“Taste is said to be our strongest, most primitive sense. So flavors are great evokers of the past.”
—ERIN D. GILMORE
“If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it’s not good cooking for yourself; the joy is in cooking for others.”
There are funeral cookbooks (Thailand) and there is funeral food (deep South), and this book is neither. My mom was a great collector of recipes and could remember without fail which cookbook each one was in. We, however, could not. Her collection of cookbooks was HUGE and included her own “Big Green Notebook,” which was a two-volume kelly green 3-ring binder that held family handwritten recipes, her own interpretations of recipes and clippings from all over. And so, a few years ago, at our request, she started assembling a collection of her best-loved recipes and transcribing them by hand in her beautiful and distinctive handwriting.
The eventual goal was to create a booklet to hand out to family, loved ones, friends and neighbors—all those who had over the years asked for one well-loved recipe or another. We found the unfinished project in her great room, in a drawer with her knitting projects, just waiting to be picked back up. Based on her notes, this is very close to the completed collection of recipes that mom wanted to share with everyone she loved.
To know my mom was to know her love of good food and cooking. If you were in her orbit, there’s an excellent chance you ate at our table, cooked with her, talked food with her, received gifts of food from her, shopped for food with her or visited a newto-you restaurant with her. She was always trying new things, always experimenting, and those experiments meant she was often way ahead of her time in finding a new favorite. Hummus became a staple in the 80s, long before anyone else had heard of it, and many family friends tried it for the first time with us.
For my mom, food was either “good” or “bad,” and there wasn’t much in between. Good foods were many of those of her New England childhood—seafood, fresh tomatoes, homemade peanut butter, every kind of homemade soup. The bad food category was dominated by the processed foods of the ‘70s that I was dying to try—mysterious canned things, Jell-O pudding cups, American cheese, anything made by Hostess and the ULTIMATE: junk cereal.
To my mom, junk cereal was anything where sugar was higher than the 4th ingredient, which knocked out such alluring options as Lucky Charms, peanut butter Cap’n Crunch and Golden Grahams. All year long, all three of us girls would dream about our Rehoboth Beach vacation because it was also our vacation from good nutrition! And we were each allowed to buy a single box of junk cereal to eat all week.
Rarely a bad meal came out of her kitchen. In fact, I remember only one—a sausage and sauerkraut dish that had been delicious at someone else’s house but did not translate well to ours. Everyone ate extra apple crisp that night, and we all remember that meal vividly and even fondly because it was unique in its unpalatability. We should all be so lucky to be that talented at something—so that our only failure is a peculiar aberration that provokes a goodnatured shrug at the time and fond memories later.
Taste is said to be our strongest, most primitive sense. So flavors are great evokers of the past. That makes sense to me. Certainly, a taste of my mom’s dilly bread or apple crisp brings my childhood back like nothing else. And the first day of fall will always taste to me like baked pork chops with Pepperidge Farm stuffing, cauliflower with cheese sauce and roasted acorn squash with a pool of melted butter and maple syrup. That’s the meal we ate every year on September 21.
I hope each of you has your own taste memories of your time with my mom. And I hope that, whether you are a cook or not, these recipes provide good memories of the time you spent with her and the meals you shared. Food and cooking was so important to her! Sharing it with everyone around her was, too. I think she’d like the way her cookbook turned out. I know she’d like to be remembered by those she loved as someone who loved to cook.
—Erin D. Gilmore October 9, 2022Sara’s Favorite Recipes FROM THE BIG GREEN NOTEBOOK
Boursin
Cheddar Chutney
Chester Cakes*
Hot
Marinated
Paté
Salmon Mousse*
Spinach Balls*
Broccoli Cauliflower
Sara’s
Pashka
Barb’s
Clam
Chicken
Homer’s
Okonomiyaki
Potato
7-Layer
1 lb broccoli
1 lb cauliflower
⅓ c vinegar
⅓ c sugar
⅔ c mayonnaise
1 T salt
1 small onion, chopped fine
Chop broccoli and cauliflower into small florets. Mix together with other ingredients and chill overnight to let flavors blend.
