Exploring the foods of my recent ancestors

For this Thanksgiving, my talented and thoughtful mother put together a collection of family recipes from her mother and her mother's three sisters. It's an amazing book with photos, stories, reminiscences, and scanned recipe cards - most definitely a keepsake. It contains 13 breads, 17 salads, 38 main dishes, 17 cakes, 11 cookies, 9 pies, 12 other sweets, and 22 other miscellaneous delights. Most are from the 1960s and 1970s, and most serve a crowd. I believe my mom is putting together a Facebook page for the book, and if she does, I will post it here.

I thought it would be an interesting idea to commit myself to make every recipe in the book. (I know I recently tried unsuccessfully to do that with an issue of Gourmet, but I think this is more likely to happen). Not only will this honor my recent ancestors Cecile, Billie, Pearl and Lee by replicating their culinary efforts, but it will also be an interesting look into the changing nature of food - both during their lives and in the years since. In other words, a lot of the recipes involve jello, and a lot involve marshmallows, and some involve jello and shrimp both at the same time. Being a Portlander in 2010, surrounded by other Portlanders with our collective concerns about gluten, levels of organicity, free-range everything, chemicals and food allergies, it is going to be a real challenge not only to make this stuff, but to get people to eat it. It will be an adventure in culinary anthropology as well as geneology, and I expect most of it will be delicious, too.

I am going to try stay true to the recipes, although I can make changes that will make it more likely for the recipe to actually get eaten. For example, I can divide a recipe in two, I can use organic ingredients, I can increase the amount of spices added (but not the type), and I can reduce the sugar in some recipes if I think it will entice people to eat them. (I'm thinking of the 3-bean salad with 3/4 cup sugar. That's just not going to happen.)