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My grandma hand-wrote down all her recipes for her daughters before she died. A few years ago I decided a nice gift for all of them would be to transcribe the recipes into a printed book. While trancribing the recipes I realized that 80% of her dishes were just variations of ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, oleo, and shredded cheese.
I had an elderly aunt that made “oyster stew” on special occasions. The recipe was as follows:
One gallon of 2% milk
One 16 oz. jar raw oysters with juice
Salt and pepper to tasteThat’s literally all that was in it. She’d mix it together, heat until steaming, then serve. Just a big pot of hot, oyster scented, salty milk, served with oyster crackers. Everyone hated it and none of her children carried on the tradition.
That recipe deserved to die.
Edit: oops, broken line breaks.
Oyster milk! It’s fight milk but you get a refreshing seaside holiday while you drink it
It’s fight milk
I didn’t see any crow eggs in the recipe.
…oh my g*d what a horrible day to have eyes…
My dad couldn’t cook rice for shit. Always put way too much water in the rice cooker. On his last Thanksgiving, he made rice with something that turned it pink, honest to God not sure if he used food dye or something else.
And I’m convinced my hatred of liver ties back to how he’d drop beef liver in various soups. I’d never know if the meat I was biting into was goat, turkey or liver until it was too late.
He also gave us food poisoning twice. Yeah, he was a shit cook. Fortunately his cooking died with him.
My grandmother would put food in the oven before turning it on. When the timer would go off, she’d be frustrated that the food was dehydrated and undercooked, so she’d try her best to salvage it by starting the timer again for the same amount of time. Then she’d ask “what smells funny?” before pulling the food out from the oven, and complaining that the recipe was bad.
She never cooked before she got married, but she was married for somewhere around 70 years.
70 years.
In 70 years, she was never able to understand the concept of preheating the oven. When I was a child, she’d come over to my parents’ house. If my mom was preparing dinner, and the oven was preheating, my grandmother would turn off the oven and tell my mother that she shouldn’t leave the oven on. My mom tried so many times to explain preheating the oven, but my grandmother insisted that it was a waste of energy.
Sounds like granny was a full blown dumbass.
Or had early onset Alzheimer’s. Or both.
Turns out I don’t actually dislike vegetables, I just dislike how my mother’s and grandmother make them. Did you know they can be served with colour still on them?
Boggles my mind oven roasted asparagus and broccoli were not a thing as a child.
Do you mean to tell me vegetables can be cooked some other way besides boiling? And you can put seasoning on them?!? My grandfather would be disgusted by the thought.
Even boiled vegetables taste good if you don’t go stupid mode about it.
I got fucking microwave steamed frozen veggies with no seasoning at all not even butter and if I didn’t eat the freezer burnt slop I wasn’t allowed to leave the table.
Trauma bonding hell yeah. 👊
I get the microwaved steamed veggies now. But I at least toss them in some olive oil or butter and season them. Usually I’ll microwave them halfway to thaw them then fry them in some oil to get a nicer char. Not gourmet, but perfectly fine.
I used to stir fry my veggies, but they’d end up soft due to the resulting moisture.
Then I baked them in the oven hoping that’d be better, but I’d overcook them just a bit and they’d be too hard.
I finally decided to air fry my veggies, and they were juuuuuuuuuuuuust right!
Church potluck every Sunday when I was a kid. A whole buffet line of jello based not dessert dishes. Usually peas in green jello, shredded carrots in orange jello,or hotdog in jello abominations. If not jello, there were at least 10 mayonnaise based atrocities.
I ate a lot of dinner rolls.
I still can’t do potlucks because my parents forced me to eat all sorts of random bullshit at the church potluck, because they felt like being seen eating someone’s dish conferred some weird church status.
“Go over and tell Miss Borley how much you liked her chicken liver and salmon casserole.”
On the other hand, this also contributed to my powerful disdain for church, so I guess that’s something. The only way out is through… a senile lady’s disgusting casserole, or something.
“Go over and tell Miss Borley how much you liked her chicken liver and salmon casserole.”
Okay, Mommy!
goes over and vomits all over Miss Borley
Sometimes the holy spirit just moves through you.
God, I feel for you folk. When my parents forced me to try something, it was like sushi, fried okra, or pesto.
I was a stubbornly picky eater. So thankfully my parents never made me do that, as I would have simply accepted a punishment rather than take a bite of any of that shit.
In defense of my old church:
Pizza biscuits.
Get Pillsbury biscuit dough, slap down one, slap down mozzarella, marinara, pepperoni/sausage, slap down another biscuit over top, do this 12 times, cover and bake.
Sorta like a poor man’s calzone… or, arguably, they’re just super sized pizza pockets.
Don’t pair well with grape juice imo, but they were honestly pretty good.
We did eventually get an Italian soda station bar type thing, no clue if we just aped that from the Mormons or came up with it independently.
Dude! We made those exact pizzas as kids after temple. They were quite good.
Ahem.
Cheesus Crust.
That is all.
I would have eaten those for sure.
Apparently I missed out. Post church social time was coffee and pastries. The big meals were normal (turkey with mash, green beans, and cranberry sauce, for example).
But I’ve read the cookbooks.
Is it weird that I can’t recall my grandmother ever cooking for me? She may have at some point, but there was never any special reverence for her cooking the way I hear a lot of families have. As far as food goes, my strongest memories are about how she’d keep a cup of jelly beans in her car. I was always excited to ride with her because of it, haha.
The big deal cook in my family is my dad, who would have everybody lining up for his chili when he’d cook food for games and fundraisers. He became known for it. When a home game was coming up, football players would ask my marching band brothers if our dad would be cooking for it.
