{"id":34165,"date":"2024-08-12T17:47:10","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T23:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/?p=34165"},"modified":"2024-08-12T17:47:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T23:47:10","slug":"grandmas-recipe-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/grandmas-recipe-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandma&#8217;s Recipe Box"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> my wife, who is the world&#8217;s best cook, made old fashioned English toffee for me. I didn&#8217;t ask her to and we did not even discuss it. She just did it not knowing that it would bring back a rush of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> memories.<\/p>\n<p>Food, like movies and music and just about anything else traditional, is something we hang on to at <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a>. We <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/sneaking-christmas\/\">love<\/a> the new stuff. But we really <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/sneaking-christmas\/\">love<\/a> the old stuff. And we want it again and again.<\/p>\n<p>Part of my wife&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/sneaking-christmas\/\">love<\/a> for food comes from the connection it gives her to others. She&#8217;s legendary, of course, among our children. Sandy makes a chicken pot pie and her chicks come running home at the first whiff of it.<\/p>\n<p>As Gram, she&#8217;s legendary for many things: bread, pea salad, the world&#8217;s softest cookies and all manner of pies.<\/p>\n<p>Among her prized possessions are the recipe boxes of two grandmothers &#8211; one each from her Mom and Dad&#8217;s sides of the family. Nobody else wanted these well loved relics of days gone by. They are just as you suppose &#8211; small wooden boxes filled with index cards, folded up bits of paper, and even napkins with quick scribbles.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, they have sentimental value. Handwriting in any form is cherish after one passes on but to have it in the form of a beloved recipe seems to be an expression of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/sneaking-christmas\/\">love<\/a> that never fades. She goes to the boxes all the time for inspiration and to remember.<\/p>\n<p>She pulled the boxes when she made the English toffee. I don&#8217;t know how she settled on the final recipe but there was something in the way it looked and smelled and tasted that took me back to my Grandma.<\/p>\n<p>My Grandma was such a sensible lady. Eating at her house meant getting a balanced meal.<\/p>\n<p>My wife never got to meet her but I&#8217;m thought many times how famously they would have gotten along. As breadmakers, they are exactly the same. I can remember Grandma rolling her dough &#8211; she was famous for her wheat rolls, which she made fresh everyday &#8211; and she would comment about it. &#8220;Oh, these are going to be good,&#8221; she would say. Or, &#8220;The humidity is way too high today for these to turn out right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For the simple knave I was Grandma&#8217;s rolls were consistently great. No matter the humidity or how much she apologized in advance when they did not meet her standards. My wife is the very same way.<\/p>\n<p>So when the toffee came last <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> it was a real treat because Grandma only made it at <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a>. And it wasn&#8217;t a feature &#8211; it was an accessory to an otherwise healthy meal. I can remember as a kid savoring every bite because when it was gone it was gone &#8211; and it wouldn&#8217;t be back until next <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Food and <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/sneaking-christmas\/\">love<\/a> and Grandmas are just that way. Special. Meant to be remembered. And savored.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone has someone&#8217;s old recipe box hanging around. Everyone has their favorite <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> recipes as well.<\/p>\n<p>For years we have been building a repository of recipes at our sister site, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/merrychristmasrecipes.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MerryChristmasRecipes.com<\/a><\/strong>. It&#8217;s a simple site. It&#8217;s just about <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> foods.<\/p>\n<p>We believe the time has come for us to step on the gas a bit when it comes to building up our recipe database. We have set up a new <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/home\/christmas-events\/\">Christmas event<\/a> here at MyMerryChristmas and you are all invited to participate.<\/p>\n<p>I figure if we all chip in, by the time another 30 years in our history rolls by, we should have at least a couple of million <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> recipes.<\/p>\n<p>Our new <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/home\/christmas-events\/share-a-recipe\/\">Share-a-Recipe event<\/a> is designed to reward you for your Grandma&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> recipes &#8211; you know, your favorites. Stop being so selfish and start sharing your Grandma with the rest of us.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re reward you. See the <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/home\/christmas-events\/share-a-recipe\/\">Share-a-Recipe<\/a> page for details but basically it boils down to this: a free 1-year premiere membership to the <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/home\/christmas-events\/annual-christmas-card-exchange\/\">Merry Forums<\/a> if you share. It&#8217;s an awesome deal because your Grandma deserves the recognition for making those <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> goodies for you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Christmas my wife, who is the world&#8217;s best cook, made old fashioned English toffee for me. I didn&#8217;t ask her to and we did not even discuss it. She just did it not knowing that it would bring back a rush of Christmas memories. Food, like movies and music and just about anything else [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"Grandma's Recipe Box | MyMerryChristmas.com","_seopress_titles_desc":"Somewhere in your home right now is Grandma's recipe box - and it contains secrets of Christmas love that you need to share with the world.","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":201,"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,85,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-events","category-christmas-foods","category-christmas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}