The Little Black (cook)Book

Today my Grandma gave me something amazing. My Great Grandmother Helen’s cookbook from their RV days.

I started rummaging through it immediately. She was such an amazing cook, I can’t wait to bake from her recipes.

Great Grandma Helen I knew very well. She lived until I was a Sophomore in high school. Her memory was amazing. She told stories about growing up in Rural Kansas with her traveling preacher father, mail order step mother and living through the intervention of electricity in their ‘cabin’. It had wooden walls and dirt floors.

Most importantly she kept journals and made scrapbooks her entire life! We have boxes and boxes of binders filled with her handwriting or clippings from magazines. She kept recipes she liked and How-To’s she found intriguing. She even has a whole binder filled with the cards my Great Grandfather Art received for his 90th birthday.

Knowing all this, I wasn’t surprised at what I found when I opened her Little Black (cook)Book.

Pages and pages of recipes and meal plans all in her own handwriting.

So many cool recipe ideas… even one for peanut butter bread.

Look what else I found out. G-Grandma Helen was a pre-computer and internet Food Blogger. I found pages, all dated, with detailed accounts of what she ate! Some even have recipes interspersed. Blogging is in my blood.

I feel so inspired to bake! I don’t think I’ll be cooking much from this cookbook, everything has Cream-Of in it. Meaning cream of ______ campbell’s soup. AKA not too healthy or for everyday eating. But her bakes are legendary in my family. I’m still in shock that my Grandma threw away her Sourdough Starter that was over 30 years old!