Cooking from the Past

I have been helping my mom lately clean out her house because she has been downsizing to a smaller place. I have found some great old cookbooks. Some were my mother's and some belonged to my dad's mom, my grandmother. One I found was dated back to 1915. It was my Grandmother's. It is called The Housekeepers Handy Book. It is full of homemaking ideas and recipes. It has alot of really cute words in it we don't hear anymore. Like reminding you to set a dainty table for a sick person. I  wonder was this cookbook a wedding gift or something she purchased when she was young and put in a hope chest. Alot of the recipes would need to be adapted for sure. I might try to adapt some and then include them here on my blog. Here is a picture of the  

book and a picture of my grandmother is above, along others of my ancestors. She is the one in the middle sitting down and holding her hat. She's pretty isn't she?

Another book I found was published in the 1940's. I plan to try and use some of those recipes, also.  There were many more cookbooks. All from my grandmother. What I found interesting was almost all of these books when I opened them up had recipe's cutout from other sources, mostly magazines, stuck in the book.  I never do that. I should, though.  I need to be better about looking for recipes. I am going to be trying some of these and I will post some of them here.

There were a couple of other cookbooks I found. These are not so old. They were published in the 1960's. They were published by Better Homes and Gardens. One was a desert cookbook. The other was a cookbook for chicken, turkey and other game birds.

I tried the chicken parmesan recipe last night. I had to adapt a couple of things but this was the best way to make parmesan chicken I had ever tasted.  I am not a real big fan of parmesan chicken so I wasn't sure I wanted to try it but I did. I am so glad I did.

Here are the list of ingredients I used:

1 cup crushed packaged chicken flavored Stove-Top stuffing mix.

2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon of snipped parsley

2-3 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast

1/2 cup I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, melted.

I combined the stuffing mix, cheese and parsley, dipped the chicken in the melted butter and then rolled the chicken in the mixture. Then placed in large shallow baking pan. Sprinkled with the remaining butter and crumbs. I baked it at 375 degrees for about and hour.

This was so delicious.

Little by little I will try to post what the other cookbooks are and some of the good recipes found in them and these above.

One more thing I have to mention that speaks so of the past is instead of paper clips marking certain pages, there were bobby pins. I love learning about women of the past.