Whenever my wife goes away for more than a day I tend to play music I like quite loudly, and cook things she is less fond of or can't have (gluten sensitivity). I have a few odd favorites that I don't find in anyone else's repertoire. Today I made the sour-cream and raisin pie from the 1972 Gethsemane Lutheran Church cookbook. Browsing the contributions, they are names from my mother's and my grandmother's generations.
What obscure recipes do you fancy?
Lutheran ladies cookbooks are the best!!
ReplyDeleteThey were in 1972, anyway
ReplyDeleteKonigsberger klopse. I don't know how obscure that it--it's been pretty popular in our family for years, including my mother-in-law's generation. The recipes that turn up on the first google page are only distantly related--maybe the family recipe has Depression influence. That qualifies, I guess.
ReplyDeleteIt looks a lot like Swedish meatballs, except for the capers.
ReplyDeleteI have a craving for my grandmother's okra, dipped in corn meal and sauteed in bacon fat.
ReplyDeleteI am told that my other grandmother, if one evening she was free of cooking obligations and dinner companions, she would prepare a sliced onion sandwich for herself.
A pickled jalapeno rolled up in a slice of bread is good too.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Long's Apple Cake. It's very close to what the internet calls "Apple Stack Cake" minus the molasses and not so heavily spiced. The recipe I have was handwritten by my aunt, Mrs. Long's daughter-in-law. She would be 102 now, so it's an old recipe.
ReplyDeleteMy aunt used to dine on cornbread crumbled up in milk. Non-sweet cornbread in our family. I like them both myself, but I don't mix them.
ReplyDeleteNot milk, I meant to say buttermilk.
ReplyDeleteTex, when I first saw milk w cornbread, I thought NO, because of the Southern love for buttermilk. (Having been the product of a North-South marriage, I have some experience with the regional differences.) Especially since you stated non-sweet cornbread, which is Southern as opposed to the Northern tendency to add sugar to cornbread. You then corrected.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of non-standard food likes, I like cheese with apricot preserves. Melted or unmelted is fine, but room temperature is better than straight out of the refrigerator. With Peanut butter- or not- is fine. OT Toast- or not- is fine.
Peanut butter with raisins. Tasty, at least for me.
When I worked in Latin America, the only USA food that I missed was peanut butter. Tropical fruits were great.Back then, tropical fruits were not available in the US to the extent they are now. Chicken and tomatoes were tastier compared to US.
Cheese and fruit work in many combinations. The favored dessert of my parents' lake house was apple pie with cheddar and the favored hors d'oeuvres was cream cheese and pepper jelly.
ReplyDeletePut that PB and raisin on celery and you get the "ants on a log" snack favored by Montessori schools of the previous generation. Notice you can also put peanut butter on raisin bread for a variation of that.
I have peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandwiches, which causes everyone else to shudder. One son looked it up, found it had a facebook page with about 100 members. Worldwide, that's not very much.
We have a small blog here, but you are the third to have worked in South America.
"Southern" is such a big concept. My Dad preferred his cornbread in sweet milk, often for dessert. My Mom's cornbread was not sweet, made with white cornmeal, thin, and very crusty. I've never been able to duplicate it, though she wrote down the recipe and I watched her make it for years.
ReplyDeleteI think the test of "obscure" for southern foods is whether one has heard of chocolate gravy, followed by whether it's made with milk or not. Never mind the test of whether one likes it or not.
Donna B.
ReplyDelete"Southern" is such a big concept. My Dad preferred his cornbread in sweet milk.
Growing up in NE, I never heard of sweet milk. I first heard of it from cousins of my mother who lived in Houston. Sweet milk, versus buttermilk.
I think the test of "obscure" for southern foods is whether one has heard of chocolate gravy, followed by whether it's made with milk or not. Never mind the test of whether one likes it or not.
You got me there. My grandmother prepared gravy with most meals, but I never heard of chocolate gravy.
My mother used to serve a very 50s salad of banana, mayo, and PB with a maraschino cherry. It was pretty good. I suspect it was Miracle Whip rather than what I now think of as real mayo.
ReplyDeleteI put PB in all kinds of things, especially creamy soups such as butternut squash, with Indonesian sambals. Best to stick with real PB, of course, not that sweetened Skippy snot.
Richard Johnson -- I've been trying (not too hard, mind you) to find out the origin of chocolate gravy. One of my earliest memories is of arriving at my grandmother's house late in the day and finding that she'd saved chocolate gravy and a few biscuits left from breakfast for me. Dipping that cold biscuit in that cold chocolate gravy was the best. Of course, I now know that she didn't save it especially for me, it was that she just saved everything as long as it was edible by humans and then it went to the pigs.
ReplyDeleteChocolate gravy is cocoa powder, sugar, flour, water, and a dash of vanilla extract. It's not very sweet, is usually served with buttered biscuits (the more butter the better), bacon, sausage, eggs, and the more well-known breakfast gravy from pork drippings. My sister mixes the two gravies, but she's a heathen. Most internet recipes for this call for milk and way too much sugar -- almost pudding like. It is a Sunday or holiday breakfast item.
Texan99 -- dangit, I like Skippy!
JIF is fine.
ReplyDelete