This tastes like essence of cranberry. To unmold it, dip mold in warm water for about 10-15 seconds and invert onto a plate.
1 lb raw cranberries
1 ½ c orange juice
1 large cinnamon stick
1 ½ c sugar
1 t vanilla or cognac (optional; I think mom used cognac)
Combine berries, juice and cinnamon stick in saucepan. Boil gently 20 minutes, uncovered. Put through a food mill or strainer. Return puree to pan and add sugar. Bring back to boiling and boil 2 minutes, stirring. A bit of butter, ½ t or so, added after the boiling, should make any foam disappear. Add vanilla or cognac if desired. Pour in decorative mold and refrigerate overnight. Unmold on the plate you plan to serve it on.
This is going to sound weird, but I’m not sure mom had a go-to cranberry sauce recipe. She knew the basic principles so well that she’d just follow her instincts. She’d often add orange or a cinnamon stick, both of which make a great sauce. In her big green book is a basic cranberry sauce attributed to Olive McKay. The recipe describes a technique of leaving the sauce out overnight to let the flavors develop which mom did, too so maybe this is the base of mom’s later brainstorms? As written, here it is:
Boil 2 cups of sugar and 1 ½ c water for a few minutes. When water is boiling hard, add 4 cups of cranberries. Cook until berries stop popping. Do not remove cover at any time until berries are cold or better overnight. The berries will be whole. Delicious.
I usually make mine at night. Remove cover in AM. Add a pinch of salt with the cranberries.
This was my mom’s holiday favorite! She made it every year because she loved it so much and felt no proper New England holiday table was complete without it. I recall being interested in the buttery topping, but not so much in the oysters themselves (although later in life I did develop a taste for raw oysters). She was always thrilled when guests loved it too; it was one of her favorite recipes to introduce people to.
No origin is given, so it’s likely my mother’s version of a cherished favorite that was passed down through the Armstrong or McKay family.
2 c crushed saltines
1 pint oysters with their liquid
4 oz (half stick) butter, melted
2–3 T cream or milk
Salt and pepper
Grated nutmeg
Preheat oven to 425⁰. Melt butter. Add crumbs and combine. Put a layer of buttered crumbs in a shallow baking dish. Cover with oysters. Add salt, pepper and a few gratings of fresh nutmeg. Repeat for a second layer if enough oysters. Cover top with remaining crumbs and another sprinkle of nutmeg. Drizzle 2–3 T oyster liquid and 2–3 T cream over top.
Bake for 25–30 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve with lemon wedges.
Mom started making this salad in the ‘70s or maybe earlier. Certainly, I remember it from the house on North Monroe Street. It was my introduction to Middle Eastern food and probably the reason I love parsley so much.
½ c bulgar wheat
1 c water
Soak bulgar for about two hours in water and drain well.
THEN ADD:
1 c parsley, chopped fine
½ c green onion, sliced thinly
½ c chopped tomatoes
¼ fresh lemon juice
¼ c olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix with 2 forks to keep salad light and fluffy. Mound on a platter and surround with romaine leaves for scooping.
The “Soups” section of the Big Green Notebook has the fewest recipes, which at first seemed strange to me because mom LOVED soup—making it, eating it, discovering new ones. So you’d think she’d gather soup recipes like she did scarves. But when I thought about it… what she loved about soup was how forgiving it is of invention. And there was nothing mom loved more than inventing a new recipe, even if it came out great and she’d forgotten to note what she did and “would never be able to duplicate it again.” So her soups tended to be inspired by something she’d eaten or seen on tv or on a menu or had described to her by someone. And that someone could be ANYONE— she talked to people wherever she went, so it could have been a “neat lady” she met on line at the grocery store. And then she’d come home and make some soup based on instinct. And you know what? Her soups were always, uniformly, without exception—AMAZING.
