Timeless Table

“No one who cooks, cooks alone.  Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”   ~Laurie Colwin

(In a quick summary, Laurie Colwin was a mid 20th century American author of several novels and collections of essays and recipes.)

I have a soft spot for old recipes.  Using them provides me  comfort (or sympathy) when I feel stuck in the kitchen.  These are my two favorites right now:

Taste buds seemed to have changed through the generations.  As I flip through my cookbook collection, I discover the use of different ingredients and the subsequent preparation of them. In the “Ham Casserole” section from the Presbyterian women, there is a recipe for Olive-Ham Toss Up.  Moving on “Egg Dishes,” I found a scrambled recipe consisting of only bacon, onion, eggs, and a can of corn.

Before my grandmother passed away, I gathered her favorite time tested recipes in her own cookbook.  I scrapped booked the recipes with pictures, then had them copied and bound at a local printing store.  I loved adding in the family photos which included some black and whites from before she was married to my grandfather through until she held her great-grandbabies.  Cooking with those recipes makes me smile as it brings back fond memories of time spent and aromas smelled in her kitchen.

Follow my Pinterest board that gathers older recipes as well for a quick culinary time travel.