Family Recipes

I inherited my dad's mum's recipe box in 1975. A few weeks ago my son told his son that Granny knows how to make pickles and wanted to know how. I got into my gran's box and found my favorite of her pickle recipes. I copied her handwritten one on Xerox and sent it with a little story. So now my 13 yo DGS is making his Great Great Grandmother's pickles. It does my heart good.

I inherited my mums notebook with recipes she made at home, and recipes she wrote down when she worked in a hospital kitchen, enormous amounts, ie 15 pounds if flour fir the bread recipe. I don't actually use them, but they are so lovely to look at, she was a great cook and baker. I also have her Good Housekeeping Recipe book, it's enormous and the photos are incredible, so much colouring in the icing , and garish garnishes . A whole chapter on cooking for invalids, sounds horrible . But the basic recipes are still brilliant. Brings back happy memories as she died at 54, so she's not here to talk about them.

Half the joy of food is sharing - so why not recipes? Sadly, I don't have any family recipes which have been passed down, although I do have a couple of my mum's old cook books. She made a lovely fish pie - Russian fish pie, she called it - which I've googled and found recipes for koulibiak which sound very similar, so I'm going to give that a try some time. My aunt also made the best ever xmas pudding, but when I asked for the recipe, she said she just played it by ear every year!

I know what you mean, Blondie - I remeber asking my mother for the recipe for her delicious parsley pie - but it was very vague and variable! Made a basic one though and it was really yummy!