In the vein of a few blogs I posted earlier this year -- Recipes to Die For and The Puerto Rican Rice Experiment -- I must say perhaps several even more sought after, and more difficult to locate recipes likely lie in all of our ancestors' roots.
Scott was blessed to get many of his mom's recipes before she passed away, and over the years I have picked my own mother's brain for many of my childhood favorites, including my Gramma Marian's meatballs, which are still my favorite of all time.
And a few years after my paternal Gramma Millie's death, my Aunt Jo gifted us grandkids with scrapbooks made of copies of my paternal grandmother's recipes which were all handwritten on 3x5 recipe cards. I can think of few things more priceless than these recipes, many of which I have committed to memory, and plan to commit to my computer hard drive shortly after I finish this blog so our children and grandchildren can have them as well.
So, the reason for me writing this blog is twofold.
The first is purely selfish -- Scott's Polish grandmother, Grandma P, who passed away some years ago, made a chocolate cake which I know very little about save that:
1) it is the only chocolate cake he will eat
2) it is black as night
3) it contains coffee
4) no one in the family has the recipe
I am hoping one of the readers here on OnMilwaukee.com may have this recipe for a traditional Polish chocolate cake and will share it with me for the holidays. My efforts to find a recipe online left me with one chocolate cake recipe from cooks.com which he sampled and said simply, "Nope, that's not it." Please, Polish descended readers, if you have this recipe, please, please share; we failed to have it passed down and now it is lost.
The second reason for this blog is to urge you to use the holidays as a time to sit down with your beloved parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and anyone else out there who makes a dish you love and ask them for the recipe.
Then, many years from now when these loved ones are no longer in your life, you can still make the dish, and when others compliment you on your cooking, you can smile and say proudly, "that recipe is from my grandma/grandpa/uncle/aunt/mom/dad, and I've loved it since I was a child."
And that way, very simply, you succeed in carrying on family traditions and memories for years and generations to come.
Amy L. Schubert is a 15-year veteran of the hospitality industry and has worked in every aspect of bar and restaurant operations. A graduate of Marquette University (B.A.-Writing Intensive English, 1997) and UW-Milwaukee (M.A.-Rhetoric, Composition, and Professional Writing, 2001), Amy still occasionally moonlights as a guest bartender and she mixes a mean martini.
The restaurant business seems to be in Amy’s blood, and she prides herself in researching and experimenting with culinary combinations and cooking techniques in her own kitchen as well as in friends’ restaurants. Both she and her husband, Scott, are avid cooks and “wine heads,” and love to entertain friends, family and neighbors as frequently as possible.
Amy and Scott live with their boys, Alex and Nick, in Bay View, where they are all very active in the community. Amy finds great pleasure in sharing her knowledge and passions for food and writing in her contributions to OnMilwaukee.com.
