Mom's Recipe Book
 

My granddaughter (age 25) mentioned Sour Cream Raisin Pie today.

My Mom - known as "Grandma D" - did have a recipe for it. She was a baker of pies, cakes, and cookies at two truckstops - and she had her recipe notebooks - which I now have custody of - for the things she baked. (She also took the recipes home with her at night!)

Actually, her recipes were more like cue cards - because she knew the method - and I am attempting to figure out how she actually made some of these things. Her handwriting was "distinctive" - I think her mind went way faster than her hand! Little details - like pan size, baking temperature and time (she used convection ovens where she worked - so not sure how to convert those temps and times to conventional ovens - even if they had been mentioned!) were not usually included with the ingredient lists.

I can tell which pages were used the most - they are quite spattered!

How do you tell which recipes were used most by your Moms?

my mom rarely used a recipe book. and when i asked her for my favorites, it was difficult for her to tell me the amounts as she did most of by looks/habit. :)

I was raised at my mom's side in the kitchen. She is English/German; her mom did not teach her how to cook. Her mother-in-law, however, was a different story. When mom and dad married, my Italian grandmother (dad's mom) took that young bride under her wing and into her kitchen and taught her how to cook Italian!! It wasn't long before my sister and I came along and mom made sure we knew our way around the kitchen. My mom didn't have many recipes written down; just the various recipes for cheesecakes. Those I still have on splattered index cards!
I married and have two daughters.....you can rest assured they were raised by my side in the kitchen and both (at 24 and 30) are pretty amazing cooks already!

My Mom had a small wooden index card file box that had her recipes in it. She never really said which ones were her most used. Wish I had made more of an effort to find out, as she passed away last month.

My Mom told my sister and I that we had better "learn how to cook" as she was" the worlds WORST cook". I learned and so did my sister.. I made sure to teach my 4 children to cook.

My mom had a commercial recipe book, Fanny Farmer, I still have my copy and its my goto for the standard stuff, ie biscuits, pie crust, oatmeal cookies. But she also kept a file box of cards. at the top of the card she denoted who she got the recipe from. I still have the ones she gave me, in her careful penmanship. So I have a collection of recipes from her, my Aunt Doddy , my Gramma Dulmage and my Gramma Boyd. Alas I have no daughters so they will probably stay with me.

My mom followed recipes. I also go by the spatters on the pages and memories of course. There are some recipes I would love to find, I am hoping I have them somewhere.

I never saw a cookbook at home when growing up. A few handwritten recipes exchanged at church were on top of the flour canister.

Cooking was not my mother's long suit, which is probably why I have hundreds of cookbooks and I search the internet for new recipes almost daily. I follow a recipe once and after that I make changes to them. I live with my mother, I do the cooking and she does the dishes. This was her idea.

Over the years there are dishes I just do not use a recipe to make. I also have recipes I will not share with anyone. I still love using "Joy of Cooking" and an Eastern Star Cookbook my grandmother gave me for a shower gift back in 1967 (my favorite -- I had to find a replacement on eBay).