Flashback Friday: A Taste of Great-Grandma's Recipes

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

I'm super excited about the recipes Alvina shared with me during my visit to her farm.  The stained and tattered old notepad belonged to her mother, my great-grandmother.  Contained on these now yellowed and brittle pages are her best recipes.  I can hardly wait to go through them all.  In fact, I'm so excited I've just got to share a few of them with you now.  Here's a taste of what one might find in Great-Grandma Caroline's kitchen.

Her notepad contains handwritten recipes for everything from pies...

...to pickles...

...to perpetual yeast (sourdough)...

She even wrote down ingredients for cement wash and spray for the hen house.

Spots and splatters are indications of a well-used recipe.

Some pages are half missing, but most are quite readable.

What stories they must tell.  Who is the Mrs. Thompson behind Mrs. Thompson's Raised Doughnuts?

What about Ruth or Mrs. Alton, whose brown sugar cookies appear on several pages?  Are Mama's White Cookies my great-great grandmother's?  How I would love to sit down at the kitchen table and hear the stories behind each recipe.

We'll dig more into each recipe in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening as I share my excitement! 

Food for Thought: "We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be." -May Sarton

Random Recipe Wednesday: 2-Ingredient Chocolate Mousse

Just chocolate and water.  That's it.  No heavy cream.  No butter.  No sugar.  That can't really work, can it?  Normally when melting chocolate you should avoid water at all costs.  Just a little water and the whole thing will seize up, turning to a grainy, lumpy mass.  Needless to say the idea of purposely adding water to my chocolate to create mousse was quite intriguing.

After a little digging I learned the method originally comes from Hervé This, the father of molecular gastronomy.  There's no need for me to reinvent the wheel here.  A quick Google search will link you to multiple blog posts (like this one) featuring this simple mousse.  I'm just popping in to tell you I finally tried it, and it worked.  You should try it too.  Because clearly, since we're making mousse with water instead of heavy cream and butter, we can call it healthy and justify eating one silky spoonful after another.  

In short, you melt chocolate and water then whip it over an ice bath until the desired consistency is reached.  Or you might whip it over a bag of frozen vegetables if you're out of ice.  Just saying.  Depending on your chocolate to water ratio and the amount of whipping effort you put in, you can end up with thinner pudding-like consistency or a thicker scoopable consistency.  If you're not pleased with the final outcome simply remelt and re-whip, though you can't really go wrong with rich, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate.  As you can see mine turned out more like a firm truffle the first time, perfect for scooping but not as mousse-like as I intended.  I melted it back down, added a few tablespoons of water and then whipped it for a slightly shorter time.  After that it pretty much went straight from bowl to mouth quicker than two clicks of a camera. End of story.  

There was some sort of weird magnetic attraction between my finger and my tongue throughout this process.  It sort of interfered with my ability to give you specific measurements. Accounting for this variable, which you too will likely encounter, I'd say start with 5 ounces of 72% dark chocolate and 1/2 cup water.  Sample and adjust accordingly.  That is, assuming you have any left to adjust. 

Food for Thought: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -Leonardo da Vinci

Tuesday's Twist: Rhubarb

Tuesday's Twist:  A basic recipe with a fun twist.  In other words, just another excuse for me to play around with weird recipes I've been dying to try.

I made two strawberry-rhubarb pies this weekend for my brother's birthday.  It reminded me of the Rhubarb Festival my mom and I went to last year at this time.  I've been looking forward all year to going again, but some family commitments will prevent me from going this weekend.  If you're free this Saturday and in the area be sure to check out the Rhubarb Festival (more info here).

For those of you who can't make it you can check out my posts from last year.  I had so much to tell you it took 3 posts to get it all out.

This post is about the festival itself.

Then I told you all about the pie-making contest I was in.

And we can't forget the wooden spoon shop.

It was pretty much a perfect day loaded with fun memories.  I can hardly believe it's been a whole year since then.  I'll have to get some more rhubarb and pretend I'm there next Saturday.  If your schedule allows, I highly recommend it.

Food for Thought: "The quieter you become, the more you can hear." -Ram Dass

Mindful Monday: A Trip to Alvina's

Mindful Monday: On Monday's I'm going to share what's been on my mind. I by no means have any of this figured out, I'm just thinking out loud here.

Last week I visited my great-aunt, Alvina, and she showed me all around her farm.  She reminisced about all her years there and told stories of longstanding traditions.  Of course I couldn't help but take a few pictures as we wandered around outside.

I was eager to see how asparagus grows and she kindly saved some for me to cut.

She taught me all about growing asparagus and even let me use her special asparagus knife, marked with yellow tape in case she drops it.

Alvina advises storing the spears in water until ready to use.  I happened to use a blue glass (Alvina has a collection of blues dishes as well) and decided it looked more like a bouquet than a vegetable.

The flowers I grew up calling Johnny Jump-Ups were scattered all over the woods.

A cluster of uncurling ferns lined one edge of the house.  The sunlight streaming through the leaves captured my attention.

I'll tell you more about this during our Flashback Friday's but she also shared her mother's (my great grandmother's) handwritten recipe notepad with me.  I was able to photograph every page and am quite eager to look over the recipes.  Most were for food, but this one give instructions on making soap from lye, rainwater, borax and grease.  I'm so thankful we can still read the writing on most pages. What a treasure!

Food for Thought: "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him." -Lamentations 3:24

Flashback Friday: Muffin Ring

Flashback Friday: Revisiting a recipe from long ago

The instant I flipped this muffin ring out of the pan I thought, "wow, that looks like it's straight out of a 70's cookbook."  And then I remembered it was.  Don't ask me why I thought it would look any different.  The ring mold is a big factor, but the cherry halves and pecans really seal the deal.  Only a lime gelatin mold would scream 70's with more gusto.

I found this recipe in the same cookbook I told you about last week. The title Butterscotch Muffin Ring caught my attention.  What, a ring of muffins?  So it's like muffin monkey bread?  Or a giant doughnut?  Yeah, no.  Coffee cake would be a better description, although it's not cake and doesn't contain coffee.  But you can eat a slice with coffee if you want.  And since we're calling it a muffin ring, it's perfectly acceptable for breakfast.  Have I lost you yet?  Because my train of thought is jumping quite rapidly.