“You know what I want for Christmas, Grandma? All of the recipes for all of your food!” This was spoken by one of my 16-year-old grand-daughters at Thanksgiving this past November. She is not the first person to ask me to do this and I assured her that it was not a task that could be accomplished in the 4 short weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but that it would be a wonderful idea for NEXT Christmas or for her high school graduation the following spring.
And so after a quick trip to Etsy to find a recipe template I liked and some goals set for the new year, I am in the process of gathering the best of what I love to cook. I am including little stories if there is a history behind the recipe, like how the marinara sauce recipe we all love first came into the family from a cooking class that my mom took back when I was in junior high and lasagna was a new-to-us dish here in the rural midwest. Or how the Santa cookies came into our family through a friend of my mom’s who taught us how to make and decorate them when I was in about 1st grade and we have made them pretty much every year since then, and in large enough quantities to give as gifts many of those years.
Of course many of our favorite dishes don’t have a magical history or a story. They were something that looked good in a cookbook or magazine or online that used the ingredients we had on hand and we liked it enough to make it again…and again…until it became a favorite.
So many winter nights over the next few months will find me immersed in my recipe files, sorting, remembering, and most definitely adding some ‘forgotten’ ones to the menus around here.