Homemade recipes bring out the memories, especially at the holidays when baking cookies and frosting Reminiscing about family is often times during the holidays a tough thing for many people. My reminiscing about family started because of Egg Bake…OK reality is I was scanning through my drawer of cookbooks, many of which I inherited when my parents passed on. I was on a mission for “the” egg bake recipe for our day-after Thanksgiving breakfast. You know how it is, you know the recipe but you want to double-check yourself on measurements. My quandry is that my collection of cookbooks is large. Most reasonable people do not have an entire drawer in their kitchen dedicated to cookbooks. But I am a collector of history and many of these cookbooks were my mom’s. I couldn’t stand to toss them. Too many memories.
The one great thing when reminiscing about family is that it often leads to fond memories that seem as real today as they were years ago. So many memories for everyone is made around the dinner table. Perhaps this is even making you recall some favorite memories that took place in either the dining room or kitchen.
Searching High & Low
A few Thanksgivings ago, I wanted to make an Egg Bake for my husband, David and son, Kory so into my drawer of cookbooks I go. I knew that the cookbooks that were my mom’s would be my best bet in which to find one close to the one she always used. I started grabbing books and scanning through them for the egg bake recipes.
This specific cookbook I almost passed it by as I don’t really remember Mom using it. But something drew me to it. I don’t even know what Bunde CRC is. The front inside dedication says it is dedicated to Mothers of Preschoolers. That is interesting. Anyone who knew my mom, knows she loved kids. Bunde CRC is a little church in a little town in western Minnesota. Clara City is north of a town, Marshall, that my husband and I had moved to literally during the 1991 Halloween Blizzard. If you try to find them on a map, go find Sioux Falls, SD first. Then come in about an inch to the East and North. That is Marshall. Then go up another half inch or so and you should be very close to Clara City.
Homemade Recipes are the Making of Memories
So back to the cookbook itself, I pick it up and start scanning the pages and what falls out of the middle of the cookbook? Recipe cards. But not just any recipe cards, these are specifically the recipes my mom used when my brother and I were little for the Christmas Goodies. The really special thing about these recipes are that they are also recipes from other members in the family.
Aunt Geneva’s Homemade Frosting Brings out the memories
The upper left recipe is a frosting recipe from my Great-Aunt Geneva. Geneva was the stereotypical Farm Wife, Grandma and everyone’s favorite person. I have so many fond memories of Sunday drives to “The Farm” in Waterville to visit with Hank and Geneva and the rest of the family. Hank is my Grandma Lena’s only brother.
Their farm, Sunnybrook Farm, didn’t just have the normal farm animals. It was a working farm. With Dairy Cows, a few pigs, chickens, and sheep, but they also had deer in a pen and peacocks and hens! There is nothing like hearing the call of a peacock and seeing their display of amazing tail feathers with their brilliant colors.
And it is one thing to see a whitetail deer in the wild, but to see one grow up from fawn to Buck is awe-inspiring to a young small-town girl. The deer, initially 2 fawns whose momma was struck by lightening. Danny, the youngest son of Hank & Geneva, brought them back to the farm. Being they were too little to fend for themselves, Danny took care of them. I remember that one of them grew to be a decent size buck. Not sure what happened to them, but I know that Danny is one of the area’s finest taxidermists!
Homemade Frosting from Geneva Fessel
3/4 Cup of Regular Sugar – I giggled on this because I immediately thought what other sugar is there! But of course, there are a few different sugars like brown and powdered.
1 Egg White – Okay I actually like separating eggs, but has anyone found a good use yet for the yolk other than frying it up and feeding it to the dogs? In my house I need to triple this recipe. I have 3 dogs and 1 yolk is not going to cut it between them.
1/4 t cream of tartar – Granted this recipe is in my mom’s handwriting and I know because it is a “little” t it is teaspoon, but when you are doing recipes, PLEASE be sure to specify a little bit better of tsp or Tblsp. Especially with an ingredient like cream of tartar. If you use too much in a recipe you are better off starting over.
1/4 c boiling water – Pretty safe to say you can probably handle this one on your own.
little bit of vanilla – alright folks, is this vanilla extract or pure vanilla. I brought my mom back a bottle of pure vanilla when we went to Tijuana and California with the kids…back in 1997. I now have the bottle, plus a bottle from my mother-in-law. Anyone know if vanilla expires or does it get better with age?
Mix it all together. Want a different color frosting? Just add drops of food dye until you reach the color you want. This frosting is like a paint on cookies. We love the flexibility of the colors of the rainbow so we can make it appropriate for the holiday whether it is Christmas, Easter, Halloween or any in between!
Sugar Cookies!!
Holidays are for making memories and those memories would not be complete without the cookies themselves. Whether you left the baking for last minute on accident or on purpose, let’s have fun with those cutouts! One thing I remember for sure is Mom making up a batch of sugar cookies the night before and letting it all cool together in the fridge for rolling out the next day. The house smelling wonderful and the windows steaming up. You could look around our neighborhood at any given house to know who was baking. Then as the cookies cool, Mom would start gathering the ingredients for homemade frosting.
Making Memories for the Future
While most people these days purchase their frostings, homemade frosting is still my favorite. Because it isn’t just about the baking, it is about making memories for the future. This past holiday season, we were blessed to have our youngest son and his girlfriend, Emmy, visit us for Thanksgiving. Then 2 weeks later, we had family in from California. Then the after Christmas and before New Years, we hosted our oldest son, and David’s sister and husband. All are from Alabama. During each set of visits, we enjoyed making some homemade meals and conversations. Many of the conversations revolve around past memories and when David’s mom started sharing her memories of years past, I attempted to record them.
Remember, while you still have your elderly family members, they have a wealth of knowledge that will disappear if they do not share them. Try to record details. You never know when a golden nugget will be handed to you on a gold platter that could very well lead to family history. The generations of the future need to know and learn from past history. So sit back, open up a bottle of wine or put some meat on the grill or even bring out the desserts! And have a notepad or recording device handy.