In 2019 my gramma June died. She was the last of my grandparents and she was a firecracker. She was always stylish and had an amazing sense of humor. She knew how to tell stories and was deeply creative (more on that in a future post).
June was born in 1933 in Emerald, Wisconsin. A VERY tiny town amongst other tiny towns. When she was 22, she married my grandpa and they had 5 kids together. They fostered at least one little girl and my gramma seemed to be always sewing something for the house or the kids or the neighbors’ kids, or baking and cooking for her growing brood and all the various church functions, house parties, Tupperware parties and quilt guild meetings.
Gramma June in 1950s
May 1967 - Gramma June hanging out in the kitchen
She started collecting recipes when she was a teenager and continued to clip and collect recipes the rest of her life. She was a collector of many things but her collection of recipes is special.
For some of us, when we look at a family recipe we have a visceral reaction to them. They bring up specific times spent together, family traditions that may or may not make sense, and they seem to represent the depth of care and attachment to the person who made them.
This is really why my sister and I felt a compulsion to catalogue my gramma’s recipe collection. We loved them - they were funny (partly because of their vintage nature and partly because of my gramma’s honest notes on them) and they reminded us of her. We wanted to preserve this part of our memory of her - we also wanted to share it together and share it with our kids. We wanted to make sure our whole family had access to them.
So naturally I built a website for our project (click the button below to check it out!). My sister, Emily, and I started going through our gramma’s recipes, scanning them in and organizing them, picking out and planning which ones to try…we cooked some on our own and cooked some “together” over Zoom since we were living in different states at the time.
I think the whole project (which is still in progress as there are so many recipes…) did what cooking has a tendency to do — which I know my gramma knew — it brought my sister and I closer together and it brought my family together as they shared their memories of each thing we cooked over on our Facebook page. Cooking is kind of amazing that way - it makes us feel comforted and taken care of.
Left to Right: Emily, Gramma June, Deanna- cooking for a family get together in gramma’s log cabin kitchen. We are all wearing yellow t-shirts that we ironed on fabric cut-outs to.