Cookbook

For Christmas, I wanted to do gifts that had a bit more meaning than usual. 2009 was not the greatest of years in our family, so I really wanted to make it special.

My daughter has taken a great interest in cooking. At first I felt guilty, because I thought she was just helping cook dinner because her mom was tired and grumpy. (Who? Me?) Then she started experimenting, and I realized that she REALLY enjoyed it. So I thought that might be one inspiration....

Then there's the relationship my daughter has with my Granny. I say "has" even though Granny passed away in 2001, because Heather, like my mother and I, believes in "Pennies From Heaven". The thought that when we find a penny on the ground, it is a message from Granny, sending us her love. With this past year being as it was, we found it surreal that there were pennies every time we turned around. (And once, she sent me a dollar...while I was filling up with gas at the gas station!)

So that was a second inspiration!

When we cleaned out Granny and Grandpa's house, I brought home a recipe box. I honestly was looking for a specific recipe, which I never found. (Jalapeno pickle recipes are always appreciated, by the way)

Here is the box....

I knew there were more recipes that I had brought home, but couldn't remember what they were in. The very day I was planning on starting on the cookbook, I cleaned some shelves I have in the dining room. Lo and behold...there was an old 3 ring binder full of recipes and notes from Granny. I was about to casually take it to my office when I flipped it open to a random page...

There, in Granny's handwriting, was this:I literally RAN with the binder to my office, tears running down my face. Now I KNEW this was the right gift to make for my daughter.

So this is what I put together:

I had to add the "and such" since I have a whole "chapter" of Granny's clippings from newspapers and random notes she had written and thought enough of to keep in the binder. I also threw in a few pages of photos, of course.

The recipes are scanned, so that they retain the original "flavor" of Granny's recipe box. Complete with grease stains, gravy drops, and an occasional correction on a recipe.

There were even a few surprises. Granny is my mom's mother. But mixed in her recipes were some from my aunts on my dad's side:

and one from Backflip Johnny's mom (who is my aunt's sister-in-law.) Backflip Johnny is a rodeo clown that my family has enjoyed watching at small town rodeos around here for several years. One day I posted a shot of him on Facebook, and my cousin responded with "HEY! That's my cousin!"...From the other side, of course. Heather loves thinking that she is a "cousin-in-law" to Backflip Johnny, and was therefore excited to see his mom's recipe in the book.