My g'ma made some pies that were beyond great. Think any relative knew how? NO. One was a dark, round berry-relatives tried to tell me blueberry but tasted like no blueberry pie I ever have had since.
My wife is an only child ... she learned her cullinary skills from her mother ( very skilled cook ) who measured itmes in her about a handfull of this , a sprincle of this, and a pinch of that so she learned what was actually the size of her portions and is able to recreate the taste. On the other hand my mother was a horrible cook ( she had a maid who cooked all of her meals before we lost everything at the start of WW2) , so I had to learn to cook for myself if I wanted to eat something that was edible and actually had flavor to it.
Chef George Hirsch used the slogan, "know your fire."
Mom didn't. ... unless it was baked goods. Why she was good with bread and pies, I don't know. It might have been because she was willing to follow a recipe with those things.
Everything else was burnt. Maybe just cooked into a soggy nothing, at best. Limited ingredients was a good thing. I don't know how far back she stood when she threw things together ...
It was not very inspiring. Except! I was inspired to try to have tastier food and ... to have another slice of her apple pie.
My MIL, who is a good cook, once told me, good bakers don't make good cooks, and good cooks can't bake. I don't know if I believe that, especially since she said that after having a meal I made.
But she did love my breads and cinnamon rolls.
That was all decades ago and I think my cooking has come a long way in the right direction, and I still make darn good bread.
Had a big, juicy yellow stripey cut up in my salad for lunch.
Our recipe box has about 12 recipes in it...we are not much for using recipes around here and, even when we do, we rarely stick to them. One I really cherish from back in the day and use often for cookouts is the hot dog sauce recipe my mother had gotten back in the early 70s and used in her restaurant. It was called Famous Coney Island sauce and she claims she copied it down from one in the newspaper at the time. If followed consistently, it's the best I've ever eaten.
The rest of the recipes are for canning things and there's one bread recipe, which we've been using for years and is pretty much the only way we ever make bread except for the occasional focaccia bread.
The rest of the cooking here is good but it's a pinch of that, a handful of this kind of cooking.
I'll write it exactly as it's written...it will give you an idea of the age of this thing.
1/4 c. Oleo
1 1/2 c. chopped onion
1/4 c. chopped celery
1/2 ground beef(now, that was back when beef was BEEF and not all fat and gristle ground into it, so you might have to increase this amount to get the desired amount of meat in the sauce nowadays).
32 oz. tomato sauce
1 1/2 T. Worcestershire Sauce
2 T. Chili powder
2 T. brown sugar
3 T. lemon juice
1 T. yellow mustard
1 T. salt
Hot sauce is optional...doesn't give a measurement for that.
Melt oleo in pan and add onion and celery, cook slowly for 10 min. Add other ingredients and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 min.
****We normally add the hamburger to the boiling mixture raw, and without browning it first, so we cook it a little longer than 20. min. afterwards.*****