Ancestors, Friends, and Family
Recipes
Connecting with our past through food
My Ancestors, Family, and Friends Recipes
My mother collects recipes and I followed in her footsteps. Recently, when I returned home to help care for my mother, I rediscovered old recipe books from my grandmother, her sisters, aunts, and cousins. Recipe books collected from women in the town and churches in the area as well felt like stepping back in time.
The old recipes may need tweaking because ingredients change over the years. Therefore, you may alter to your taste and desired brand of ingredients. Make the recipe your own. Many times I notices a recipe given to several women to make for a funeral, or church dinner, yet the finished product never turned out the same.
Put yourself into the recipe. Now, let’s get started.
Breakfast & Brunch
At first, I thought breakfast for many of my ancestors consisted of bacon, eggs, and toast, or pancakes. Searching through old recipe books, and talking to my mother about her memories, helped me discover other traditional meals, like corn on the cob for breakfast.
Appetizers & Drink
Appetizers seldom graced our table unless at a party. However, we did not drink alcohol, so the drinks included were to refresh us in the hot summer, or cold winter.
Soups & Stews are some comfort foods I still enjoy. My mother made corn chowder, and beef stew in the winter to warm us up from the cold. Mid-summer found Green Pea and new potato soup on the table as the garden began to feed our family.
Salads & Veggie
A good salad or vegetables adds variety to a meal. For many of my ancestors, to obtain fresh fruit and vegetables meant planting a garden each year. For vegetables in the winter, hours of preparation for drying and canning took place. Grandma planted a large vegetable garden and grew fruit in an orchard near the house. During the harvest, she bottled fruit in a water bath. Vegetables dried in the sun on a board held up by two saw horses. When dried, she packed the vegetables into guney sacks for storing.
Main & Side Dishes
My grandmother obtained a refrigerator after most of her children left home. She used a root cellar and a fruit sellar. Meat hung in the fruit cellar until needed, surrounded by bottled fruit. Ham, beef, and venison hung on hooks from the ceiling. Grandma killed, plucked, and cleaned her own chickens. I remember doing that once with my parents.
Breads & Rolls
Delicious Bread served hot or cold, smothered with butter and jam or honey, yum. My Grandmother baked bread every week to feed her large family. On the back porch of my mother’s house, a cupboard, about 4 feet deep and 3 feet wide stored the flour for baking. Every fall, Grandpa drove over the mountain to the nearest mill and purchased enough flour to fill the cupboard, which lasted all winter until the roads opened for travel again.
Desserts & Candy
The dessert my grandmother served often consisted of fruit or pudding. At my mother’s house, we made dessert or candy for special occasions, like birthdays, holidays, or parties. We often ate pumpkin, cherry, mincemeat, or apple pies only on holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or the 4th of July.
Canning & Bottling
Mom and Grandma served bottled fruit for dessert, alone with fresh bread for supper, or even sometimes for a quick breakfast. Mom used an electric stove for canning. Grandma used a wood-burning stove. She picked, cleaned, and washed the fruit, packed it into sterilized jars with sugar syrup to within an inch or so of the top. The bottles bathed in a boiling water bath for about thirty minutes.
Remedies & Hints
Grandma settled in a very rural area in Southern Utah. A doctor lived in her small community for a few years, but the nearest hospital was located 100 miles away. The people learned to use make and different remedies and they made their own soap.