Leave a Story about your Grandmother Sessions

 

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If you have a story you'd like to share with us about Grandmother Sessions (or Mom, as many of us call her), please leave a comment with your story on this post.

The Tale of Two Pans of Lasagna

 

I asked Mom about her lasagna recipe, as I had found two in her card file.  The first one, above, was here because of the fact that my then-husband was Italian and I should know about Italian food.  This is the one I remember being made.  Cottage cheese in lasagna? (so 1970)  Then there is the recipe below, a recipe written on the back of a little Relief Society message.  In her ward, they used to print up these cards to take to the sisters that were on your Visiting Teaching list, so that they'd have something every month from the sisters that visited.  

When I asked mother about lasagna receipes, she kept saying she didn't remember, and that it was too long ago.  But she did remember this:

"When we moved to Ogden, I learned a microwave recipe that is a lot faster. That’s when Scott’s friend lived with us, when he came home off his mission. His parents had managed the Winestocks store, and then retired. They bought a sailboat and took off, so when the young man came home, we said to Scott, You know, he should come and live with us. Maybe the parents had planned to be back, but they weren’t. After a while, the young man went off to college. I just know we had an empty house with lots of space. The mother brought us back a large cross-stitch tablecloth, white with red stitching. Do you have that? No? I wonder who does have it."

"The first lasagne I made may have come off the package, but Middy Magleby may have given it to me. She inspired me to do a lot of unusual things in my cooking. We’d go to her place, and she'd serve something different. We’d taste it and I’d ask her about it, and she’d say, 'oh it’s just a little of this and a bit more of that,' and then I’d try to find the recipe and serve to my family. Middy was always making something new that I had never thought of, so I'd go home and look it up, and try new things."

Interestingly, in these recipe files are many recipes from her daughters: Christine, Cynthia, Susan and Elizabeth, all written up on little 3x5 cards in their handwriting.  Some appear to be variations of recipes she already had, as the one above.

THE Fruit Cake Recipe

 Dictated to Elizabeth E.

Right after we got back from New York, we were living in one of Grandfather Sessions' apartments, and I decided to try to make a moist kind of fruit cake, different from the dessicated ones that I'd previously tasted.  This was before Cynthia was born, probably about 1950.  

Dad said, "You're not going to make a fruit cake.  They are so awful and dry!"  

"Yes, I am," I replied.

I found this recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and cut it out.  (It's not printed in their cookbooks anymore.)  I followed the printed version almost exactly, but left out the citron, as I thought my mother didn't like it. I pulled it out of the oven as Sterling wandered in.  He asked what I'd pulled out and I said "fruit cake."  He made a funny sound, and said "Ugh! Fruit cakes are awful things."  So I cut a sliver from the end and handed it to him.  He tasted it, took a few more bites.  Then he had another slice.  

Grandfather Sessions had come home with Sterling.  They often would go selling things together, or Grandfather would say, 'I"ve got to go measure for draperies," and he'd take Sterling with him.  Grandfather Sessions also thought he didn't like fruitcakes, but when he tasted them, he liked them.  And then I think I sent some home with him for Grandmother Sesssions.

Time passed and after a while, I couldn't get the list of nuts and candied fruits on the left.  I could only buy the fruits altogether, so I adjusted quantities and wrote them out on the left.  "Of course I didn't use the brandy," she said, in response to my query about that item in the printed recipe.

Note: The recipe was folded up into a plastic sleeve and these two pieces of paper were tucked behind it.  The bottom one is the interesting one; it was the famous List of Who Got Fruitcakes.  Initially I didn't like fruitcakes, so my name is not on the list (I grew to like them, but never could get back on The List.)  Apparently Susan gave a non-committal answer, so she didn't make it onto The List. 

Mom's comment: "They take over four hours to bake, so no one who wasn't enthusiastic about it got one!"

Now you have THE Fruit Cake recipe.

More tidbits that came up later about the Cedar Avenue home, all in mother's voice:

Dad would leave early in the morning, when the house was a disaster, with kids toys everywhere, dishes in the sink and laundry to be folded.  But one morning he came back to the house about 10:30, just as I was preparing to give baby Elizabeth a bath.

"Wow!" he said.  "I’ve never seen the house look so clean!"

I said to him: "It looks this way at this time every morning."  

He had always left really early to go to work, and then by the time he came home at night, everything was a mess again, as I had four small children and dinner to fix. So I think he thought that's how the house was all the time.

Grandfather Sessions and Sterling were the bright lights of my life, that every once in a while they would pop in and say hello, and stay for a bit in the middle of the day,

Grandfather doted on Christine and Cynthia, one time coming over with a box from Kiddyville [the children's clothing and toy store in Provo].  He'd purchased two little pink satin bathrobes with matching satin slippers.  I thought that was so wonderful.

It was comfortable there living there in Provo.  We didn’t have a lot, and were eating on Grandmother and Grandfather's cast iron table and chairs, having put their patio furniture in our dining room.  When we moved to Salt Lake, we bought the maple table (not from Grandpa) and chairs, and gave them back their table.

Ironing

 

Ironing

Dictated to Elizabeth E.

 
       I don't know how I was I first started ironing, but it must have been when we got our first electric iron.  I don't think I would've been allowed near the old coal stove with all those old irons.  There were actually a series of flat irons that were warming there, and when the iron you were working with got too cool, since the handle was detachable, you clamped on a new hot iron which had been on the stove.  At some point it became my job to help with the ironing.  I ironed all the flat items: handkerchiefs, napkins, pillow slips and dishtowels.  We ironed everything in most days, even our bras and slips.  I always thought I would really like to iron something that maybe had ruffles and wasn't just entirely flat, but I guess I didn't realize that when I got older I have a lot more ironing to do so.   
       One day mother set me up in the upstairs bedroom ironing, because it was cooler room.  She said iron everything in the basket except your father's white shirt. When you get to that let me know and I'll come and iron it.  I ironed everything in the basket.  Of course by that time, I was ironing my father's workshirts, which were called that because fabric was so stiff and hard to manage.  I was always glad when I got those done.  Having finished up everything, I wished I was still ironing. Mother was busy in the kitchen doing something very important and so I thought I would iron that white shirt of my father's since I had watched her do it so many times that I know exactly how to do it.  So I did. 
       I then called to mother and I said, "I finished the ironing."  She came in and half-panicked said, "But you did not iron your father's white shirt,  did you?"  I said "Yes." She looked it over and pretty soon the smile broke out on her face. She told me I had done a really good job.  The only thing I hadn't done correctly was when I turn down the collar,  I had turned it down on the seam instead of just letting if fold naturally.  She corrected that and hung it on the line.

Sugar Cookies

 Both of these were in a plastic sleeve.  There is nothing on the back of the recipe card, no directions or anything.  I'm assuming it would go like this:

Cream together shortening and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add in eggs, one at a time. Add almond extract to milk and add to egg-sugar mixture.

Mix together all dry ingredients (flour, soda and salt) and add to the above.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

The doubling of the cookies (in the hand-writing) were written on the back of a cut-up typewritten page of which I can't make sense, but the following phrases are present:  Bernard Food Industries, quick freezing, Nature's nutrition, dried through extremely low vacuum (sic), dried food, resistance to bacteria, hermetically sealed cans.

White Fruit Cake (Aunt Louise)

 Written on Aunt Francis' stationary: Louise's recipe for White Fruit Cake.  Mother has multiple fruit cake recipes in these boxes; I hope I can find "her" recipe.