Surprisingly—or not, given the reasons above—there was no recipe in the Big Green Notebook for clam chowder! Clam chowder, a staple of her New England childhood, was her very favorite soup and one she made ever since I can remember. So it could be that she just had it memorized. I saw her make it so many times that I have many of the ingredients memorized too, but I got the proportions from one of her favorite cookbooks, ‘The Williamsburg Cookbook’. I hope she wouldn’t mind sharing credit.
12 large clams (make sure to use fresh clams!)
¼ lb bacon, chopped
2 medium onions, sliced
3 medium russet potatoes, cubed
1 c light cream
2 T flour
Salt and pepper
Scrub clams and boil in enough water to cover. Remove clams from shells, making sure to save any juice, chop fine and reserve. Strain liquid and add enough water to make 6 cups. Set aside.
Fry bacon until crisp and brown. Turn down heat and add onions and potatoes seasoned with salt and pepper. Saute until the onions are translucent. Add clams and reserved liquid and simmer until potatoes are tender.
Mix flour in a little cold water and stir into chowder. Simmer until thickened. Add cream and heat until soup is hot. Adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper.
We ate this all the time in the ‘80s because it’s a one-pot dish that’s so easy to make. The cinnamon stick makes it slightly exotic but still approachable, which probably explains why my mom liked it so much. She was always trying to broaden everyone’s palate.
2 lbs chicken parts, boneless or not 1 stick butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 16-oz can tomato sauce
1 cinnamon stick
½ c white wine
1 c orzo pasta
Wash and dry chicken parts and salt and pepper them.
In a large skillet or wide, shallow saucier pan over medium high heat, brown the chicken parts in two batches. Use about 2 T of butter for each batch. Set chicken aside.
Reduce heat to medium. Add rest of butter and onion and cook until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add white wine and let reduce until it’s mostly evaporated. Add tomato sauce, 1 can of water and cinnamon stick. Arrange chicken in single layer in skillet. If sauce does not come nearly to top of chicken, add a bit more water. Let simmer for 30 minutes. Add orzo and stir in. Let simmer another 10 minutes or until orzo is done.
I don’t recall the origin of this one, and the recipe doesn’t provide any clues about who Homer is. I seem to recall that she may have gotten it from someone in California in the ‘60s.
BROWN:
3 lbs ground beef
1 lb bulk sausage, regular or hot (mom used regular)
1 32-oz can tomato puree
2 cans kidney beans, drained
1 medium onion
¾ c green pepper, chopped
4 T chili powder
1 t garlic powder
1 t ground cumin
1 t oregano
1 t marjoram
1 t red pepper flakes
1 T sugar
3 T paprika
1 t salt
As with many of my mom’s recipes, the directions get vague here. She cooked a lot on instinct. When I make this, I simmer for at least a couple of hours, probably more, until flavors are combined. Taste it; it should taste like chili! If it still has an unfinished flavor, keep simmering. More simmering will make the flavors blend.
This is the only Japanese recipe that mom identified for the cookbook, so it must have been a particular favorite! I recall she had all kinds of ingredients she’d use to make the dashi. I believe you can also buy it or just use water. A quick google search tells me the grated yamaimo is traditionally used to add fluffiness, but it’s generally only available at an Asian market, so her substitution is noted below.
Her directions for this one were kind of sketchy, so I don’t know how many pancakes this will make. I’m assuming at least a couple large ones or a few small ones, as these can be frozen.
1 c cake flour
1 c water or dashi (Japanese stock)
2 eggs
3 T grated yamaimo (OR 2 T potato starch, 1 additional egg and 1 t baking soda; blend before adding to other ingredients)
½ t salt
2 oz tender beef, in narrow strips
1 oz pork sirloin
4 large shrimp, deveined and cut in half lengthwise
2 T minced pickled red ginger
1 c finely sliced Chinese cabbage (may need more)
A few bean sprouts, some sliced green onions—a tablespoon or two each
Blend batter ingredients. Let rest in the fridge for at least an hour; overnight is fine. Add cabbage and mix well. Batter should be thick and very chunky with cabbage. Add shrimp, bean sprouts, green onions and ginger. Mix well.
