Those family recipes…

I had a brainstorm. Nothing new, right? Evidently I was also having them a (horrifyingly long time ago. A time before the internet, before Pinterest, and before Allrecipies. A time before your dear daughter could just text or message you to ask for a recipe. It was a time when my daughter was getting married and I imagined her having to cook everyday, and I thought that she might like to have those simple, every day recipes that she had enjoyed as she grew up. And so I searched for a book of some sort in which I could write-in those recipes. This one was just what I was looking for. I left lots of empty pages also, pages that she filled with recipes from friends and relatives, and others that she found over the years. That that book has been well-used is evident from the worn out spine and the spills from dinners made over the years. I’m especially tickled to know that my granddaughters have made some of those recipes in that book, even though finding new recipes to cook is a much easier task these days.

A few years went by before my son was getting married, and I took that same idea a little further for my new daughter-in-law. I had discovered Longaberger baskets by then, and further discovered that they had a recipe box available. So I bought some cute recipe cards and sent a few to various relatives on both sides of the family, so that she now has a box full of hand-written recipes from special people in her life.

All of this came to mind when I was at my son’s house the other day, and in talking about the bullfrogs we were drinking I mentioned that I wished I hadn’t lost the recipe for a drink we used to make called Creamsicles. They may not have totally unpacked since their recent move, but my DIL was able to go straight to that recipe box and the first recipe I saw was for Creamsicles. As she talked about how much she enjoyed having those hand written recipes from favorite people it made my little heart go pitter-pat. And the Creamsickles, can’t wait to make them again. I used to make them for the kids too, without the vodka of course…