The Grandma Zone
16 recipesWhen my grandmother passed, I inherited several worn-looking coffee cans and small boxes full of scraps of stained paper inscribed with my grandmother's lovely handwriting. These dinged up containers number amongst my most cherished possessions, for this is the collection of recipes that my grandmother turned to again and again over the years, and they form the basis for some of my happiest childhood memories. She transcribed these from her mother in law and sister in law, clipped these from magazines, wrote down notes dictated by friends over the phone. They are often difficult to decipher… the ink or pencil has faded, the ingredients splashed the notes, the paper has grown brittle with time. And so I am slowly digitizing the recipes I love best, photographing the original scraps of paper and including them on the page, transcribing what I can make out, and then, when necessary, interpreting the recipe to conform more closely to modern conventions (e.g. I know what my grandmother meant by "a third of a yahrzeit glass" but not everyone else will know what brand she meant or that those candles are not made in those glasses any more).
This is likely quite old, as my grandmother has written “Spry” instead of “vegetable shortening” or “Crisco”. Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening that was popular from the 1930s - 1960s. I have struggled to interpret the recipe because it is not written in a particularly organized way and is very vague, written haphazardly on both sides. This, too, speaks of this scrap of paper being quite old. My grandmother was an excellent cook, and had an eye for order and organization and I suspect would have written this down differently later in life. Anyway, fruit pie is one of the few desserts I am fairly comfortable with, so in the instructions I will be drawing on my own experience making pies when there are gaps to fill.
Beverly is my mother. My mother was a good cook, but didn’t have much patience for the process nor passion for the result, so there are very few recipes that I have that are distinctly hers. This recipe is one of the rare few, and my grandmother evidently kept a copy in her recipe box. The relish was always on the table for Rosh Hashanah and Thanksgiving, although I myself have not made it lately. It’s a nice alternative to the widely-available weird squiggly canned cranberry sauce, but I will admit that I have a strange affection for the canned stuff, too.
I do not recognize the handwriting on this note, although it strikes me as the writing of someone whose first language was probably Yiddish, written in the Hebrew script who studied the Roman letterset from typewritten or printed text. This means it is most likely the handwriting of either my great Aunt Bessie, my great Aunt Ida (unlikely), or my great grandmother, for whom I am named. I say that Aunt Ida is unlikely because she was brain damaged at the age of 9, probably in a pogrom. My grandfather refused to talk about it. The use of “Spry” in place of the more generic term “vegetable shortening” is a clue that this piece of paper is quite old. Spry was a competitor to the Crisco brand that got its start in the 1930s and peaked in popularity in the 1940s and 1950s. I don’t think the brand survived to the end of the 1960s. My great grandmother died in 1955, so it could be hers.
My grandmother always served baked apples for dessert after Shabbas dinner. It's an extremely simple and healthy recipe that can be served hot or cold. We make one apple per person, but you can always make more to refridgerate them for Saturday! She never put any seasoning on the apples since they're quite yummy without any additions, but obviously things like cinnamon-sugar would go well over these. You can use any sort of apple - my grandmother always used red delicious since those were always the nicest apples in our area of the country.
This excellent pareve dish has some things in common with Jennie Grossinger's truly inspired mock-liver recipe. (The Grossinger recipe uses sardines to outstanding and totally unidentifiable effect. It's the best mock-liver I've ever had.) In both cases using a food processor makes the recipe much easier with no sacrifice on the results.
This is an easy recipe, and it doesn't require much in the way of ingredients or equipment. However, there is a critical step at the end where you must take care not to curdle the eggs by adding them too quickly to hot liquid... you'll see what I mean. This is a thin lemony soup that is most frequently served chilled with a splash of milk to thicken it, although it can be served warm. This is one of the Grandma Zone recipes that I learned directly from my grandmother many years ago.
I remember her making these on occasion, especially in the latter half of Pesach. They were simple but tasty. The instructions are a bit vague.