Heat 2 T vegetable oil in a nonstick pan over medium high heat. Arrange the batter in a 4-5” pancake shape in the pan, about ¼” tall. Add proteins of your choice to the top and press in. Turn heat to medium. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Flip over and cook, uncovered for another 5 minutes. Serve drizzled with sauce (below) and top with bonito flakes and nori strips, if you’d like.
SAUCE:
¼ c catsup
1 ½ T Worchestershire sauce
1 T Dijon
2 T mirin
1 T sugar
1 t shoyu (soy sauce)
These are an interesting variation on potato pancakes because the potatoes are mostly chopped fine rather than shredded. When cooked, the edges spread out a bit and become lacelike.
2 eggs
¼ medium onion, sliced
1 t salt
¼ c parsley, not chopped
2 c diced raw potatoes (you can leave the peels on)
¼ c flour
To blender container, add eggs, salt and half the potatoes. Cover container and turn blender on high. Uncover and add rest of potatoes, flour and parsley. Pulse until potatoes and parsley are chopped fine.
Use ¼ c measure to pour batter onto a hot well greased griddle and place over medium high heat. Cook on one side for 5 minutes, covered. Uncover and turn pancakes over and cook until browned outside and tender inside.
Serve with sour cream and apple sauce.
This casserole was one of the few times my mother would break out the Campbell’s-soup-as-an-ingredient-and-not-soup recipe trick. It was a staple at our house and everyone seems to love it, even now. The aroma of this casserole while it’s baking is so amazing you’ll wish you could eat it! Let it bake until well browned and then cool slightly before serving.
2 c poached and shredded chicken breast
1 can Campbell’s cream of chicken soup
1 can Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup
1 can chopped green chilis
1 large onion, chopped
12 corn tortillas
1 c container sour cream
1 ½ c grated Monterey Jack cheese
Preheat oven to 350⁰. Stack tortillas and cut into 8 triangles. Grease a large casserole.
In a bowl, mix together both soups, sour cream, onions and chilis until well combined.
Spread a thin layer of the soup mixture onto the bottom of the casserole, which will help prevent sticking. Layer the rest of the ingredients in this order: tortilla pieces, soup mixture, chicken, cheese. Repeat sequence.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake for 20-25 more minutes, until well browned and bubbling around sides. Let cool 10 minutes before you serve.
Mom discovered phyllo dough long before most people knew what it was, and she loved to cook with it. Sometime in probably the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, she picked up a recipe leaflet put out by the Apollo Strudel Leaves Company. It contains recipes for all kinds of things that use phyllo and promises “Easily made by anyone.” Ha! Working with phyllo dough takes some advance knowledge so you know what to expect. THEN it’s easy.
No fools, the writers of this pamphlet—they also caution “Read directions before using.” Mom was already a pro by then, so she probably skipped the directions and instead used this leaflet as a jumping off point to design her ideal baklava… and this spanakopita.
1 lb phyllo dough, defrosted completely
1 lb feta cheese, crumbled
1 lb cottage cheese
1 bunch fresh scallions, chopped
2 medium onions
1 c olive oil, divided
¼ lb butter
2 bags frozen spinach
3 eggs
1 t dill
½ c bread crumbs
Defrost frozen spinach, rinse and squeeze it well to get out as much water as possible. Brown chopped onions and scallions in ½ c olive oil; let cool. Mix cottage and feta cheese in a large bowl with spinach, onions, eggs, dill and bread crumbs. Set aside.
In a small saucepan, melt together olive oil and butter. Let cool.
Open phyllo dough and unroll. It’s ok if it tears a little. Cover completely with waxed paper and a damp dish towel so the dough doesn’t dry out.
Preheat oven to 350⁰. With a pastry brush, grease a 9” x 13” dish with the butter mixture. Lay over a sheet of phyllo. Use pastry brush to brush butter all over. Repeat with 4 more sheets of phyllo, covering the package of phyllo dough each time.
Cover phyllo with half the spinach-cheese mixture. Add 5 more sheets of phyllo, buttering each one. Repeat with rest of spinach-cheese mixture and 5 more sheets of phyllo. With sharp knife, score top layers of phyllo in a diamond pattern.
