Inspired

For a few months I have been contemplating a new project. This project. I kept telling myself it would just take a few minutes to sit down and make up the blog. But then the whole putting recipes in was what was daunting to me.

I sat down in front of Mary Poppins this afternoon with my daughter and a Bon Appetit in hand. I read an article about a food writer who lost her grandparents recipes through their deaths and her desire to recreate the recipes with her family and to pass down to her family the recipes and methods.

Inspiration.

I have it a bit easier. I have boxes and boxes of recipes from my mom, my grandmother and my great grandmother. The only one still living - with Alzheimers - is my grandmother.

My great grandmother inspired within my mom a desire and ability to cook well. My great grandmother was Swedish, born in North Dakota in 1899 and her recipes come from her heritage and are based on farm life. My grandmother, while not a particularly good cook, got by and her inspiration was as a post-WWII bride. My mom went through many phases of cooking from getting buy with the least expensive ingredients to dabbling in French cooking later in her life.

I would love to take the time to cook each of these recipes, but that's not going to happen. I may try a few of them.

My rules - I am going to type out the recipes as they are written. I am going to leave any names written on the recipes as sources. I tend to not post full names, but in many cases I expect the people are deceased. Plus, I suppose I have some vague hope that some long lost relative may look into geneaology and use the internet and be surprised to find a recipe from their ancestor. Where they aren't deceased I will not use full names and will note this.

My hesitation so far in tackling this project of doing something with these stacks and boxes of recipes is not really knowing where to start. I may never decide where to start.

So here we go heads first.