Preserving kitchen memories
GranniesKitchen/Flickr
As Mother’s Day approaches, I wonder how many folks out there have kitchen utensils, gadgets, appliances, what-have-you that is a family heirloom? Do you? If so, what is it and do you use it or just store it as a keepsake?
Happy foggy Monday to you all. At least we had a gorgeous day on Sunday to get outside and tinker in the garden. I cleaned up my herb garden and now have three trash bags full of rosemary from my monstrous rosemary bush. I’m going to donate a bunch of it to the RAM house – did you know they’d take donations of fresh herbs? Kitchen manager Linda Cannon said she’ll dry them and store them for future use. I can’t think of a better use for my monstrous rosemary bush.
I got a neat cookbook the other day called “Sweet Home” by Rebecca Miller Ffrench. It includes a chapter about preserving family recipes. Here are her tips:
1. “Get your hands dirty and get digging.” she advises going into basements, attics and other storage spaces to look for recipe boxes, books, cookbooks and letters that might contain recipes.
2. “Keep your eyes out for baking accoutrements.” Look in cupboards, closets and storage spaces for forgotten accoutrements. Some examples she lists are shortbread molds, pudding molds, cookie cutters, cake stands, cookie jars, pizzelle irons, krumkaker presses, rosette irons, bundt pans and silver spoons. Even though most of these items are not worth much money (at least, that’s what I heard on Antiques Roadshow), they are priceless when it comes to family meaning.
3. Take pictures of food, relatives cooking, their gardens, kitchens, holiday spreads, etc.
4. Do not fight over things. Be generous about sharing equipment and recipes. I’ll bet we’ve all seen the worst that can happen when elderly relatives pass away and their descendants get into a snatching and fighting match over the stuff they want. The author advises that if one everyone wants the pizzelle iron, for example, the family designate one person as the keeper of the iron but plan an annual get-together to make pizzelles. And copy and share recipes, for goodness sake. Don’t steal the recipe box when nobody is looking and then claim you don’t know what happened to it.
Additional ideas: Ask a lot of questions while the loved one is still living; copy, protect and store those recipes; produce a video DVD of the relative making a recipe; record a live interview; design an accordion fold-out how-to album; make a magnetic recipe board using a cookie sheet; print a vintage recipe on a tea towel or apron at zazzle.com; start a family recipe blog; write a cookbook.
You all know I’m a big proponent of family recipe history, so I love all of these ideas. But at the moment I am particularly interested in the kitchen appliances and gadgets. I know I have a few objects, including my grandmother’s old aluminum fudge pot and a couple of her aprons, which are too tiny and fragile for me to even think about wearing. Still, they are treasured items.
April 30, 2012 - 11:22 AM
RSS feed 
I have my maternal grandmother’s biscuit cutter, which she received from her mother in law. I also have her sifter, roasting pan and an earthenware bowl that she used as a mixing bowl.I was very close to her and they are priceless to me.
My grandfather was an avid cook noted for his delicious soups. With his creative hand at seasonings and everyday ingredients, he always had something wonderful simmering away in the kitchen in his huge Army surplus stainless steel soup cauldron. I inherited it, and I use it alot. It continues to turn out tasty soups and stews, plus a lot of great memories each time!
Years ago, there was a collectibles show on FX that was like Antiques Roadshow. I remember an appraiser saying one time that people should realize that they’re selling their family history, in their eagerness to sell some things.
Nothing I have is worth anything monetarily, but the memories are worth everything to me.
I have my grandmother’s rolling pin and bread board. I don’t use the rolling pin much but do use the bread board for various things. I love thinking about her using them to made breads and pie crusts and it seems she had the board out any time she was baking. I also have one of her glass measuring cups which I use all the time.
I have a 10″ cast iron skillet that “came over on the Mayflower,” as they used to say. My mother got it from her mother, who got it from her mother. No one knows how old it is. I used it last week to make a pan of cornbread, and Saturday to pan-sear a steak Pittsburgh rare.
These are great! Boy, things were well-constructed back in the day, weren’t they?
I am now also thinking about dishes. We have my husband’s parents’ wedding china, and I have a deviled egg platter that my great Auntie Pete made for my parents. It is so beautiful!
I have BOTH my grandmothers’ cast iron chicken fryers from the very early 1900′s; one is stored, the other is used for frying and always for baking Pineapple Upside Down Cake. I have my mother’s cookie press, the one she and I always used at Christmas to make cheese rings; I still pull it out at Christmas. I have plenty of Mom’s and Grandmother’s cook books, including a very old Rumford book; mother’s “slaw dish”. They passed down their love of cooking and entertaining, and I am fortunate my sisters had no desire for these treasures!
