Discovering Old Recipes...

Before my Grammy passed away, she gave me her recipe files.  These files include every recipe you can imagine: those she was given, she clipped out of magazines, and others she was going to save for a rainy day. Let me just give you a picture. I have six accordion files full of clippings, a recipe box that is held together with rubber bands, and her trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, that was her mother's, and too is held together with a rubber band, as she has every additional recipe that ran in the magazine for the next 50 years!  Let's just say she was a collector, and recipes was one thing that she loved to collect!

I love to cook, and come by it honestly.  Grammy loved to cook, and try new things. I can remember as a little girl, her telling me that she had to learn to cook out of starvation.  She married at 16, and only knew how to make fudge and chocolate cake. These were the two things she learned to cook  in Home Economics class.  My Paw Paw was able to eat on the military base, so she was left to fend for herself. She said the lady they rented from felt sorry for her and taught her how to cook.  Once she learned to read a recipe, she was off to the races.  Some of the greatest memories I have are standing in the kitchen talking with her while she cooked. She was an environmentalist before the term "green."  She save every kitchen scrap and put it into a compost bowl to keep it out of the trash.  Paw Paw would take these to the compost pile, and it was spread on their garden.  I loved to go to their house and spend time with them!

Today, I pulled out her recipe box, and will begin to sort through the treasures held between the rubber bands. I am so excited to see what is there, and will share with you as I test them.  I can assure you there is more than congealed salad to this box.  I am hoping her recipe for Leg of Lamb just might be inside.

Until next time, I will be adventuring through the recipe box...

Sarah