Foods Granny Made and other treats.

[Gillg]

I still make Christmas puddings for all the family from Grannie's recipe.  It's better than my teetotal mother's, which has no hooch in it, but has the words "an eggcup full of rum, if desired" in disapproving brackets!

[Erin2012]

Lefsa!

A Norwegian soft, flatbread that I think she made from potatoes... We would eat it cold with butter and sugar.

We arent Norwegian, so she must have learned from neighbors in northern Minnesota.

Havent had it in years....

[loobylooayr]

The thing I remember most though is the non alcoholic ginger wine that she made every Christmas. When we were young we had it diluted with lemonade, but as we got older we drank it neat. She didn't write down the recipe and it died with her. The nearest I've found to it was a bottle of ginger wine that I got from a craft fair.

My Gran made ginger wine too. It was (and still is) in some areas of Scotland traditional to make your own ginger or blackcurrant wine for Ne'erday. I was never that keen on my Gran's ginger wine as it burned my throat 
Groom  - I'm sure someone somewhere will have a ginger wine recipe - The Co-op up here still sell tons of the little bottles of ginger essence in the run up to Xmas.

I also loved my paternal Gran's tattie soup and stovies.
My maternal Gran was more exotic and made things like curried rice and orange chicken. She was a wonderful baker too and her Victoria sponge and Fruitloaf were to die for.
Just remembered a really sweet dessert she used to make which we called "Fluff" - this was a table jelly whisked when just dissolved with a tin of evaporated milk - which made a fruity fluff
Haven't had that in years.
Nice to think about my Grans for a wee moment. Bless them both

Looby

[groom]

Just remembered a really sweet dessert she used to make which we called "Fluff" - this was a table jelly whisked when just dissolved with a tin of evaporated milk - which made a fruity fluff

That was one of the first things we made in Domestic Science ( as it was called then) in school, I remember still I used a lime jelly.

My grandmother used to make pink blancmange in a rabbit mould.

[Gillg]

Can't remember what we called "Fluff", but I know it involved whisking the evaporated milk till frothy before combining it with the melted jelly.  This sometimes separated out into two layers as the pudding set.  Simple, but spectacular!

Nigella Lawson has a posh recipe for it (involves jelly crystals) and so does Sophie Dahl.

[california dreamin]

Hello all,

Just reading through this thread - and funnily enough I have found a recipe only yesterday in an old notebook that belonged to both my Gran and Mum  . The attached recipe for 'Whipped cream' sounds like the 'Fluff' you describe.  It is written in a juvenile version of my Mum's handwriting.  So I assume she must have copied this out from domestic science at school sometime in the late 30's/or 40's.  I will just make the point I have never tasted this -  so nothing she ever made us as children!

[LizzieW]

Treetotal - I used to make Millionaires Shortbread frequently for my children, well before I was a granny.  [Most of my grandchildren call me Nan, or Nanny (because my son's M.I.L wanted to be granny and said I had to be Nanny  to the first grandchild in the family, so all my other grandchildren have followed suit, except oddly my 5 year old granddaughter (she has a brother and a sister who call me Nanny) and she calls me Granny - of course my American granddaughter used to call me Grandmom].

My maternal gran lived with us but died when I was 7 and I don't really remember her cooking, although I'm sure she did as my mum had a shop.  My paternal gran lived further away and I don't know what her cooking was like as when we visited we usually had a salad tea.

One of my granddaughters' favourites when she used to come round after school was Paprika chicken.  Very easy, just sprinkle paprika over a chicken breast, fry until cooked and serve with pasta with butter stirred through it.

The pudding which people are calling "fluff", I remember as Honeycomb mould.  I remember having it at my friend's house when I was about 12 and wondering what it was.  Basically you make a jelly, then whip in evaporated milk and leave it to set.  It separates out so that you get a two layer dessert.

My mum was a plain cook, so we mainly had roasts, sausages, chops etc.  Any braised meats or stews I used to cook, they were my speciality when I was a child. 

We did have mock cream during the war which was made by making a custard with cornflour and milk, whipping butter and sugar together and stirring in the cornflour and vanilla.  I loved it, especially with bilberry flan for a pudding with our school dinners.  Mind you the cooks always made it wrong, so instead of coming out thickish, it was runny with bits in it, probably because they didn't let the cornflour mixture go cold before adding it to the butter and sugar, but I still loved it.

[Clarkey500]

My granny, although not the best of cooks, uses a family recipe for macaroni cheese, which was cooked by her grandmother! It's different to any other macaroni cheese I've tasted, and my favourite! It must be good to have been passed down so many times!

[mrs.tenacious]

Not my grannies, but my great-aunt.  She and her husband emigrated to Australia in the late 40s. My great-uncle opened the first drive-in cinema in Australia, but first my aunt cooked for the workers on a sheep farm, and was a wonderful cook. She used to ship out home-made Xmas puddings or cakes to the family back in the UK for many years (probably at some expense), and the shape used to determine whether it was pudding or cake.  Delicious, whichever it was.

They returned to the UK in the early 70s when they retired.  When we visited, Aunty Doris would lay on a full roast beef/yorkshire pudding lunch with home-made pie for dessert.  Her beef and gravy was to die-for, the yorkshires always came out massive and perfect, and I've never found anyone who made better pastry from scratch for the pie.

Lunch (a FULL plateful plus pudding) was served at 1pm.  At 5pm she served full tea. Sandwiches and home-made, scrumptious cakes. 

I don't know how we managed to 'put it all away' - needless to say, we used to manage it somehow but it involved a lot of dragging ourselves to the car and driving home in a rather soporific state!