How to Cook Like Your Grandmother
Neither of my grandmas were especially good cooks, but somehow I always left their houses a few pounds tubbier. It's got to be all that butter and every grandkid's inability to turn down a hefty wedge of cake (à la mode, obviously) they already sliced. Oh, grandmas. Michael Pollan may disapprove of all those buckets of cream of mushroom you use, but high five, sister. How to Cook Like Your Grandmother is a blog devoted to this worship of grandmas in the kitchen. You will not see the words "lite" or "skim" on this site—just recipes for things like cheesy poofs and pork chop salad. [via Metafilter]
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17 Comments:
One of my grandmothers was a very poor cook, she was insanely proud of her jello molds (complete with canned fruit and cool whip) and that was about it. My other grandmother was a decent cook but nothing she made ever stuck out in my mind except for her chocolate sour cream cake.
My grandfather on the other hand was a great short order breakfast cook. He made fluffy sky high pancakes and the yummiest french toast ever.
missjess at 7:28PM on 07/28/09
One of my grandmothers made fried chicken that would make you cry and the fluffiest banana cakes. The other always had a big jar of what she called egg custard but I would now call cream anglaise in her fridge. Sometimes I could remember to give her a hug before I visited the refrigerator.
ocarol at 7:37PM on 07/28/09
how to cook like my grandma? two steps: scratch and stir. i always lost weight after summer's at my nanas in florida. every plate of beans and rice and steak include stray gray hairs, dead skin cells, cigarette ash, maybe an insect corpse or two and the worst of it all.. too much pepper
akapluto at 8:11PM on 07/28/09
i live with my grandmother. needless to say, i did not slim down till i started cooking for myself.
frybread and cheez whiz. i almost miss it.
eggyzhe at 11:06PM on 07/28/09
In order to cook like my grandmother, I'm going to need a cauldron, a goat and much, much despair.
maered at 12:32AM on 07/29/09
My nan used to make mac and cheese with cheese ends and spaghetti. It would melt your soul, it was so good.
She also knew her way with a cast-iron pan and a few handfuls of ground beef. I still remember the smell of those burgers cooking. Always on plain white bread, always with Kraft singles, always delicious.
At the same time, she would make this god-awful thing called 'spaghetti casserole', which was watery spaghetti mixed with tinned tomatoes, canned olives, boiled bacon and velveeta, all over-cooked.
Let's face it, we all probably have one recipe we like that no one else does.
NotAmerican at 1:38AM on 07/29/09
By the way, Erin, your last name is particularly apt for this post...a 'walker' is known in the UK as a 'Zimmer frame'.
NotAmerican at 1:40AM on 07/29/09
my one grandmother could do just about everything, bake her own bread, make noodles, can fruits and veggies, make pastries, smoke meats.... pretty much because she had to .... but she had a knack for making it all taste so good..... the other grandmother was taught by her sicilian mother in law to make outrageous food .... so both were pretty good cooks....
pooch at 7:58AM on 07/29/09
me and my grandmother were bff's and all we did was eat and eat when i would spend the weekends with her. pancakes, bacon, cheetos, snicker bars, frozen pizza, apple pie, cookies, creamy soups, grilled cheese, fried fish, root bear floats, popcorn...the list goes on and on. she was an awesome cook and definitely knew how to stock her cupboards with stuff the grandkids loved to eat. after all that food, she just had to asked me, "how much do you weigh now?" grandmothers have a special of telling you that you're chubby.
_greenbean at 10:09AM on 07/29/09
I learned everything from my grandmother cause she loved us with food. My grandma could cook anything for any size crowd. She raised my four cousins who were orphans but at least once a week she called my mom and say I'm just making dinner, why don't you all come over -- all six of us and she would just add a few slices of bread to the fried potatoes to make them go a bit further and get another jar out of the cellar of something she canned in the summer and whip up another pie in a flash. She could make a chocolate pie in the 5-10 minutes it took us to get there. I was blessed to grow up in her shadow.
Jilly at 11:27AM on 07/29/09
I loved visiting my father's mother or having her visit us. She would always make our family's version of some Turkish/Sephardic treat:
bimuelos (for breakfast)
montees (not the Turkish lamb dumplings and yogurt, but more like a spinach borekh that's flatter and has more cheese)
biscochos (a flat toroid with the outside edge cut so it flared with sesame seeds on top)
The food was great, but boy, did she use a lot of oil. The walls in her kitchen always had a coating of oil on them. I knew that I was making my own montees properly when I had a small fire in the oven!
My other grandmother was a decent baker, but her sister was a master. I still remember seeing a pie crust recipe in the Times when I was young that called for a little vinegar. She railed against its use in a pie crust--"It should be sweet! Why would you destroy that with vinegar?" and gave me her recipe, which I subsequently lost.
alden at 11:56AM on 07/29/09
My mom's mother believes in overcooking and under-seasoning, but I was very fond of her stuffed cabbage as a kid. She used to bake, too. It's kind of sad that as she's gotten older, she's stopped cooking almost entirely, despite still having the physical faculties to do so.
My dad's mother paid the housekeeper extra to come in and cook when she had company. But she did stock ice cream and cookies, which my parents never had around. Also, butter, which I don't think has ever seen the inside of my family's house. She let me put it on matzoh, which was even better than ice cream.
tangledgray at 1:21PM on 07/29/09
Corn flakes, cold cuts and Pepperidge Farms frozen coconut cake.
Kerosena at 2:02PM on 07/29/09
Wouldn't Michael Pollan rather agree with a more old fashioned, grandmother-esque style of cooking? Before everything was laced with HFCS, before trans fats, and before you could buy yogurt in a squeezeable tube? Just a thought...
patoo at 4:54PM on 07/29/09
@NotAmerican: I had no idea that I help old British people putz around! Thought I was only a car and a German room.
Erin Zimmer at 5:47PM on 07/29/09
My one grandmother's not much of a cook, but a terrific baker. Her pies are amazing.
My other grandmother once cooked the Thanksgiving turkey in a microwave. She's best known for her "party cake," a recipe that does not include a single ingredient not found in a box or a can.
KarynMC at 8:44AM on 07/30/09
My Grandma Ruby was born in 1903. She taught me the old ways like making egg noodles and fluffy dumplings. She always baked her cornbread in a sizzling hot cast iron skillet for a crunchy dark golden crust. Her green beans cooked forever and were laden with onion and ham hocks. Chicken was fried in bacon grease after being simply dredged in seasoned flour. Pork chops browned next to apples and onions while potatoes fried on the next burner. The biscuits she made were a mile high and equally delicious under gravy or topped homemade jam. The dried apple fried pies she made are still a family favorite today.
TessaDee at 12:12AM on 09/21/09