In praise of recipe cards
Do you remember the good ol' days when people recorded their recipes on index cards and zuchinni was spelled with only one "n"? (Actually, we'll have to double-check that last fact.)
While recipe cards may be following the same flightless flight path as the Dodo Bird into extinction, their memory lives on thanks to - well, how can we say it - some kooks with cameras. Good kooks, though, our kind of kooks! The type of eccentric people who think that family food traditions are worth holding onto even if it means sitting down for a whole afternoon and shooting picture after picture of Mom's entire recipe archive and then posting them all to the internet.
Here are two recipe card slide shows we found posted on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kdorff/sets/1512108/show/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phil_g/sets/412209/show/
So now a question for you: how do you hold onto "keeper" recipes in our disposable, digital age? Kooky minds want to know.
Photo courtesy of Gisara
Comments
A few years ago I copied my mother's recipes then put them in a word document on the computer. While it does not hold the "charm" of a recipe card, I am glad I took the time to do this. After my mother died the recipe box disappeared - probably thrown out because of all the stuff she had. At least I have some of the recipes but how I would love to have those much worn cards instead.
Posted by: Maureen | July 24, 2006 6:38 PM
The 3 things I love about hand written recipe cards are:
1) the recipe names, such as "yummy squares"
2) how easy it is to follow when the steps and the ingredients are listed together
3) that you end up with several versions of the same recipe. I used to make fudge with my nana and each time I wrote down the recipe (since it was all in her head). When I went back years later and collected them all each was different in some subtle, or not so subtle, way.
Posted by: Carie Miele | July 27, 2006 9:08 AM
A compiling of family recipe cards into a booklet is a great gift for the rest of your family. And they're easier to deal with in the kitchen than your computer, and not as wasteful as printing them out every time.
Posted by: Ed Reid | August 21, 2006 4:27 PM
I would be sincerely grieved if anything happened to the recipe cards my mother wrote out for me when I was first married. Some of the recipes came from her mother, some from my father's family and some she just thought I'd like to have. Some of my favorites are ones that I have never made but just the names bring back memories of dinner parties my parents would have, both of them dressed up, the house spic and span, the incense smoking in the living room, the sound of ice in the glasses, and my mother's favorite, easy "company food" on the stove or in the oven. I have just hand-written about 50 recipe cards for my niece who has just gotten married and is starting her own family. When she saw the collection, the first thing she did was excitedly rush through them looking for our old family recipe for Potuguese sweet bread. I hope she is looking at that very same card 40 years from now as she makes it for her own family.
Posted by: Laurie | August 21, 2006 7:21 PM
Some Wordperfect programs have a recipe card program that you can design and print up for basic cooking scrapbooking.
Posted by: Alice | August 27, 2006 8:56 PM