Recipes Through the Years

My grandmother and mother collected recipes. Most cooks do. You can always tell a favorite cookbook, it's not only worn, dog-eared, and stained; it's covered in notes. If a cookbook hasn't been mauled and the pages aren't coming out, it isn't worth keeping. At least in our family. We have loose-leaf binders coming out of our ears covered in menus, modifications, stars, and exclamation marks. Try this --> marks abound, and sometimes huge slash marks with NEVER AGAIN scrawled in bold letters. LOL

Many recipes are cut out of old newspapers, yellowed and faded, some with questions and attributions from "Mrs. C. J. in Sask." and others. 'How to Save Money Making Your Own Maraschino Cherries' from LOWE FARM, Box 165, Man. next to a personal ad saying 'Ready to Settle Down' from Homesick in Sask. calling for girls from 20 years old and up to correspond who live in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. They're pinned in with sewing pins, or stapled, or just left loose between the yellowing pages of a plain black wirebound notebook with my grandmother's precise old-fashioned script next to my mother's sloping and hurried hand. It's a fascinating time capsule of farm life, the bits and pieces of what was important to a woman alone on the prairie.

I remember when I was first married and subjecting my husband to my inexperienced cooking looking through Grandma's books and being so frustrated because I didn't know what so much of it meant, and wishing I could ask. What was a medium oven, anyway? And yet so many things were so carefully written, even recipes for liniments, and so many kinds of pickles you just wouldn't believe it.

I barely knew my grandmother, yet she lives in these handwritten pages. She didn't journal in these books, but between the recipes and the clippings are favorite scriptures carefully written. In this I see a faithful mother and wife, a spiritual woman who nurtured all around her. Of course, my childhood memories of her are surrounded by foods, and gardening, and of course, pickles. :)

Changes

Reminiscing can get to the point of nauseating, so I'll spare everyone the 'walked uphill both ways to school in the snow after eating gravel for breakfast' speech. I do think it's important to notice and question essential changes, though.

Remember 'Schoolhouse Rock' in the early 70s, late 60s? Between commercials for Hotwheels and Barbie's corvette we kids who were glued to Looney Tunes and Scooby Doo from the time the networks came on in the morning with the national anthem learned stuff too (other than the fact that the ghost was always a guy in a glowing suit). We learned about Conjunction Junction, the Magic Number 3, and what a noun was, as well as the use of commas. Those jingles still rattle around in my head, truth be told!

The thing that fired me up about this last night was when I told my son to be sure and wash his hands thoroughly. He righteously told me that he had learned on Nick or one of the 100 other 24/7 kid's channels that you must wash your hands for 20 seconds after using the bathroom, and was very firmly counting it off as he washed.

Considering the terrible health threats we're all facing today, I'm very glad of that, but there is this little tickle in the back of my mind that just won't go away.

I've watched TV with my kids, I'm not one to just let the TV babysit them most of the time, and I've seen some good public service announcements. The one on handwashing, some on drugs, some on molestation, and many of them encouraging children to go outside and play. What I haven't seen is any public service announcements or jingles like what we learned with as children.

It really speaks to where we are in the stream of time that what is considered essential for children to know are things that their parents should be teaching them. Wash up. Your privates are private. Don't get involved in criminal activities.

It seems to me that we are in a very strange place when the TV is teaching parental messages rather than being a tool in the education of our children. I guess not being able to read or write is no big deal, though, as long as they wash their hands. After all, McDonalds has pictures for their cashiers to choose from, rather than having to actually add, subtract, and make change.