Getting to know my Grandma through her recipes

My Grandma died last year and in her eulogy I talked about how there were a lot of things we didn’t have in common. She had a green thumb and loved to make quilts. I can’t keep a plant alive for the life of me and I can’t sew at all. There were a lot of other things I didn’t talk about because they weren’t so easily defined or easy to say. My Grandma was born in1921 and by the time she was my age she had two kids and another one soon to come. My Grandma was a product of her time, never was this more clear than when she would come out with a comment that was blatantly racist or sexist without seeming to notice that anyone was taking offense. Some of things she said were even harder to stomach than her openly racist attitudes whether they were a part of her generation or not; such as her opinions on the appropriate size of a female, leading her to often declare that she thought my mom and I were getting fat.  She was also blindly devoted to any and all males who were related to her, believing they could do no wrong. Whereas the women were under constant scrutiny, never quite getting anything right. However the more I look for differences between my Grandma and me, the more I run into the similarities. I know there are many things in my life that she would not approve of such as my tattoos and perpetual singledom, but there are a number of ways that we are similar. I see her strength in myself both emotionally and physically when there is a job that needs to be done. I also see myself in her, in our mutual ability to stretch a dollar. She lived through the depression and raised a family on almost nothing and I see same trait in myself when I manage to support myself on very little. Finally I see a similarity in our use of good food to bring people together.  She was a good cook and used both familiar nostalgic recipes and fresh new ones to bring her family together, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without scalloped potatoes and ham with pineapple. Her food was  good, hearty and simple, something which I think is true about a lot of the things I like to cook. When I was home at Christmas I started going through her recipe box and realized there was a number of recipes I wanted to try. I want to use this space to share my attempts at some of her recipes - both successes and the mistakes ( I mean there’s a recipe for an aspic in there) in the hope that I might get to know her better and perhaps myself in the process.