Family Recipes = History & Love.

This past weekend, I spent some time at my father-in-law’s home, visiting and catching up on life. We hadn’t visited for a while and we knew it was time for Joe to see his Grandpa Norman again.

My mother-in-law, Mary, sadly passed away last February, and while my husband’s family has experienced a myriad of emotions before and after this, one of the interesting things that has happened is that my father-in-law has become quite the baker.

This 80+ year old man is baking pies and crisps and even has tried his hand at jams.

For us, he found Mary’s apple crisp recipe and decided to make that for our breakfast. It was delicious! (And so ironic, as my last blog post was about enjoying apple crisp for breakfast!)

As we were sitting in the kitchen on Saturday morning, enjoying Norman’s handiwork, I noticed Mary’s recipe box was on the counter, with the apple crisp recipe poking out.

Mary had excellent penmanship and all of her recipe cards showcased this. The recipe box truly is a treasure trove of some of her most prized family recipes – from her famous chili soup, as she called it, to pies, bars and other treats.

As I looked through it, I realized that for my father-in-law, this was one way he could stay connected to his wife – and keep those who visit him connected to her as well.

That’s the beauty of recipes handed down from friends and family – it’s much more than food. It’s also the memories we have of enjoying those dishes and desserts with the ones we love.

Most of my recipes aren’t hand-written anymore, although I did find a few that I had stored in a cookbook from many years ago.

My own mother will admit her handwriting is terrible, so she has actually created and printed her own cookbook for her children, showcasing some of her best-loved recipes for each month of the year. (She took all the photos, wrote all the text and printed the books through Shutterfly. Brilliant – I love Shutterfly and use it often for my own photo books, too!) Some of my favorites include her spaghetti and meatballs, Grandma Inez’s lefse (which is a future blog post all on its own!), the Anderson family way to cook Minnesota sweet corn and Dad’s sidecar cocktail recipe.

As I was digging around my kitchen tonight, I also found the kid’s cookbooks I used when I was Joe’s age to cook for my family. My favorite was the cookie book – I have always loved baking sweet treats best. (And hmm, sorry this photo is a little blurry – I guess I was pretty excited when I actually found these books!)

Recipes are history and family and love all tied together. My father-in-law is proof of that. What recipes in your family make you smile with memories?