Beyond taking pictures of relatives cooking, get them to actually show you how to make these recipes before they’re lost in the mists of time. After my grandmother passed away, taking all of her best recipes with her, my wife got together with her grandmother. While Granny cooked, she wrote down the steps, got approximate measures of “a pinch”, “a dab”, etc., and generally got all the info straight from the horse’s mouth.
I have my great grandmother’s cast iron 8″ skillet used solely for making cornbread. I use it weekly. It will last another hundred years.
I have my mother’s biscuit cutter, from the late 60′s. I use it about twice a month.
I have a sugar and creamer set from my mother’s wedding gift back in the late 50′s. I don’t use them, they’re for decorative purposes only.
Well said, Dave.
Boy, there is some ancient cast iron out there! That’s proof that everybody ought to have a good cast-iron frying pan.
Kathy, is a chicken fryer basically just a deeper version of the frying pan?
I have my grandmother’s bread board that my grandfather handmade for her. I use it for everything and love it! Like another commenter mentioned, I love the thought of her making wonderful things on it…pies, pastries, biscotti…
My mom also has HER grandmother’s bread board. That one is particularly special, as there are zig-zag marks in the surface from where her “off the boat” Italian grandmother used to cut her raviolis.
My mom and I often say that those boards have good cooking “ju ju” in them and they make things come out better. I’d never get rid of mine.
Yes. These pans are 3 inches deep – deeper than my other “skillets” – and 10-12 inches across.
A chicken fryer is deeper than a typical frying pan, but the sides are much more vertical, too. Almost straight up & down. Not to mention, the size is always at least 12″ or so. As you know, frying pans can get as small as 4″ in cast iron.
Chicken fryers can be used for more than just frying chicken (or pork chops or chicken fried steak, etc.) but they are cumbersome, so they tend to be more of a unitasker. Chicken fryers make good biscuits, if you like baking your biscuits that way, where they’re all crowded into a pan. I prefer my biscuits shaped more like hockey pucks. Hopefully not that dense, though.
When I was small, my mother had a two-prong cooking fork with a maroon plastic handle. Once she left it leaning against the side of the pot and the handle bent gently into the perfect shape to fit a right hand. It’s the best-handling utensil ever.
I have my husband’s grandmother’s flour sifter that I use all the time. My son has asked for it. I also kept her dangerous can opener and a knife she loved. I have a plain blue coffee mug that belonged to someone who meant the world too me. She had two and her daughter kept one and gave me one. She drank everything out of that cup, coffee, milk, water or whatever. My aunt gave me some of her most treasured recipes written in her hand. She copied them into another place and she knew I would want them. I love kitchen things. I also bought for $1.00, at an estate sale, a aluminum cake pan that will hold a 10 inch round cake three layers high. I would not take $100.00 for it.
I have the biscuit cutter / nut chopper that my father welded in high school for his mother on Mothers Day – back in the 60′s! I have never seen one as well made – nor as sharp, and I use it for all kinds of things.
We also have the mixing bowl set that my great, great grandmother taught my mother to cook with…it is a beautiful Jewel Tea set, and I remember the twinkle in my mother’s eye when she would talk about ‘cooking with Granny!’… priceless!
Would anybody be interested in letting us take a picture of you with your cherished heirloom? I am enjoying these stories so much that I think I will expand this idea into my Mother’s Day column! If so, please email me at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com or call me at 981-3343.
I’m an avid Cast Iron collector and also a user. I have my dads cast iron skillet that was my grandmothers I know that is at least a 100 years old or more because it has a gate mark on the bottom. Usually gate marks are prior to 1880′s. After that side-gates were typically used, The side gate is where those grinding marks are you see along the upper edge of a skillet, that was were the iron was poured in. This may help some of you to date your Iron.
My mother and grandmother, both of Italian descent, made what we called “Crummy Chicken” in our house. My father was in the metal spinning business where he worked metal sheets on a lathe mostly for use in custom lighting fixtures. Back in the ’60s he spun some round backing pans that were about 20″ around with about a 3/4″ rise on the outside. Whenever we make crummy chicken today we use the same pans. I always think about them both standing there in their aprons doing all that fun prep work. Love the memories and miss them both!
We’ve got a couple of “ancestral” kitchen items that are still in use. Most of them date from the 20s or 30s. Among the favorites are some ripple-edged aluminum cookie cutters traditionally used for making shortcakes. Something else associated with strawberry shortcakes is the big aluminum berry pot. It must hold about 2.5 gallons and has a sturdy wooden handle grip. I’m also fond of the old tin dipper- though that’s mainly used more like a ladle these days than for actual drinking.
I’ve got several “PA Dutch” recipes from my Mennonite Great-grandmother. These include crabcakes, peanut brittle, and dandelion salad with hot bacon dressing. :9