Just trying to fill the time...

I asked someone, anyone, to stop me, and no one came forward. Thus, I have done it again: as if the rigors of NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo aren't enough, I've now decided to enter Retro Recipe Challenge #4: Fall Favorites. Fortunately, this is a one-shot deal. I just need to make a fall recipe first published between 1920 and 1980, then take a picture of it and blog about it. I have until next Wednesday to complete my assignment.

I could look around online for a suitable recipe, but I thought it would be more fun to page through my extensive cookbook collection. The problem is, I don't have any cookbooks published before 1986. Then, in an "Aha!" moment, I decided to look through my mom's old recipe cards -- I knew I'd find lots of ancient stuff there.

The main thing I noticed, when going through Mom's recipes, is that I recognized very few of them. I don't think she ever made about 90% of the recipes she collected. Like mother, like daughter -- I found it very reassuring. I also noticed that my father seemed obsessed with his mother's chocolate cookies; I found no fewer than three separate recipe cards for them in Dad's handwriting.

Pictured above are recipes for the Christmas cookies Mom baked every year (ingredient #1 is one pound of confectioner's sugar); cream caramels, which Mom never made, though my grandma often did at Christmastime; sour cream raisin pie, in my Aunt Kathleen's familiar scrawl; maple sponge, whatever that is; and an apple noodle kugel. I'll probably make one of the latter two recipes for the challenge. I'm leaning towards the maple sponge because it sounds so odd and will require the purchase of a gelatin mold. That recipe is in Grandma's writing but I don't recall her ever making it; reading over the ingredients and instructions, I'm surprised anyone ever made it, let alone consumed it. Raw egg, anyone? Then again, our apples are just about ripe, so the kugel may win out. (To see the actual recipes for maple sponge and cream caramels, look here.)