Bake for 35-45 minutes. Top layer of phyllo should be golden brown and flaky looking. To serve, cut diamond shapes through to bottom.
½ c butter
1 c graham cracker crumbs
1 c shredded coconut
1 6-oz package chocolate chips
1 6-oz package butterscotch chips
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
1 ½ c walnuts, chopped
Melt butter in 9”x13” pan. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs evenly over melted butter. Sprinkle coconut over evenly, then chocolate and butterscotch chips. Drizzle condensed milk evenly over mixture. Top with nuts. Bake at 350⁰ for 30 minutes. Let cool completely. Cut in 1 ½ to 2 inch squares.
These aren’t just any brownies. In our house, they were known as Mimi’s brownies, and they were probably the most-made cookie in the Dolby household. When I made them, I would double the batch because more brownies is always better!
Mom always wanted walnuts in hers, which I didn’t understand for years. Why mess up a perfectly good brownie with something that’s not chocolate? But later on I got it, and now these don’t taste right to me without walnuts.
⅔ c flour
1 c sugar
2 eggs ½ t salt
3 squares unsweetened chocolate
½ c butter
1 c broken nut meats
1 t vanilla
DIRECTIONS
Mix dry ingredients, and add unbeaten eggs. Melt butter and chocolate together over very low heat and stir in. Add vanilla. Transfer batter to 9”x9” in. pan. Bake at 350⁰ for 25-30 minutes.
The origin of this recipe is lost to time, but I know that it’s an old one, as I remember mom making these in our North Monroe Street house. It’s also the only time I can remember her buying those lurid red and green candied cherries you find in the produce section of the grocery store at Christmas time.
1 c honey
¾ c brown sugar
1 egg
3 T lemon juice, divided
1 T lemon rind
2 c flour
1 T pumpkin pie spice
½ t baking soda
¼ t salt
½ c golden raisins
½ c chopped blanched almonds
1 c confectioner’s sugar
Candied cherries, halved, for decoration
Heat honey to boiling point. Pour into large bowl and let cool completely. Stir in brown sugar, egg, lemon rind and 1 T lemon juice.
In another bowl, sift dry ingredients. Stir in raisins and almonds. Gradually stir into honey mixture and blend well. Chill the dough. Divide into two 9” x 9” pans. Bake at 350⁰ for 30 minutes.
Make glaze from remaining 2 T lemon juice and confectioner’s sugar.
When cookies are cool, press cherry halves into top in even rows so there is one per cookie (Erin’s note: This is probably 6 or 7 per row.)
Drizzle glaze over and cut into small squares so there is a cherry at the center of each cookie.
These were my mom’s favorite gingerbread cookies, and she made them every Christmas. They were always decorated as Christmas trees with green, red and yellow frosting so they’d “dress up” the cookie platter at our Twelfth Night party.
⅓ c molasses
3 t soft shortening
2 T brown sugar
1 ¼ c flour
¼ t salt
¼ t baking soda
¼ t each cinnamon, ginger, cloves
Dash of nutmeg and allspice
Cream molasses, brown sugar and shortening. Combine dry ingredients and add wet ingredients all at once. Dough is very stiff, so you’ll need to knead it with your hands. Chill dough 4 hours and roll thin—1/16”. Cut into shapes with cookie cutter. Bake at 375⁰ for 5-6 minutes. Mom cautions: “Watch—they burn quickly.”
Once cooled, these cookies are sturdy and great for icing and loading on the sprinkles.
These cookies should have a better name. When the North Monroe Street house was on the market, I recall mom (or one of us kids) making these cookies for each open house because they make the house smell so amazing. Definitely use the shortening here; no other fat gives the cookies that exact texture and crispness.
¾ c shortening (for texture to be right, it MUST be shortening) 1 c sugar, plus extra for rolling
1 egg
¼ c molasses
2 c sifted flour
1 t salt
2 t baking soda
1 tsp each ginger, cinnamon and cloves
Cream shortening and sugar. Add egg and molasses, then add dry ingredients. Make walnut sized balls and roll in sugar. Bake at 375⁰ for 10-15 minutes.
