Grandma Olson’s Recipe Box

A few weeks ago, my dad came by after work to take Jude to Karate. Dad takes Jude to Karate (almost) every Monday after work. He usually works in the area, and can fairly easily schedule Monday jobs such that he doesn’t have to go too far out of his way to come by. He really enjoys the time with his oldest grandson, and we appreciate that he tries to take Jude when he can.

While he was here (he sometimes shows up hours early and hangs out at the house), we got to talking food. I had a bunch of green tomatoes that I had no use for. The frost had killed the plants, and so the tomatoes needed to be picked. He said that my Grandma, his mom, used to have a recipe for a relish that used green tomatoes. When she died, my cousin Kiley, out in California, got her recipe box. It was something he really wanted, and he got it. Since it’s been 16 years since she died, I had forgotten about most of the details, like that all of us grandkids got to pick something we really wanted from her apartment to have before the family went through he things. Kiley went straight for the recipes.

I got to thinking it would be great to get my hands on that box. I tracked down Kiley via his dad, my uncle, and asked if I could borrow the recipes so I could scan them into the computer and put them into electronic form. Kiley’s family uses many of the recipes, but they’ve long ago memorized their favorites, and have little actual need of the cards any more, so he was happy to send them to me. I got them yesterday, and went right to work scanning them so that I can send the box back to Kiley. It has a lot of sentimental value, I want to be sure he gets them back.

My plan is to refer to the scans and type them out. I’ll post some of them here. First up will be her Lefse recipe. My hope is to eventually have them all in typed format that can easily be copied and pasted. Maybe I’ll even put together an ebook, “Grandma Olson’s Cookbook” or something along those lines. Until then, the easiest way to see what recipes have been posted is to click here.