Grandma’s best recipes came from a time when nothing got wasted, and everything was done by memory, which is probably why you’ll never find them in a cookbook today.
A soft start
It’s exactly what it sounds like. Milk toast. All you have to do is dunk some toast into a bowl of warm milk and butter, along with a little sugar. You can add some of your favorite flavors, too, like cinnamon or salt.
It’s not exactly revolutionary, and it certainly won’t win any culinary award. But it’s the kind of food that’ll fill your stomach when you’re hungry and too lazy to cook anything. It’s soft and to the point.
Something over biscuits
Tomato gravy over biscuits isn’t exactly a breakfast food, but it’s also not something for supper, either. Most grandmas made it by cooking tomatoes with some flour and fat. However, the best kind had some bacon drippings in it. They’d then spoon it all over biscuits.
The whole meal is kind of its own thing, not marinara, and not sausage gravy, either. That’s probably why you’ll never find it in any modern cookbooks. It’s a strange-sounding dish, sure, but don’t knock it until you try it. All that gravy over a hot biscuit? Delicious.
The sliced-up pan
Grandmas never made fried cornmeal mush because someone in the house was craving ‘mush.’ It’s hardly an appealing meal name, after all. But what made it so popular was the fact that you could use yesterday’s pot of cornmeal to create it.
It’s a deliciously crispy breakfast. Unfortunately, a lot of modern recipes rely on making everything from scratch and don’t teach you about reusing leftovers.
The pie with a funny name
No, it’s not a joke. Vinegar pie was a genuine pantry pie that some grandmas made when they didn’t have any fruit or when they didn’t want to spend any more cash. Yes, it tastes tart, if you’re wondering. There are lots of alternative versions of the recipe.
A few of them tell you to use eggs and butter, but the simplest ones say you only need sugar, flour, water, vinegar, and a crust. It’s the pie’s name that’s probably killed it off. A ‘vinegar pie’ doesn’t exactly sound like the most delicious of desserts, does it?
The cake missing three things
That’s not all for cakes. A lot of grandmas grew up during harder times, like the Great Depression, and that’s when depression cake was popular. You don’t need eggs or milk. Butter? Don’t bother. All you need is some flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, oil, vinegar, and water.
The vinegar and baking soda help the whole thing to rise. Don’t expect anything too amazing, though. It’s not exactly delicious, but it did the job when Grandma wanted to make a hassle-free cake.
The breakfast slice
With a name like ‘Scrapple,’ it’s not hard to guess what’s in this meal. Scraps. Pork scraps, specifically, along with cornmeal or flour and some spices, all of which you shape into a loaf. Then you slice it and fry it.
The dish has origins in Pennsylvania Dutch culture and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. Anyone who grew up eating it is ready to defend it, although people outside of those places might not know about it. You’re not going to find many modern recipes calling for using pork scraps as a meal.
The coffee in the pan
Who knew that leftover coffee could be so useful? Grandma does, for one. You just throw the leftover coffee into a skillet, after you’ve cooked country ham, to make red-eye gravy. The coffee pulls up all the browned bits in the drippings.
The result isn’t something you’ll find in a restaurant, mostly because it’s so thin and salty. Don’t forget that it’s sharp, too. But the gravy goes well with something like ham or biscuits, maybe even grits.
The sweet thing on white bread
Nobody’s going to say they want to eat a sugar sandwich. It’s one of those desserts that just got made. To make it, grandmas got some white bread and spread some butter or margarine on it. Then comes the sugar. Dessert made.
You could make it slightly fancier by adding some cinnamon, but really, the basic version was good enough. It’s too simple for any recipe book to ever include it.
The cob trick
You might think that, once you’ve eaten some corn, the cob’s trash. But just ask Grandma. She knows that you can use the naked cobs to make corn cob jelly, a kind of pale, corn-sweet liquid. Add some sugar and pectin to the liquid to make the jelly.
It’s weird, yes, but it’s also one of the best ways to avoid wasting. Modern cookbooks use the cob for stock or compost. The idea of making jelly out of corn cobs is something that a lot of people today don’t really know about.
The yard greens
The charm of dandelion greens with bacon grease comes from how practical it is. Pick some young dandelion leaves and wash them really well. Then, cook or wilt them with some bacon grease, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Throw in some bits of bacon or ham, too, if you want.
The leaves themselves are pretty bitter, and that’s where the grease does a lot of the heavy lifting to make it taste better. Grandma knew all about how to use stuff in the yard as a side dish.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
