Showing posts with label recipe collections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipe collections. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Remembering

I made a Dutch Baby to serve with blueberries, peaches, and melon on Saturday morning. This puffed pancake has been a family favorite for nearly 30 years, so I no longer look for the scrap of paper on which I first wrote the recipe. But later, I searched through my stack of handwritten recipes and found it. I held it and remembered who first gave me a taste and then gave me the recipe for Dutch Babies. In late 1987, we moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Joe worked for ARCO. Among our expatriate friends there were Bob and Dorothy Thomas.  Dorothy gave me the recipe and first served it to us in their home in Jakarta. She passed away about a year ago after a battle with cancer, and last week, her husband Bob followed her. I am sad to say goodbye. I will remember with gratitude their dear friendship, especially when I take a golden brown Dutch Baby from the oven.

Dutch Baby     recipe from Bob and Dorothy Thomas

1/3 cup butter
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
4 eggs

Heat oven to 425 degrees.  In a 9 inch iron skillet, place butter and put inside oven to melt. Place all the other ingredients in blender and mix thoroughly. When butter is melted and pan is hot, remove from oven and carefully pour batter into melted butter. Do not stir. Carefully return to oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until puffed and golden brown.  Serve with fresh fruit dusted with powder sugar or topped with whipped cream.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Nana's Recipe for Chewy Crisps

No, I didn't mix up the posts for my blogs.  Although this might seem to have been intended for  Kitchen Keepers, my cooking and recipe blog, it is posted here intentionally.  Today, just like most other people, I print out recipes from websites, or save them to my documents file for use at a later date.  I do still prop up a cookbook (I have many more than I have shelves to store them) or lay a printed recipe nearby when I am cooking.  I like being able to use my mini Ipad to bring up a recipe I know I have already posted.  That is very convenient, and portable!  But my most cherished recipe collection is handwritten, like the one above.  Chewy Crisps were peanut butter treats my mother, Opal Terrell Teal, made in our kitchen on Sunset Street in Jacksonville, Texas when I was growing up. I could enter it in my computer and print it out (and may very well do that for other reasons) but I thrill at being able to hold it in my hand, trace Mother's lovely, even, measured handwriting, and cook from her "book."  This recipe has a checkered ribbon threaded at the top since I use it, along with a few others, every year on a small kitchen Christmas tree where it hangs along with Mother's cookie cutters, the first ones I ever used.  I cherish other recipes written down by my Grandmother, or my mother's best friend Gertrude, our neighbor Mrs. Adams, even one from Mrs. Fay Martin who was mother's friend when they lived in New Orleans over 70 years ago. Recipes on the back of my 4th grade spelling test, an  envelop, a paper napkin.   I have some in my own handwriting, a collection of family recipes made as a third grade art project, complete with a fabric cover edged in blanket stitiches.

Next time you are asked for a recipe, why not write it down with your own pen?  Someday, there may be someone else who collects more than cookbooks and cooks with a heart beyond the cooking channels on TV!