Currently Til We See the Shore By Seabird see related

My dad's side of the family has a family cookbook titled, aptly, The Neuenschwander Cookbook. (At Abby's wedding shower, when she received a copy of the cookbook, Abby announced the present, and her aunt who was writing things down couldn't process the name "Neuenschwander," so she wrote "Newest Wonder" instead--a great example of assimilation, for those of you who still care about child-psychology education terms.)

Anyway...

You won't find a better cookbook (though you probably won't find this one, either). All of the family "secret recipes" are in there. Old-fashioned cream pie? My grandma's pecan pie? Baked macaroni & cheese? Swedish meatballs? On and on and on. All of the recipes that made going to my grandma's house so special are at my fingertips.

A brief aside: My oldest sister, who has had her copy of The Neuenschwander Cookbook for years, warned us when we first got married, "It's not a good idea to use this cookbook exclusively," the reason being the copious amounts of butter required to successfully bring each recipe to completion. Still, some Saturday mornings, you just need some "eier datch" (pancakes).

While having all of these tasty recipes at my fingertips is great, my family was not very good at recording them for posterity. Many of the recipes have an ingredients list, but still introduce ingredients in the body of the recipe. The most famous example of this is the tapioca recipe. We had already purchased all the ingredients we thought were needed to make the pudding, when out of the blue in the cooking instructions, we read that we need a new ingredient, and one that they don't even sell anymore.

Tonight I decided to make strawberry pie for book club. The directions were vague, but I knew the final product would be fantastic, if only I could decipher the instructions. Well, I failed at my recipe code-breaking, so the strawberries are a bit soggy, but I'm sure it will still taste good (because of the butter, no doubt).

Despite the annoyances (and wrecked "test items") asssociated with poorly written recipes, I'm not sure how much "editing" I would do to the cookbook were I to update it. The recipes as written are admittedly confusing, but watching the way my grandma cooked, it's no wonder her recipes were strange. I don't think she ever used them. Recipes are for us no-talent hacks. The recipes themselves are portraits of my relatives. They were pestered by their children to write down what came naturally to them, and you can't often manufacture talent.

Anyway, I'm excited for the pie. Come, book club!