My
mother collected recipes the same way I collect doll
clothes patterns. It’s the same obsession, just focused differently. Yes, I had
great training in the obsessive arts.
Mother
had three recipe boxes. When she outgrew one, she moved to another, and so we
see eras of recipes – ‘30s and ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.
And
then there were the drawers of recipes. She devoted one drawer in the kitchen to
recipes, and among those I even found a poem she had saved about the obsession
to clip and save recipes, even when you know you’ll never try them. Moving to the
basement we found yet another drawer totally filled with recipes and booklets
from bygone eras. (Totally cool if you like vintage.)
When
we cleaned out the old family home (25 years ago), I scooped those loose
recipes into a box and took them home so that I could work through them at my
leisure. Eventually I tossed a lot of it. You know, you can’t keep it all, and
some of it, such as undated newspaper clippings, I didn’t find interesting. But
now, having reduced it to the meaningful, I have a file folder full of
wonderful – and sometimes wonderfully odd – recipes.
Chicken
Fried Hot Dogs
1
package wieners
mayonnaise
crushed
potato chips
Coat
wieners with mayo and roll in crushed chips.
Bake
at 350 for 20-30 minutes.
(From Ethel Robinson, my dad's sister)
KW
Hmm, I have to say, it sounds dreadful! But maybe... I have been plowing through boxes and bags of recipes myself. A trip through the decades for certain.
ReplyDeleteThis recipe was a tongue-in-cheek offering, but sister Harriet wrote that she might fix it for her group at church, together with a salad and rolls -- unless, of course, she was also putting her tongue in her cheek.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I remember Aunt Margaret Walrath pausing to visit with Mother and me as she passed the house one day, and she said she was going home to prepare wieners for her supper. "You know," she said, "sometimes I just get hungry for wieners." Mother agreed.
I hope you find some treasures among the recipes, Chris, and if you do, I hope you recognize them. But if you don't, you'll never know, so it doesn't matter.
I'm one of those people who likes to put some "crunch" on a hot dog or hamburger, so I can get behind this idea. I'm not a big mayo fan, but I suppose you need something to get the chips to stick to the dog.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you couldn't use ketchup in place of the mayo / salad dressing. I don't know if it would burn more easily or not.
ReplyDelete