Lost Family Food Traditions

While replying to another thread, it occurred to me that there are things that Mom, Gramma, Aunts, uncles and friends made that we enjoyed as a child. We were too young and they were too part of their lives to have written down. Hence they may be lost. We can document them here and maybe someone else may be able to recover the ideas.

Great idea, Andy! I'll have to give this some thought.

I know I'm fortunate in that my grandmother gave me alot of her cookbooks, written recipes, etc. a few years before she passed away and taught me how to make alot of them. I'm sure there are some from her or my mom that I'm forgetting about....

I thought of this while reading Sass' popcorn thread. Sometimes when we made popcorn Mom would make a "sauce" with molasses and sugar. She would dump it on the popcorn and we would put butter in out hands and ball it. I have no idea what else went into it. Anyone else do this?


If you have some things from long ago please add them here= or answers for that matter.

We used to use a recipe using corn syrup and sweetened condensed milk and other ingredients for popcorn balls. I've never seen molasses. It sounds like it would be good though. lol

I think I have your popcorn stuff Andy!
It's from a kids cookbook my Mom got us when we were litttle so it's at least 30 years old. (geez how am I old enough to have a 30 year old cookbook!)

1 cup molasses
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 TB butter or marg
5-6 cups popped popcorn

cook molasses, sugar, salt over low heat about 20 min to hard ball stage. remove from heat, stir in butter. Pour over popcorn, make balls, let stand 1 hour.

hth

I think that will work Suzie - Mom would never use sea salt LOL. It would be better though and I will.

LOL its from a wanna be hippie cookbook called "Growing Food Growing Up" "a child's natural food book", of COURSE it's got sea salt!

Stuffed with all sorts of great recipes for yummy stuff like Carob. Disgusting stuff......

Mom tried a little too hard to be healthy sometimes.

You bring back such memories Suzie. I amcurrently renovating Mom's house to rent it to a young couple starting out. As I travel the 250 miles there every friday night and work in the house I keep stumbling over memories. It was a 5 minute walk to a mini grocery store and Mm could not put a meal on the table without me making a trip tothe store.I really didn't mind, I knew everyone in the store.

As I work up there (Utica, NY) I keep running across friendly people saying hi and offering to help load / unload, whatever. I find myself getting homesick when I return to Metro NYC.

Only thing I can think of right now of that was a tradition for us that is on the verge of ending because of my father passing and my moving cross county is us having Prime Rib and Yorkshire pudding EVERY either Christmas or New Years Eve (depending on when we celebrated my fathers Birthday at my Grandmothers house which was Jan 1st) It was something we ALL looked forward to, esp my father with crossing his fingers that his Yorkshire pudding would rise high that year and not fall
I plan to keep it alive but I know I will not be able to this year.
I don't need to worry about a family recipe because I know both my Dad and my Grandmother kept the Fanny Farmer cookbook close to them at all times! lol and I even have their orig copy of it wrapped in a zip lock bag (its falling apart pretty bad).

I don't have my Mother's aztec chili recipe, or her special fried rice recipe.
Those stayed in her head and were never written down.
My sister and I have tried to make both, but they never taste like Mom's did.
On the other hand, I know how to make my Grandma's banana cream pie totally from scratch, and her fried chicken in a CI skillet

We had a family tradition that I was HAPPY to see die:
Manhattan clam chowder on Christmas Eve.

Parents made it every year, and we had to eat a bowl before we could
open presents. I LOVE New England chowder, but HATE Manhattan chowder.
ECK!

The year I left for college, they stopped making it. Mom never quite admitted that
they only made it to torture me, but came close.

Years later, when I discovered my love of cooking, I used to call home for old family
recipes. It was kind of like pulling teeth; Mom wasn't good at rattling off the ingredient
list. So for some, I have just the bare bones of the recipe... like fried gizzards. Mine are good, but Mom's were sublime.
Now, if my DAD was the chef, he was happy to give out the recipe. So I have his
Chicken Adobo recipe, and his steak rollups, and a couple others.
Miss my parents a lot this time of year.

