, and gullible readers, though I suppose it may have been his grandmother’s best (but poor!) approximation of a sauce from a faraway land described by a wooden sailing ship captain of the time. He should have brought along a sample as well, though Roberts was adamently against any sweetening in a ketchup. Good thing he was a writer and historian, and not a chef.