Recipes from Sue & Jim

While we were at Sue & Jim's this afternoon, after Megan and Ben had left, I went through Sue & Jim's recipes with them. It was quite funny, because they started off saying 'Oh, we don't have many to give you, because we just cook off the top of our head. But you must have the chocolate fudge pudding recipe...' But as we went on, they found a few more 'must have' recipes and a few more good ones that they wanted to contribute. I asked if we could go round to Gran's house sometime and go through her old cookbooks, but Jim said Uncle Don had already looked and couldn't find any. Jim thought she probably just kept all the recipes in her head and didn't use cookbooks. I was pretty bummed about that, since Gran was well-known in the family for her food. It seemed a shame not to pass on some of her recipes. The Edmonds Cookbook is pretty much a standard thing in any New Zealand household. Anyway, Mum has two copies of it, an edition from the 70s and a 1980 edition. I have a 1998 edition, which was given to me when I first went flatting. Sue & Jim also had the 1980 edition. As we were going through the books, they pulled out this older edition of the Edmonds Cookbook. I said 'Let's check the date, so we can note it in the book.' It was a 1955 edition. Sue & Jim looked at each other and Sue said 'That's not our copy. That's older than us.' And Jim said 'Wow, this is Mum's copy. This is Mum's book.' It was great to have the recipe book that Gran used, but was going to be difficult to pull any recipes out of it to attribute to her. I asked Jim to go through it with me, page by page, and see which recipes he remembered his mother making. He remembered a few and even gave me some quotes to put in with them, but also, Gran had made notes on a few recipes, so we knew she'd made them. Excellent! We have Gran's recipes! Jim said that the recipes themselves probably evolved over the years, but that she would have started with the basic recipes in the Edmonds. I was so pleased. What a find. I also asked Sue to contribute a couple of non-food recipes. I figured we had a recipe for playdough (and one for Wartime dog biscuits!), we could put in a few of her 'recipes' for her aromatherapy stuff. So she gave me two to put in. From Jim: Sugarless Fatless Milkless Banana Ice Cream Rhubarb Cinnamon Cake Marshmallow Surprises Gluten Free Chocolate Cream Biscuits Gluten Free Shortbread Jim's Hummus Caramel Meringue Plum Sauce - 'Only works well if you use the right plums - Black Doris, picked from the tree in Grumps' garden. Lots of slow and careful cooking. Stinks the house out, but it's worth it.' From Sue: Chocolate Fudge Pudding Date & Nut Loaf Cocoa Butter Massage Bars with Sweet Pea Bouquet After sun lotion Red Cooked Chicken Bakewell Tarts Banana Cake Peppermint Creams From Gran: Cheese Biscuits or Busters ANZAC Biscuits Vanilla Kisses One Egg Chocolate Sponge - 'You can multiply this up to ten times and it still works well.' Raspberry Delights Rock Cakes Ginger Gems Cheese Scones - 'These were Dad's favourite.' Plain Scones - 'Mum would churn out heaps of these if she had guests, just at the drop of a hat. She probably modified the recipe slightly over the years, because she never used the book towards the end. People used to rave about them, how soft and light they were. She was renowned for her scones amongst family and friends.' Aaron says he doesn't have any recipes to give me, which is a shame considering he's a trainee chef (or is he an actual chef these days?). I understand if the book just isn't his thing, but it's a shame. I'm not going to pressure anyone though. I encouraged him, but left it at that. He did say he had a notebook of recipes that he thought might be Eves Pantry recipes that Steve had given him. So he's going to try and pass that back to us and I'll copy any Steve wants to add in to the book. :) Oh, and while Megan was there, I asked if she wanted to contribute. She's on the family tree as she is Josh's mother. She said she definitely had one to contribute, so that's awesome. :) I'll let you know when I get it.