Cookbooks and Memories

Today's postcard - the lines come from a fused-on potato bag.

There are a few blogs that I read every day, and one is Red Shoe Ramblings, by Deb. She puts a lot of heart and effort into her blogs and they're always interesting. Her photography is pretty awesome, AND she has great shoes.

In yesterday's blog, she announced that she will be giving away a cookbook just published by the Fleming County, Kentucky, Homemakers called Clothesline of Quilts. It has a picture of barn art on the cover - read back a week or two in her blog to find out about barn art. I'd seen a few barns with quilt "signs" on them, but until she educated me I didn't realize that these were more than individual efforts.

There are three ways to get in the drawing, and since I really want that cookbook, I'm including all three. To get us going, here are my cookbooks. I gave away a few of my seldom-used ones before I moved, so there are no longer a whole lot. Like many of us, I rely on internet recipes.

The first of Deb's themes is "name of your favorite cookbook and why you like it best." I'm going to talk about a couple, and this one is number two. This cookbook was published in honor of Bluffton College's 75's anniversary. It's now Bluffton University, and I'm sure that the 100th anniversary has first come and gone.

In that cookbook are my mother's cut-out sugar and molasses cookie recipes. I've tried and tried to make them as pretty as my mother did, with no luck. My sister can, but not me. Both use those pretty colored sugars and the finished products could easily have been sold in a bakery. On the other page is a ice box cookie recipe from my aunt.

My absolute fav, though, is my Great Aunt Ella's cookbook, The Household Searchlight Recipe Book, published in 1931 and 1937.

It was a journal of sorts, with notations about the events she used a recipe for, and lots of handwritten notes and pasted-in articles and recipes. Great Ella was a renaissance woman, and there are notes about how to remove stumps and uses for DDT. A look in this cookbook is a look at her story.

The second item is "your favorite recipe." I make a lot of bread, and my favorite recipes come and go, but here's the current one, from Soule Mama. It's a bread machine recipe, and there is a loaf in process right now. If you have a bread machine, you know the drill.

1 1/4 cups water

2 T honey

2 T margarine

3 cups flour (I used half whole wheat)

1 t salt

1/2 cups rolled oats

1 T brown sugar

1 T cinnamon (I've never included the cinnamon)

2 1/4 t yeast

And last, "a memory you like recalling from your past that has something to do with either food or quilts."

This is probably my first memory. I had a wooden puzzle with squares, diamonds, and triangles that made a quilt block. It seems that the pieces were different colors on both sides, but I could have made that part up. Anyway, I loved that puzzle, and I'd put it together, then take it apart and try to make a different design. I just knew that if I tried hard enough, I could make a block with a different design. I don't think it ever happened since, with adult eyes, there really weren't other ways it could go together, but I never lost hope and I'm sure that puzzle started me out on my love for quilting.

Thanks, Deb, for helping me think about great memories.