Nana’s Recipe Box

This time of year is filled with family recipes. For my family, the star of the Thanksgiving table is my great-grandmother Hadley’s cranberry ice, a tangy and smooth sorbet. For CJ’s family, it’s Grandma Krantz’s perfect mashed potato recipe, which has to be made the day before so the flavors set in. Come Christmas season, I have to eat some chocolate crinkle cookies that my mom always makes or it doesn’t feel like Christmas yet.

Lately I’ve been going to my recipe box for some of my staples. The box was once my Nana’s and I’ve since added to her collection with my own assortment of handwritten cards. As I flipped through the box, something stood out to me about her recipes versus mine. So many of hers begin with someone’s name who she knew personally, such as…

• Margaret’s Chocolate Crinkles
• Aunt Beth’s Coffee Cake
• Mildred’s Ouefs Enterallies
• Molly Nelson’s Baked French Toast
• Mary Cox Cheese Fondue
• Karen Taylor’s Zucchini Bread

Whereas most of my recipes I scribbled down from some random person’s blog post after trying it a few times and considering it a keeper. No need to write their name, there’s no personal connection there. It made me remember once again how food embodies our relationships. And how the era of sharing recipes between friends is somewhat over.

Now I don’t want to overromanticize the past. After all, my grandma was somewhat limited in her culinary explorations by what she and her friends circulated between them, whereas I find myself making recipes from around the world because I have endless access to online food blogs and more niche items available at the grocery store.

But it made me want to add a few more of my own recipes to the box that start with a friend or family member’s name. So I thought, why not start with the community we’ve garnered around this farm.

Share one of your favorite family recipes by emailing us below! We’d love to gather inspiration from your household’s traditions and share them back out with this community in a future newsletter. What are the recipes you make that are tied to a certain person? What memories do they hold for you and yours?

Keep your eyes out for a special holiday recipe, made by Chef Zach Morgan, coming your way soon!

Before signing off, I had to share this picture. My Nana always had a good sense of humor. On the card that she labeled “Bread / Rolls,” she decided to tape a photo of herself as a paunchy toddler to represent the subject. This is one of the few photos I ever saw of her as a child, which now lives in my journal.

Warmly,
Molly