Today is Pi Day so... I made cheesy chicken pot pie, from scratch, for dinner. :)
The basic recipes for both the filling and the cheese crust came from my grandma's cookbook. Oh, yes, that's right, there's CHEESE in the pie crust as well! I have made my own changes- the cheese wasn't one of them- but the overall intent is the same: Deliciousness in a savory pie crust.
I don't know if I've mentioned before that I have a cookbook that once belonged to my grandmother on my dad's side. In it you will find instructions for everything, and I mean EVERYTHING kitchen and cooking related! If you ever need to know how to eviscerate poultry or rabbit, I have the instructions. Are you curious as to how to set a proper table or what was considered necessary when starting a kitchen in the late 1940s? I have that information as well and, not surprisingly, it's not completely irrelevant in today's world. I can also give you multiple recipes for jello salads and aspics which nobody in their right mind would consider making today. I can tell you what the temperature range is for an oven heated to moderate and how to test your oven when there is no temperature gauge. There is even a section on nutrition and a Wartime Postscript instructing you to use that information to keep your family healthy because, "A healthy nation is the best contribution our homes can make to our war effort." (I told you it was from the 1940s.)
My grandma's cookbook is full of history- including, but not limited to, the family kind. It's over fifty years old and is full of notes and recipes that she scribbled in margins, in the index, on both the front flyleaf and the back one, the title page... Pretty much everywhere there was a little space. Also tucked between the pages are recipes written on note cards and newspaper clippings. It's my own treasure chest- filled with the kind of gold that not everyone will appreciate- and I am incredibly lucky to have it.
*Update* I intended to post the recipe but got busy writing about the book. :P If anyone is interested in having it, let me know and I'll post it here.
2 comments:
what a treasure!! in my family, people would have been violently fighting to get their hands on that book and be the sole owner. then, those nutritious recipes would have come in handy.. you know, "wartime effort" and all...
Oh man! I totally forgot about pi day! Bummer. And Mindy, if I had known about this book I may have tried to beat her up for it.
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