The Grandma Zone
4 recipesWhen 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).
This is likely quite old, as my grandmother has written “Spry” instead of “vegetable shortening” or “Crisco”. Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening that was popular from the 1930s - 1960s. I have struggled to interpret the recipe because it is not written in a particularly organized way and is very vague, written haphazardly on both sides. This, too, speaks of this scrap of paper being quite old. My grandmother was an excellent cook, and had an eye for order and organization and I suspect would have written this down differently later in life. Anyway, fruit pie is one of the few desserts I am fairly comfortable with, so in the instructions I will be drawing on my own experience making pies when there are gaps to fill.
My grandmother always served baked apples for dessert after Shabbas dinner. It's an extremely simple and healthy recipe that can be served hot or cold. We make one apple per person, but you can always make more to refridgerate them for Saturday! She never put any seasoning on the apples since they're quite yummy without any additions, but obviously things like cinnamon-sugar would go well over these. You can use any sort of apple - my grandmother always used red delicious since those were always the nicest apples in our area of the country.
My guess is that it's a cookie (biscuit) and it ought to get baked at 350 °F for 10 - 15 min or so? I may have to just try that to see. Also, dry oatmeal? Cooked oatmeal? Normally, dry oats are referred to as rolled oats and cooked oats are oatmeal, but not only is this scrap probably 70+ years old and language shifts, if my grandmother got this recipe from her inlaws (as I am guessing from the 'glass' measurements), there could have been a language barrier, to boot. Anyway, to say the instructions are incomplete is a bit of an understatement.
Having now made this myself, I can say that butter is the obvious choice unless you are baking for a fleishig meal. Butter represents a significant upgrade in flavor. You might try coconut oil in place of shortening if you like the flavor, but I have not tried this myself. They're outstanding, by the way. Don't let the rolled oats deter you.