Spritz cookies require specialty equipment in the form of a cookie press. But since people are always getting rid of baking equipment, it’s pretty easy to find one for cheap or borrow one. These cookies are actually the world’s best excuse to use lots and lots of sprinkles. Mom used to make these for Twelfth Night parties, so her recipe contains instructions for multiplying, but these quantities are for a regular sized batch.
2 ½ c flour
½ t baking powder
1 c butter
¾ c sugar
½ t salt
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract
Cream butter and sugar. Add salt, egg and vanilla and mix again. Slowly add flour; dough will be stiff. Load dough into cookie press and press out cookie shapes. Decorate with sprinkles, dragées, red hot candies or colored sanding sugar. Bake at 375⁰ for 7-9 minutes. Watch them carefully towards the end because depending on the shape, they will bake at different rates.
These are from a cookbook on low-calorie cooking that mom discovered in the ‘90s and quickly cooked her way through. They became a staple because they use real whole-food ingredients and do not wear their “low calorie” designation on their sleeve. They taste like a slightly creamier chocolate truffle. Chances are, if you ever sat at our kitchen table for a chat, mom would bring out a container of these to impress your taste buds and challenge you to guess how they were made.
¼ lb (18-20) roasted chestnuts (you can often find vacuum sealed packages of these)
½ c evaporated skim milk
⅓ vanilla bean
2 ½ oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 T Karo syrup
2-3 T cognac, like Courvoisier Pinch salt
5 T good cocoa
Simmer chestnuts in ½ c water until water is evaporated, about 15 minutes. Stir in milk and seeds scraped from vanilla bean; toss in bean. Simmer covered until chestnuts are very soft. Remove bean. Add chocolate and Karo; let chocolate melt.
Puree in food processor until very smooth. Add cognac and process one minute more. Transfer to bowl and chill covered until mixture is firm. Use a teaspoon to form small balls; roll in cocoa. Store in refrigerator.
This recipe appears in a ‘60s version of The Joy of Cooking under the unglamorous and uninspired name of “Uncooked fondant,” proving that mom was a culinary superhero. She would deny it—she always said she couldn’t make candy, or at least she wouldn’t try. But she somehow saw past the dubious name of this uncooked candy to the genius underneath—that a severely small, plain-vanilla ball of fondant would transcend the sum of its parts to become a gloriously addictive sweet. These were served every year at the Twelfth Night party, half dipped in dark chocolate and half plain.
Beat until soft: ½ c butter
Add very slowly and cream until light: 1 lb sifted confectioner’s sugar
Add: ¼ c whipping cream ¾ t vanilla extract
Dough will be very stiff and may need to be worked with hands until smooth. Form into balls slightly larger than a marble. Chill until firm. Dip half of the balls halfway in dark chocolate and leave the other half plain. Makes about 60.
There is a recipe for apple crisp written by Marjorie McKay (Mimi to the Dolby girls; Grammy to the McKays) on one of my mother’s signature strawberry recipe cards in The Big Green Notebook, but it’s not the apple crisp I remember mom making. So I’m taking a liberty and including a recipe that is more similar to the one I remember eating all fall and winter long each year. We always used to make this to celebrate the first day of autumn and often to use up some of the many apples we’d buy each year on Catoctin Mountain. A few years ago while having our elementary school librarian over to dinner, Lori and I impressed her mightily by making this together using mostly hand gestures while we kept up a three-way conversation.
5 cups sliced peeled apples
1 T sugar
½ c regular rolled oats
½ c packed brown sugar
¼ c plus 1 T flour
½ t salt
1 t ground cinnamon ½ t allspice
¼ c butter plus 1 T melted butter
¼ c chopped nuts vanilla ice cream (not optional)
Preheat oven to 375°F. Place fruit in a 2-quart square baking dish. Stir in the granulated sugar, 1 T flour and 1 T melted butter.
