Take two eggs and.....

Things, they are a'changing. The computers....they are taking over the world. And most, I embrace that.  Something easier, faster, smoother, smarter... I love techno-gadgets A LOT.  My husband puts up with it, but I can tell he doesn't love that I come home and frequently have my face stuck in a laptop or a kindle or an iphone.  But I love feeling connected, I adore having information for my curious brain right at my fingertips, and even the homemade-ish items that I love to create are at least conceived and designed on the laptop.

So, my loss?  Handwritten recipe cards.  I love them!  Remember when you asked for a recipe from someone?  The really organized ones went directly to their little file that held 3 x 5 cards, cutely decorated with turtles or frogs or flowers or mushroom.  (You can tell I came of age in the 70's)....They got their ball-point pen and they WROTE the recipe out for you.  By hand.

These were my cards.  Classy, yes?

 Sometimes messy, sometimes their instructions were a little too detailed and sometimes they were a little too vague.  (By that I mean FOR ME....because "combine"? did that mean stir with a spoon or mix with the mixer??  "blanch"?  that was waaaaay out of my league.  I learned somewhere in there that it NOT mean the woman on Golden Girls, but had some mysterious meaning that involved ice or cold water.  I did not take easily to cooking.  I needed details. 








Some of my grandmother's recipes just had a list of ingredients with some heading like "Marble Cake".  Those did me no good at all, because I did not know what came first, second, third, etc.

See?  I COULD NOT make this pecan pie if my life depended on it!

See this one?  It's written on paper from the San Antonio Bag & Burlap Company.  Do you wonder if it's still in business?  Well, just call....

CApital 6-1493 and see if anyone answers.

How about this one from Community Public Service?  What was this little guy's name?  Reddi-Freddi?  I miss my mind so much!!

Love these from old products.

Remember:  You'll be GLAD  you used Gladiola Flour.

Some were clipped from the Comanche Chief and taped to the back of an index card.  I posted this one because Granny  always made egg custard pie.  And I'm sure Mrs. Bill Lee, 839 Poplar did also.  :)

Check out this cool design and retro look..  Ummm what's that font?  Plus, who doesn't love Party Punch?

OR Pink Punch Party Cake?

You may already recognize the dromedary label for dates , and the back of a powdered sugar box.

This one was written on a receipt from the store my Granny worked at.  I'll bet they looked for receipt number 48 forever.  But my Granny took it..  For her own personal Cake Mix recipe documentation needs.

But despite my s-l-o-w learning curve in my 20s, I eventually did learn to cook and the onset of a different kind of recipe, the electronic kind,  makes me look back lingeringly at those old handwritten recipe cards.  I have some from my paternal grandmother (we called her Mama Owen), my maternal grandmother (we called her Granny Cox) and my own mother (We called her.......wait for it......."Mama". Sorry, but SHE would think that's funny!) I have some my sister wrote out for me when I got married, probably fearing the worst for my young husband. I have some from my sweet mother-in-law, Pat.   I have some from my Aunt Frances and because my life has had funny twists and turns I have the recipe box of my husband's late wife, who died of a sudden illness when she was 42.

All of these recipes, handwritten and  suspended in time, tell a story of who these women were at that time.  The early ones are very inherently different than the later ones.  There are noticeable trends in products used .  I'm telling you, there was a decade that produced a whole bunch of jello-based goodies and one undetermined timeframe for everything evaporated milk.

We go through those times don't we?  Currently my husband and I are going through a manic stage of the green chilis!!!  We want them on everything....most recently, scrambled eggs.  Along with cheese, of course, but that's another story. 

So while I love http://www.allrecipes.com/, http://www.cooks.com/, http://www.foodnetwork.com/, and http://www.food.com/, I do dearly miss the days when I received a carefully handwritten recipe.  One I'd asked for because I absolutely loved it at the pot-luck Sunday dinner.  Or the wedding shower.  Or Christmas dinner.

To most slow old-fashioned processes, I say Good riddance.  I myself haven't written a recipe down in years.  But that doesn't keep me from being so delighted that I have these keepsake memories that other women in other times took the time to write them down for me.