It’s interesting too, because despite being born in a foreign country, and nearly my entire extended family being of the same culture, he doesn’t cook in that style. His recipes are entirely his own. The key difference is that he uses a lot of sorrel, which is rare in the US but very common in the country he’s from. We grew it in our backyard garden, and he gifted me a potted plant of it when I moved out.
I used to get annoyed when he’d invite himself to join me whenever I cooked… but I miss it now.
🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂
Great depression, to rationing to factory farm byproducts and processed food.
See the thing is you have to remember that a lot of people’s grandparents now are not great depression or a children. They were raised by those from the Great depression but they developed their own horrible nasty cooking habits in the '50s and '60s.
Yeah, at this point “grandma’s recipes” would be mostly mid-century ones based around boxed or canned hyper processed convenience foods. “Put your French’s® french-fried onions on top of your green bean casserole made with Campbell’s™ cream of mushroom soup” and that sort of shit.
Also, probably half the recipes have their ingredient ratios thrown off by shrinkflation, since they were designed to use whole packages (for even more ‘convenience’) instead of giving proper measurements. And even if you did convert them to real units, nobody wants a recipe that needs 1.25 tubs of Johnson & Mills Bean Lard Mulch because a tub is now only 80% the size of what it used to be anyway!
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/grandmas-recipes-dont-turn-anymore-091602464.html
My grandma wouldn’t give me her recipe for my favorite dessert and she died:( My aunts try to reassure me by saying she probably didn’t have a recipe she probably felt it out.
That’s why one day I insisted on standing next to my grandma to take notes. I‘m glad I did because otherwise her „I don’t have a recipe“ noodle dish would have been lost forever.
my grandma’s famous brownies turned out to be box mix with chopped walnuts added 😂 and the box mix ingredients changed so they’re just not the same anymore.
i came up with my own deeply indulgent recipe that i prefer anyways.
When I asked for the recipe (fudge) my grandma legit sent me a cutout from the back of a marshmallow fluff jar. I am 100% certain that’s not the recipe she used.
You might have been provided a “less-ipe”. In communities where recipes are closely guarded, social pressures may force one to share what would be a personal secret. So they give an adulterated version ensuring only they, the original recipe holder can produce the beloved result.
God people are stupid. Oh no. Can’t give or my special recipe! No one will remember me!
It’s very likely:( I know some people who are holding out on their kids for that reason.
i actually “caught” my grandma using the box mix. my aunt, her daughter, acted like i was foolish for being surprised 🤷🏻
That’s some pretty solid evidence. Caught in the act!
The secret ingredient was dust, dander, and flop sweat.
Source: my grandmother’s kitchen. No disrespect granny, but your kitchen hygiene was awful.
I wonder if all great cooks “feel it out” or if that’s just something I tell myself to help my disorganized ass sleep at night.
Cooking allows for a lot of “feeling it out”. For example, most spices you aren’t really going to taste a difference between a tsp and a tbsp of the same spice. Just knowing what spices go into the dish you are making can often be enough.
For example, taco seasoning is onions, cumin, oragano, chili pepper, and paprika. By far, the cumin and onions drive the flavor, you could almost leave out everything else. With that in mind, it mostly ends up being just the technique. Brown the onions, toast the spices, brown the meat. The actual amount of spices that goes in won’t make a huge difference one way or another. What does make a difference is if you grind your cumin instead of using preground (that’s true for most seed spices).
Technique is often the most important thing vs exact ingredient measuring. The exception to this is baking. You must measure (preferably by weight) your flour and liquids. You can eventually do it by feel, but it’s hard. You’ll get much better results with a scale. Even then, it’s mostly just the process of targeting the right hydration. 70% does well for a lot of white breads (For every 1 gram of flour add 0.7g of liquid).
Thank you for the best and simplest explanation of doing __% hydration for dough that I’ve seen.
No problem. I’ve definitely seen a lot of baking articles that somehow try and make this simple concept unbelievably convoluted.
The only other thing to know is that 1 mL of water = 1 gram of water. Which means 170g of water == 170 mL of water (At STP… blah blah blah. It’s not super important to hit exactly 70% you can hit 75% or 65% and you’ll be fine. It’s close enough to true).
I don’t know what the fuck that monstrosity is, but what I do know is that it is neither a snack nor a sandwich!
There’s 4 bread layers, spread with some kind of cream cheese/mayo abomination and laid down with gherkins, ham, pistachios, and mushrooms before being pressed in the fridge overnight and “frosted” with I dunno, horseradish or CoolWhip or something. The bread makes it a sandwich I guess.
No.
I don’t care what’s in it or what other fevered rationalizations someone might try to make; just No.
has anyone ever tried this?
A lot of people really don’t want to admit that their family recipes are trash.
Family recipes are great though. Not women’s job, but they are great and should be preserved. Unless they involve gelatin.
I dont necessarily agree - my family (including my mother who has run a few restaurants
into the ground) didnt have any recipes worth passing down - unless you count dumping a jar of ragu in a pot with some spaghetti.By the time I was 20 I could match or improve the flavour of any dish from childhood (about the only good thing to come out of going to a culinary
scamcollege), and I ended up not cooking… Basically any of it. I still pop open a can of smoked oysters on cheese and cracker nights, but thats more for remembering my grandma than anything else.I blame the fact that everyone in my family smoked like a chimney and had no tastebuds left.
Tradition is peer pressure from dead people. Just because they did this to live most definitely does not mean you are to live this way. Britons and “headcheese”.
I grew up on shredded carrots in raspberry jello. Both the texture and the taste left a lot to be desired lol
The very bad neighborhood of Flavortown.