For topping, in a medium bowl stir together oats, brown sugar, flour and spices. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the nuts. Sprinkle topping over fruit.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until apples are tender and bubbling and topping is golden. Completely perfect with vanilla ice cream.
This recipe is from the ‘Joy of Cooking’, but I’ll bet hardly anyone who’s ever had it at the Dolby house knows that. I have no idea when mom discovered it, but she felt very proprietary about this recipe and was emphatic that it was the very BEST hot fudge sauce. Most people who had it on a sundae at our house would likely tend to agree because this sauce is FUN as well as delicious. Cooked a little, it’s like ordinary hot fudge sauce, but when cooked longer, it gets slightly chewy and candylike, which is a fun surprise when you dig in with your spoon.
Mom went through a period where she ate this on orange sherbet, which is an unusual and good combination. But eventually she settled down with a traditional New England favorite—coffee—and that was pretty much it. It’s good plain, but to make a true Sara sundae, softly whip some heavy cream and top with toasted nuts.
Let the sauce boil readily but not too furiously over direct heat. Do not stir. Cover to wash down any sugar crystals for about 3 minutes. Uncover, reduce heat and cook 2 minutes more without stirring.
If you want the sauce to harden over ice cream (this is how mom made it), boil it, uncovered, about 3 minutes more.
Add just before serving: 1 t vanilla
Stir in well. The sauce will bubble up as the alcohol burns off; this is normal. Store any leftovers in a glass jar. Reheat gently in a water bath on the stove or the lowest microwave setting.
This recipe is written on a very well handled and spattered 3x5 card in Marjorie McKay’s hand. The directions for the meringue topping say to bake until “this is it!” Maybe it was a recipe she shared with mom when she first got married, and mom was still learning meringue? I certainly remember having this pie a lot as a child. I’m transcribing it exactly as charmingly written.
Sift together 1 c sugar, 4 T cornstarch, ¼ t salt. Then add 1 ½ c milk and 2 egg yolks (slightly beaten). Stir till dissolved. Put in double boiler and stir frequently (15 minutes approx.). I use a heavy pan. Then add ⅓ c fresh lemon juice and 2 T butter. Cool—turn into baked pie shell. Cover with meringue—(I use 3 egg whites) and bake until – “this is it!”
This makes a good sized 9” pie. Fresh lemon juice and butter are a must.
The card does not say, but to my recollection, mom browned the meringue until a low broiler setting, watching it until it the tips were nicely toasted.
This pie recipe is also written in Marjorie McKay’s hand and is a masterpiece of brevity and assumption of basic cooking skills. You’ll see; it’s transcribed as written. It must have been written in a hurry at mom’s request—likely because she wanted to make it for a dinner party—as the back has a note in an unknown hand that the recipe is going to the post office “to night.”
INGREDIENTS
1 ½ c rhubarb
⅞ c sugar
1 egg
2 T flour
Cut rhubarb in ½ inch pieces. Mix flour and sugar together – add egg –beat. Fold in rhubarb. Bake 450⁰ for 15 min. then 350⁰ for 35 min.
You’ll notice this pie is missing a pie crust! Mimi was famous for her hot water pie crust recipe, and I would have added it here, but alas, I can’t find it in the big green notebook. Mom didn’t like making pie crust—she considered herself terrible at it—so it’s likely she bought one. Or rather two, as my guess is this is a double crust pie.
This cake often served as the “king’s cake” at the annual Dolby family Twelfth Night party. The male and female who found the hidden beans beneath a slice of cake got to wear a crown for the evening!
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1 package yellow cake mix with pudding in the mix
4 eggs
½ c cold water
½ c vegetable oil
½ c Bacardi dark rum
Preheat oven to 325⁰. Grease and flour a bundt or springform pan. Sprinkle nuts evenly over bottom of pan. Mix all cake ingredients together. Pour batter over nuts. Bake for one hour or until cake starts to pull away from sides of pan. Cool until lukewarm.
Turn cake over onto serving plate. Prick all over with a sharp fork.
MAKE GLAZE:
¼ c butter
¼ c water
1 c sugar
½ c Bacardi dark rum
Heat butter, sugar and water until smooth. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add rum.
