I?m sitting here wondering what to make for dinner, and began to think of all of the great old family recipes that I will not be able to enjoy due to disfellowshipping. I actually had one ?relative? ask for the old fashioned "potato cake" recipe back. Harumph
I was able to smuggle a few family favorites out of the organization by secretly copying recipe cards from the family library before my untimely organizational death, but many are lost to me forever. In going through the copied cards that I was able to take with me I found striking discrepancies in the family recipes between the copies made of the older cards and the newer.
For example, in the older yellowed recipe cards for ?old-fashioned chocolate cake? there were notes, which clearly indicated that the use of bacon grease was preferred if one wanted an authentic interpretation of the original taste created by the Great-Great-Great Grandmother Beaulah. However, sometime in the early ?80s, the recipe cards ceased to even list bacon grease, and instead advocated the use of lard, but stated that if one preferred the taste of bacon grease that it would be left to their own conscience. Upon further investigation I found that at the end of the 80s, lard had been replaced with Crisco, and that the use of Bacon Grease or Lard would be considered destructive to ones health, and that a dish made with such ingredients could not be brought to any family gathering.
These things troubled me so I investigated further only to find more disturbing changes. For instance on the pre 1970 recipe card for ?pastachuta? the directions clearly indicated the use of bow tie noodles and 10 onions in a "feeds 12" recipe. The next card changed the number of carrots from three to 6. Then on the last card, the noodles were changed to shell noodles and the number of onions was limited to no more than 7 and they had to be white onions. This was very disturbing to me since I had always preferred to bow tie rather than the shell noodles and never did like the carrots.
I had suspected the changes when I was still in the Troot because the flavor in some of the dishes had changed. When I asked my mother about the change, she had just said that I should not question such old family recipes and asked me if I believed that the original creators of the recipes would be happy if they knew I was questioning them. . I decided at the time to hold my tongue in the interest of family harmony, and because being only 12, I didn?t want to have to cook dinner every night because I had offended the cook.
It is so good to be free from the restrictions of enforced New Light at the dinner table, and be able to choose for myself which ingredients to use, and whether or not to even use a recipe card. Even better is that I can now use bow-tie noodles in my pastachuta and cut the carrots way back without worrying that I am offending the cook. She no longer cares.
By the way, if you have a good recipe for potato salad and would like to adopt a cooking orphan, I am looking for a cooking mom who would be willing to help me pick up the pieces in my shattered family recipe box.
Jeannie