Customer Reviews

Grandma's Favorite Recipes

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I'm pretty critical of cookbooks. Too many of them, it's hard to figure out what purpose they serve. This cookbook has many "family favorites" for the author's family, though, that may well be comfort foods for you as well, and they are items that you probably aren't going to find in the looseleaf cookbook in the red-and-white plaid tablecloth cover, nor in the Joy of Cooking.

Of course, you could get this kind of recipe from a church cookbook, but the problem with those cookbooks is that many of the recipes are contributed by people who are lousy cooks, or who don't want to give the actual recipe they use, for fear that others will be able to cook as well as they can. Besides, those church cookbooks tend to have many duplicate recipes, and you have to guess which recipe is best. This cookbook save you all that hassle. If you are going to make Weimar cookies, this one recipe is the one to select.

That's not to say that the cookbook is perfect by any means. Two-egg Treasure Cake calls for 1/2 cup of Crisco. Would that be Crisco creamed shortening, or Crisco vegetable oil? The instructions say to sift the first four ingredients into "spry". I know that Spry was a vegetable shortening from Lever Brothers that competed with Crisco until about 1960 or 1970, but would the average cookbook reader? I don't think so.

I read a lot of cookbooks, pretty much ignoring the recipes, but simply using them for inspiration in using the ingredients I have on hand, or that are currently in season. This cookbook, though, I intend to actually try the recipes. I suspect Grandma made these recipes many times, and they have the benefit of decades of taste-tests.

This cookbook looks like a real winner.