While glaze is still warm, spoon and brush glaze evenly over top and sides of cake. Allow glaze to be absorbed, and repeat until glaze is used up.
I found three likely candidates for this recipe in my mother’s big green notebook. One is written by Marjorie and has a note attributing the original to “Aunt Florence.” Another is written by Dobie and reads much the same as the first, although he simplifies Marjorie’s instructions to cut each cranberry into quarters (“that is the secret!”) into coarsely chopping. The third is an anonymous printout of a recipe for “Cranberry bread” with my mother’s notes for multiplying the recipe on it. Bingo! I recall her gifting loaves of this to all the OTs one year for Christmas, so that one must be the winner. This recipe makes one loaf. Apparently, it freezes well, but since it’s never around that long, who knows?
2 c flour 1 c sugar (part brown is ok)
1 ½ t baking powder
½ t salt 1 ½ t cinnamon
¼ c butter
2 t grated orange peel
1 6-oz can frozen orange juice concentrate
1 egg
1 ½ c coarsely chopped (quarter each one if you’d like!) cranberries* ½ c chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 350⁰. Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Combine egg, juice concentrate, peel and 2 T water and stir into dry ingredients until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in berries and nuts. Spoon into greased loaf pan that has been greased and floured. Check for doneness after one hour; top should be golden brown. Store overnight to develop flavor (says Marjorie here: “if you can wait!”).
*There’s a note here that says “I use more.” The McKays are cranberry people, so of course she did :-)
This bread came out every fall and is the very essence of autumn spiciness. is it any wonder fall was my favorite season? It makes two regular-sized loaves, which is a good thing because my recollection is that the first loaf never made it past day one.
2 ½ c flour
½ t salt
½ t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 ½ t ground cloves
1 ½ t cinnamon
1 ½ t nutmeg
2 c sugar
¾ c butter
2 eggs
1 ½ c canned pumpkin
Preheat oven to 325⁰. Cream sugar, butter, eggs and pumpkin. Add dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Divide batter into two loaf pans that have been greased and floured. Bake for 60-75 minutes, checking for doneness with a toothpick.
Mom inherited this recipe—along with hosting duties for the Twelfth Night party—from a North Monroe Street neighbor named Blanche who moved away and needed a successor. It’s a hot wine-based punch, and the smell is pure Dolby party. This may be the only recipe mom ever followed exactly—at least at first. As the years went on, she knew the recipe so well, she’d just wing it, and the claret turned into whatever red wine she happened to buy at Safeway. Still tasted exactly the same.
There are notes all over the recipe from where she tripled it on up to sextupling it. That year must have been quite a cheerful bash.
1 c sugar
1 qt water
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
Whole cloves and grated orange rind (Erin’s note: no quantities are given here, so I’m going to guess 4 cloves and rind of one medium orange)
DIRECTIONS
Boil for 5 minutes and strain, discarding spices.
ADD:
1 c lemon juice
1 quart orange juice
½ gallon claret
2 c brandy
Bring to simmer and turn down to low. Keep warm for serving. If you have punch cups, this is the time to bring them out.
I don’t remember when the first time was that I had pesto, but I do recall that it was because mom made it from this recipe. I’m also fairly sure she started making it before the pesto craze of the ‘80s, which means some of you holding this cookbook right now may have tried it for the first time made from this exact recipe. (This recipe got made A LOT.)
There are no notes about its origin, which usually means she jotted it down in conversation with someone in passing. Lori wrote “I LOVE” at the bottom. I did then, and I still do, too! The other thing I remember about this pesto is that mom would make it in the summer, then freeze it in ice cube trays and we’d have it all winter long.
2 c tightly packed basil leaves
1 c olive oil
½ c parmesan cheese
¼ c pine nuts
2 cloves garlic (or more)
Process basil in food processor until finely chopped. Add nuts, garlic and cheese and process briefly. Then drizzle in olive oil just until all is blended. Store in a jar in the refrigerator. Add an additional bit of olive oil to the top of the jar to keep it fresh longer.