I wish I had my grandma and my ant's recipes. They were both superb cooks. Ah ...

Speaking of gizzards Kimchee, that's another thing my Grandmother made that was the best!
Par-fried in a CI skillet, then roasted in the oven for a while.

Sass, my mom pan fried them, but I am not sure what came next. I believe she
might have braised them in red wine for a while, because I remember red wine in
there somewhere.
I love gizzards! I marinate them in the wine, then fry. Keep saying next time I will try
the braising method, but haven't made them lately for some reason. Hmmmm.....

Kimchee said:

I LOVE New England chowder, but HATE Manhattan chowder.
ECK!

Click to expand...

A man who obviously knows his chowder!

Lee

Well let me think a bit but my mother couldn't boil and egg but did make the best fried chicken I ever ate. Every thing else was like taking your life in your hands. Here secret here was she fried in lard.

Now my father was a good cook especially when it came to beef or fish. Trouble was they divorced when I was very young so I saw little of my father till my early teens. My mother worked so my father's parents took care of my brother and I during the week as my mother worked. Now my grand mother was a super cook both Hungarian and Italian foods. She was Hungarian from a large family so the girls with their mother did most of the cooking. When she married my grand father who was Italian the first placed they lives was Hell's Kitchen NYC. The had a small apartment over an Italian Restaurant in the 1920's. Well in those days women didn't work so she would go down stairs and help in the restaurant kitchen where the chef (right off the boat from Italy) taught her to cook Italian.

She was really a good cook and taught my wife when I got married but taught my brother and me as kids. I've managed to convert about 20 of her recipes (she had hundreds in her head) into written form as she never measured anything just knew how much to add. Now she lived with my wife and I up till she died and though didn't cook any more she was a great critic of our cooking. I actually base my marinara sauce on her recipe which she swore tasted it exactly like hers. The only thing I never seemed to pick up from her was baking which she also was excellent at with her lemon meringue pie (2 1/2" thick meringue). She also made her own pasta from scratch and I didn't eat a dried pasta till I got married.

My mother's mother was a very Southern (she was Cherokee Indian) but raised in North Carolina and Virginia her whole life. She was another good cook as they lived on a dairy farm share cropping out some of the their land. They raised chickens, beef, pigs, goats and rabbits. She would churn her own butters and canned preserves and jams as well as many other things. She had 14 kids so they lived off the land and my grand father's preacher salary. I only visited them a week or two out of the year so never learned much about cooking from her.

my mom and dad are still alive, so i fortunately have them to ask for whatever recipe or tradition that crosses my mind. i really need to write these things down.
my sister has recorded all of my dad's experiences growing up in ireland, then in the second world war, then as a nyc firtefighter, and finally as a sports writer. i should take a pen and paper and get down all of my mom's recipes, and her life growing up in brooklyn.

on the other hand, my mil and fil have passed, and many of their traditions have gone with them. my mil was kinda funny about teaching either my wife or me about her dishes. i think she felt like her cooking was the best thing that she could offer, so if she taught someone her secrets she'd be that much less special.
so, gone are her recipes for white borscht, pierogies, stuffed cabbage, chicken paprikash, split pea soup, chicken soup, and rye bread.
and my fil was an expert gardener. i wish i could still pick his brain about how he grew his brussel sprouts, radishes, sunflowers, and so on.

Well my wife and I are the oldest living now from our immediate families. All our parents have been gone now for many years.

Cool thread Adillo! When DW and I got married my maternal grandmother who was of modest means gave us a recipe card box with all her favorites. Yes, some had a pinch of this or dsh of that but many bring back such fond memories. Three years ago our youngest son married. The month before our daughter-in-law's shower, I had hip replacement surgery. While rehabing, I decided to continue the tradition started by my grandmother and compiled a recipe book from DW and my side of the family plus some of our own favorites. The kids still comment about the book.

My Mom has most of her recipes on hand written 3X5 cards. Mu sister has possession and I think I really need to read them over. Mom had a couple of specialty recipes that I NEED to get hold of.