Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Fearless Female Writing Prompt: Nana's Recipes

It's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun by Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings.  For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I want you to:

1) Read Lisa Alzo's blog post "Fearless Females Blogging Prompts Series Returns for 2019" on her blog, The Accidental Genealogist. 

2) Choose one of her daily blog prompts from the list (this is March 9th, do that one if you don't want to choose another), and write about it.

3) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook post. Please leave a comment here with a link to your post.

Checking Lisa Alzo's blog post, I chose March 7:  "Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother’s kitchen. Why is this dish your favorite? If you don’t have one that’s been passed down, describe a favorite holiday or other meal you shared with your family."

Many years ago after I was first married, my mother made me a recipe book full of her favorite recipes and of many we ate as a family. She typed up the recipes and photocopied them onto yellow paper. She then cut them individually and spaced them out on the pages of a magnetic-typed photo album with photographs of me.

This was a really neat gift to give after we were married and she did one for each of my siblings, except the youngest, Renee, who married after her death. So I copied the pages from my book and made one for Renee using photos of her and the family.

Three of the recipes in the book were from my paternal grandmother, Anne Marie Sullivan Hork, whom we called Nana.

These recipes I remember very well from my childhood. The tuna casserole was a favorite for meatless Fridays and one we kids could make ourselves. Anything with potato chips has to taste good, right? Sometimes we made a variation of this recipe by skipping the potato chips and scooping the soup mixture over biscuits or toast.

The beer pork chops were pretty tasty, too, though I think today I'd find it too sweet. My grandmother liked to drink the small cans of Olympia beer. I think my cousin Gigi still makes this dish.

The meatballs were usually served over mashed potatoes. They were so big I remember they being cut in two before we kids got one. Somehow, I don't remember the mushrooms. We probably pushed them to the side of the plate.

I have since taken the recipe book apart, fearing the photos would be damaged in the magnetic photo album. Actually, everything became loose, so the photos were saved!


Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.