The Grandma Zone

When my grandmother passed, I inherited several worn-looking coffee cans and small boxes full of scraps of stained paper inscribed with my grandmother's lovely handwriting. These dinged up containers number amongst my most cherished possessions, for this is the collection of recipes that my grandmother turned to again and again over the years, and they form the basis for some of my happiest childhood memories. She transcribed these from her mother in law and sister in law, clipped these from magazines, wrote down notes dictated by friends over the phone. They are often difficult to decipher… the ink or pencil has faded, the ingredients splashed the notes, the paper has grown brittle with time. And so I am slowly digitizing the recipes I love best, photographing the original scraps of paper and including them on the page, transcribing what I can make out, and then, when necessary, interpreting the recipe to conform more closely to modern conventions (e.g. I know what my grandmother meant by "a third of a yahrzeit glass" but not everyone else will know what brand she meant or that those candles are not made in those glasses any more).