A taste of days gone by with family recipes

Photo: Contributed

My mom was young when she and my dad started our family. She knew about cooking and my grandma cooked a lot, so she wasn’t entirely out of her element. But there was no such thing as the internet or the Cooking Network back then. And she couldn’t have afforded to use Skip the Dishes even if it had been around.

Figuring out meal plans day after day, week after week while staying on a budget has always been a real feat. In my childhood days, help wasn’t as easy to find, and the recipes weren’t at everyone’s fingertips. Making those meals took a dash of creativity, a regular serving of gumption and a good dollop of stamina to keep everyone fed and happy. 

You want to know the best part? These are many of the foods we all grow up and crave. Some of the timesaving tricks my mom employed have come in handy; when I worked on food trucks, we were often scrambling to get everything ready on time and those secrets helped make tasty dishes in record time. 

The simple nature of many old-fashioned recipes also makes them easier to adapt for some of today’s new requirements. Gluten-free flours can be substituted easily in many baking recipes, and the current range of options for ingredients, like stock, can help make dishes even more healthy.

I’d like to share a few of my old favourites with you this week and give a few resources for anyone who wants to delve into the old-fashioned realm. Some of those old dogs have even learned the new tricks of today and are keeping up online.

I’m sure many of you have at least one of the “Best of Bridge” cookbooks on your kitchen shelf. These ladies were local celebrities in Calgary where I grew up, and they became what some might say were the first celebrity housewives. 

Their books are full of family classics, like meatloaf, artichoke dip, and zucchini loaf; they also contain lots of early fusion recipes. This was when the concept of eating anything beyond meat and potatoes was considered “far out” in more ways than one. If you have one of their books, I’m sure it’s got splattered pages just like mine does. If not, never fear – they have a website, with their style of recipes being carried on by a new generation of home cooks.

My mom – and every other mom I knew growing up – didn’t have the internet or cooking channels, but they did have magazines. My mom’s recipe journal was full of clippings for recipes like Sweet & Sour Pork and Chicken Marengo. 

Some titles sounded exotic, but most mentions for vegetables in those recipes were by the can, and spices were limited to a much smaller repertoire. Nevertheless I know plenty of TLC was a secret ingredient that made most things taste delicious. (I’ll tell you about those dubious pork cutlets another time.)

I have made it a project to post many of my mom’s adapted recipes on my blog. I never had children, but I still understand the value of family legacy. Perhaps by sharing my legacy to a bigger circle, traditions can be created or passed down in other families. 

I know there must be other people out there who thought Tuna Casserole and Chocolate Wacky Cake were the best things ever when they were kids. We can’t deprive future generations of those classics.

Spring Break is fast approaching. Why not make it a project to catalog a few family classic recipes, or ask someone to show you how they make those special creations you love so much? It would be a real shame to lose that magic forever. Skip the Dishes can’t deliver the taste of a memory.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.