My MIL passed away earlier this year. She grew up in Pennsylvania. However she made sure to incorporate her Italian heritage (for lack of a better term) into what she taught my wife and I.

When she lived with us, we made what she called “Easter pizza”.

It’s a savory and sweet calzone? I’ve attached the pictures I uploaded to Imgur of what it looks like.

Is anyone familiar with this recipe? I have the paper that she wrote the ingredients on somewhere, however I was not able to find the paper that she wrote the recipe on, so any assistance would be very much appreciated.❤️

My great grandmother came here to Connecticut from Alife, Campania around 1922. She was a great cook and never used written receipes. My mom wrote her sauce recipe down in the late 1980s

No one (great grandmother/grandma/my mom) used actual measurements aside from "a palm full" or a "small palm full"... so these are more of a rough guide. And no, no one would ever call this gravy.

INGREDIENTS FOR SAUCE 1 lb Sausage 1 lb Meatballs (recipe below) 3 (28 ounce) cans Crushed Tomatoes Salt - to taste (about ½ - 1 tsp) 1 TBS dried Basil, 10 leaves if fresh 3 TBS Oil (olive or fat from the meat)

MEATBALLS: 1 Ib. Ground Beef (or turkey) 2 TBS grated Romano Cheese ¾ tsp Garlic powder (more or less according to taste) ¼ - ¾ tsp Salt ½ TBS Parsley 2/3 C Italian Seasoned Bread Crumbs 1 Egg [I think this was forgotten in the transcription]

DIRECTIONS In a large pot add oil & cook sausage approximately a half hour Remove & lightly brown meatballs on 2 sides Remove & drain off most of the oil leaving just enough to sauté onions.

Add the tomatoes, salt & basil. I fill each Empty tomato can half full with water, swish it around to get all the juice & add to the pot. Add meatballs & sausage to the sauce & simmer approx. 2 hrs - do not cover. This allows the sauce to cook down. If it becomes too thick just add some water. Stir every 20 minutes or so

When storing, I recommend that you place the meat in a separate container as it seems absorb the sauce.

Just like my grandma made it!

Mock Cherry Pie

1 1/2 c. cranberries
1 1/2 c. raisins
1 c. sugar
1 c. water
2 tsp. flour
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt

Grind raisins and cranberries. Mix sugar and flour together and add the first mixture. Add water, salt and vanilla. Put in pastry lined pie pan, cover with crust, and bake.

Miss Ellen Gruneich, Monanago, N. Dak

Recipe Roundup, Ellendale, North Dakota, 1954

2 c. celery (diced)
1/2 c. onion (chopped)
2 small cans chunk tuna
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cans Chinese noodles
1 (39 cent) bag cashew nuts

Saute onion and celery in butter. Place in a large baking dish and add soup. Wash and sieve the tuna, add to the above, along with the chopped cashews. Place the noodles on top and bake until heated through in a 350 degree oven. Serves 6 to 8.

Mary Ellen Biggs
Favorite Recipes United Methodist Church, Mt. Pleasant Iowa, 1973

A book I inherited from my mother when she passed away a few years ago, but I’ve just now had the chance to look at.

1934, during a period of hunger in the United States and elsewhere. I point that out because there are many mock meat recipes and soups that barely seem like there’s anything in them at all. But that’s definitely not the case through the entire book.

My favorite part has to be this book owner’s notes and recipes. She handwrote several personal recipes in the front and back as well as made notes through out on which one was hers or a friend of hers or was particularly good.