My guess is that it's a cookie (biscuit) and it ought to get baked at 350 °F for 10 - 15 min or so? I may have to just try that to see. Also, dry oatmeal? Cooked oatmeal? Normally, dry oats are referred to as rolled oats and cooked oats are oatmeal, but not only is this scrap probably 70+ years old and language shifts, if my grandmother got this recipe from her inlaws (as I am guessing from the 'glass' measurements), there could have been a language barrier, to boot. Anyway, to say the instructions are incomplete is a bit of an understatement.
This recipe has just about the shortest ingredient list and instructions imaginable. And it's barely legible. But if you're into minimalism, here you go - and really, potato, eggs, salt and fat is always a winning combination.
Yes. Yes that is quite a lot of margarine. It tastes fantastic, if your arteries can handle it. This recipe has been retrieved from my grandmother's recipe boxes and the original paper (images below) was heavily spattered with food and almost illegible. I have rephrased it without changing any ingredients or techniques into a more traditional recipe format.
Having now made this myself, I can say that butter is the obvious choice unless you are baking for a fleishig meal. Butter represents a significant upgrade in flavor. You might try coconut oil in place of shortening if you like the flavor, but I have not tried this myself. They're outstanding, by the way. Don't let the rolled oats deter you.
For my formative years we had this recipe every Rosh Hashana and Thanksgiving. I'd looked through my grandmother's recipe boxes a few times in search of it, but didn't find it until now, 10 years after her passing. I'm so happy that I found it that I am using it to inaugurate a new section of my site called "The Grandma Zone" which will consist of recipes I have of hers, or those I find in her recipe boxes, many of whom she attributes to various friends who have now also passed on. This recipe has been retrieved from my grandmother's recipe boxes and the original paper (images below) was heavily spattered with food and almost illegible. I have rephrased it without changing any ingredients or techniques into a more traditional recipe format.
Frances Toren was one of my grandmother’s best friends. Frances was one of the nicest people… genuine, kind, warm, trustworthy… managing to be incredibly sweet without being saccharine. Neither my grandmother nor I put much credence in the supernatural, but I was present for a very odd experience regarding Frances. At the time, Frances was quite elderly and frail, but still very much in the world. She had been ill and my grandmother had been in regular contact by phone. I was home from school and in my grandmother’s kitchen late one afternoon when suddenly grandma gasped and grabbed for a chair to sit down. Concerned, I asked what was wrong. My grandmother (who was sharp as a tack until the day she died) looked at me with utter confusion written on her face. She said, “I don’t really know. I just heard Frances’s voice in my ear, plain as I’m speaking to you.” “Oh!” I paused, equally at a loss. “What did she say?” “She said, ‘Don’t worry, Jeannette, everything will be alright. It’s going to be okay.’” My grandmother’s delicate eyebrows were pinched with worry. “I don’t know what it means.” My grandmother tried calling Frances, but got no answer. A couple of hours later, Frances’s husband called with the news that Frances had passed away. Below you’ll find the scrap of paper my grandma had in her collection with Frances’s potato salad recipe jotted down.
My grandmother wrote down a lot of recipes from friends… especially from her hairdresser Marge. But she didn’t necessarily make the recipes in question. I’m pretty sure this one is an exception.
This recipe is written on the back of a letter from my youngest uncle to my great aunt Bessie, who was such a wonderful person that I named one of my children after her. Herring with milch is a very traditional Eastern European/Ashkenazic dish. Milt/milch is the male fish equivalent of roe, and considered a delicacy. I’m not sure where you can get a herring with milt today, but if you have a fishmonger who sells these… here’s a recipe for how to deal with it to make spiced pickled herring with it.
Vicky was my aunt’s aunt, so related to me by marriage. My aunt’s family always treated me as their own… I did not realize until I was in my teens that I was not a blood relative, so kind were they. My grandparents were great friends with my aunt’s parents, and socialized with them whenever possible. My aunt is of Sephardi heritage, and the two families exchanged recipes often, each mystified by the other’s flavor palette. I was not surprised to find an “Aunt Vicky Recipe” in my grandma’s recipe box.