Recipes

11/30/2013

Because I don't have anything better to do beside dusting, laundry or cleaning bathrooms (ick), I decided to see if I could get my recipes under control. I have in one kitchen drawer a higgledy piggledy mess of recipes.  Some are neatly typed, others handwritten and I even have a few that just list ingredients and nothing else (a mystery dish I suppose).  

I decided today was as good a time as ever to get these recipes under control, i.e., get them typed up and saved on the computer.  My theory being that once they are stored electronically they could be found easily (perhaps).  That is unless you forget exactly which folder you put them in!  

After I emptied out an entire drawer, gathered up all the loose 3x5 recipe cards, as well as a really disorganized recipe box (do people even use these anymore?), I was ready to begin organizing, hopefully for the last time.

When I typed in the recipes, I actually added a blurb about where and from whom I had received the recipe from.  Don't I sound very Martha-Steward like?  Everything was going pretty well until I got bogged down in Memory Lane.  

I have typed recipe cards from my mother-in-law, a lot of handwritten recipes from my mother and even some handwritten ones from my Grandmother.  

One of the recipes from my Grandmother was written in purple ink and by now the paper is very thin and has been folded many times causing part of the paper to be torn, but still readable. The recipe in question is for Oatmeal Cake and calls for 11 ingredients!  I've never made it and don't even know if it's any good.  What I can't bring myself to do is to type out the recipe to add to my electronic recipe box and toss out this very old and worn piece of paper.

I also have a typed recipe from Jeff's Great Aunt Ruby for Pound Cake that is to die for - truly!  The paper is also getting a bit thin and I should probably type it in to preserve it for the future.  But I know that even if I do this, I won't be able to toss out a recipe from a wonderful woman that I, unfortunately, didn't know near long enough. I will tell you this about the pound cake.  One summer Jeff, myself and the three boys traveled to Arkansas for a family reunion and we stayed with Aunt Ruby.  I remember coming down for breakfast one morning and finding the boys all eating rather large pieces of cake.  I fussed a bit until Aunt Ruby told me it was the perfect breakfast.  "Honey all it's got in there is eggs and butter"  Admittedly, those were key ingredients but it also has 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of Crisco!  I don't make this cake near often enough but perhaps I will surprise the boys at Christmas.

Time to change gears, which means I will swap my computer chair for my recliner and one of my library books I picked up yesterday!

P