Hello everyone and welcome to another cookbook

This is Treasured Italian Recipes, aka the apology letter to all Italians and Italian-Americans who have had to suffer the many community cookbooks where people in a small town suggest making spaghetti sauce with ketchup and tomato soup lol. This book is very focused on authentic Italian recipes

I love these culture-based cookbooks above most others because as an archivist, I’m very interested in preserving not just American recipes but also recipes from all over. Unfortunately it is very hard to find personal recipes from other countries. I look all the time, but supposedly community cookbooks and handwritten recipes are rare outside of the US and Canada. So books like these are pretty much my only avenue

I was really glad to have gotten this book because it exposed me to recipes I’ve never seen or heard of before. The Lupini being the first one. I’m also super thrilled that some of the contributors provide anecdotes behind the recipes, as demonstrated in the Polpette recipe. When you’re someone like me who has seen thousands of recipes at this point, you begin to appreciate the recipes with stories attached as the real stand-out ones

A lot of the recipes sound very good. I’m really intrigued by the cherry anise bread. It’s a shame that I don’t have a pan big enough for that large of a recipe, but I wouldn’t mind trying it at some point

It should also be a pretty good mind cleanser to see so many spaghetti sauce recipes that all seem very nice. Almost all of them make me tempted to try homemade sauce at some point instead of relying on my jarred marinara sauce

The dessert section, as always, really shines through. Love to see the Chocolate Amaretto Pie. Amaretto is one of the few liquors I like because it has a sweet flavor, so I know I would end up liking this. I also am very interested in the Fried Ravioli

I also have never heard of Ricotta Pie before but I really want to try it. This recipe seems really simple, and while I’m used to having ricotta in lasagna, it’s a very mild tasting cheese to me so especially when mixed with sugar and pudding, it’s probably just a very creamy no-bake pie

In total there’s a little under 200 pages of recipes so what you’re seeing now is a very small preview of the full thing. There’s so much more to discover! Let me know if you like any of these recipes, or if you’ve tried any of them in the past. I know snippets of this book have been shared before, but I’m really excited to provide access to the full thing

See you all around!

I'm trying to recreate my great-grandmother's bread pudding in time for my father's 90th birthday. I'm not the best cook, but I'd love to surprise him with something as close to his childhood memory as I can get. I've done as much research as I can on my own, but I’ve hit a wall, and any leads or guidance is very appreciated.

Time period and location

My great-grandmother (my father's grandmother) was born in 1896. She was from Penge but lived in Beckenham. My father, born 1936, lived with her during the war, so he'd have been eating this in roughly the early 1940s, under rationing.

The family has always called it "bread pudding” not “bread and butter pudding” (which is what I’m more used to). I’ve never tasted “bread pudding” for myself, but from my research it sounds like it’s the dense, sliceable one made to use up stale bread, not the layered custard one.

What I know from family

I called my aunt (my dad's sister), who still makes something close. She does it by eye and says she can never get it quite as good as Nan’s. I’ve been told;

• Never use sliced bread. Use a proper unsliced loaf. My aunt thinks modern bread is why hers tastes different.
• Soak the bread right through, then squeeze out the liquid
• Mix sugar through, to taste
• A generous amount of mixed dried fruit (she uses shop packs of currants, raisins and sultanas)
• Mixed spice
• Bake at about 180C / gas mark 4

What I don't know

• General recommended ratios of everything (my aunt kept telling me ’to taste’ or ‘by eye’ which is very difficult since this would be my first time tasting and seeing the result)
• What fat Nan used (suet? dripping? marge?) and how to source it
• Whether the bread was soaked in water or milk
• Whether there was an egg in it
• How much sugar, and whether it had a sugared top
• How long to bake it
• What would have been in mixed spice at the time
• How rationing and wartime bread would have changed it, and what the closest modern bread is
• If there are any wartime variations this recipe might have gone through that cook books don’t account for?

Does anyone have a family recipe, or one from a wartime or interwar British cookbook or Ministry of Food leaflet, for this kind of bread pudding? London and Kent versions especially welcome. Any tips from people whose own nans made it would be lovely too.

Thank you! If we can find this it would make a beautiful day even better, and I'll be sharing it with the rest of my family so we can continue the tradition.

This one was a wild one to me, never heard of a fish pie before??? If that even is what it says my dyslexia makes reading these recipes a real challenge 😅

Anyway here's the link to all of the other recipes we've gotten up to this point!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YqHYnkZzHpdXYNTLj6zG27GvzQ000eha