My mother taught me many things. She still teaches me today through the strangest of mediums...her recipe box. One of my most cherished possessions, it is a stained, old tin box that I bought for her when I was six or seven..stuffed to capacity with recipe cards and yellowed, folded bits of paper...scraps cut from magazines and the backs of tin cans. On the back of the box, there is a company decal from some place my father worked in the 70's...stuck on with grubby, little fingers and never peeled off. In the bottom of the box, beneath the recipes, there are two bits of paper with novena prayers, offered for a hope I will never know.
It is more than just a tin box. It is history... MY family history...remnants of happy times and holidays...fragments of friendships and church tombolas, pot-luck suppers and Sunday dinners.
Most of the recipes are written in my mothers fine, even hand, some in childish scrawl, many in the hand of those who shared them...each of them tells a story. Each card, a treasure to me.
I think my mother knew that one day, I would learn to love to cook. I'm sure she despaired that I would ever settle down, yet somehow, she knew that the recipe box (and her cherished recipe books) would become a way to communicate with me when she could no longer be here to guide me through life. She scratched little notes of encouragement and wrote a running side-bar of directions - to get me through the recipe with the least likelihood for disaster and to get me through a life without her...also, with the least likelihood for disaster.
In an effort to preserve these treasures and to share the magic of the recipe box with my own children and grandchildren, I'll share the first and most mystical recipe of all. Grandma's Buns.
Grandma.(Josie Erickson, born 1897, Tooele, Washington) All 5'11 formidable inches of her, was picture perfect grandmother. She almost always wore dresses and like all Ericksons, had blue, blue eyes. She smelled like rose water and she smiled more than laughed, and listened more than talked. I never heard her raise her voice and I only twice saw her cry. She said "warsh" instead of "wash" and "crick" instead of "creek", and Grandma Erickson baked the most amazing buns.
My mother and my father's mother remained very good friends, even after my parents divorced. I spent countless week-ends in my granmother's (also picture perfect) little house in Magrath, Alberta. It was a tiny, two bedroom bungalow with gnarly old trees in front and flower boxes filled with geraniums in front of the kitchen and front-room windows.
Her house always smelled like fresh-baked bread and something savoury...and my mother was on a mission to learn how to bake those buns. I think she must've determined that my grandma was holding out on her, because there are three cards titled, "Grandma's buns" in the recipe box...each a little different from the other.
Like most women of her generation, Grandma probably never had a recipe box. She baked buns and bread for five children in a tiny little two bedroom house on the Southern Alberta prairie. She lived and worked on the farm and she baked her bread in an old, wood stove.. Her recipe consisted of a pinch of this and a dash of that and she improvised when there was an ingredient missing...
I cook in much kinder conditions...but when I make Grandma's Buns something magical happens... I swear it's as if we all make the bread together. Her hands, my mother's hands and my hands all work the dough...kneading in a rhythm as old as man. Everything about Grandma's buns gives my soul comfort. The smooth, warm feel of the dough beneath the heel of my hand, the smell of them baking in the oven, and the Sunday dinner taste of them. I am transported to a time when I was young and safe and nurtured...when I had a mother and a grandmother watching over me and I was safe and loved.
The first ( and probably my favourite) of the recipes is as follows:
Sweet Rolls - Grandma's - 1976 May
Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water with 1 tsp sugar added - Scald 2 cups milk - Add 4 Tbsp shortening to melt - Add sugar (6 Tbsp) and1 tsp salt - Cool to lukewarm - Add 2 well beaten eggs - Add to yeast mixture and mix well - Add 3 to 3 1/2 cups flour and beat well in mixer - Add remaining flour (3 cups) by hand - Put in well greased bowl and allow to rise to double in bulk - Punch down and allow to rise again if you like - Not necessary - Make rolls - Cinnamon rolls.
That's it. Mystical, magic recipe #1.
The 2nd..clearly for when there is no fresh milk handy:
1979 - Grandma's Buns and Cinnamon Rolls
Dissolve 1 Tbsp yeast in 1/2 cup water - Stir to dissolve - 1 Tsp sugar before adding yeast
To 1 1/2 cups of boiling water add 1/4 lb butter or marg - Add 6 Tbsp sugar - 1 tsp salt - When marg melted add 2 well-beaten eggs and 1 small can of evaporated milk. (And yeast) Add 3-4 cups flour - Mix well - Add remaining 2 cups flour - Dough should be sticky still - grease hands with butter or bacon fat to make it easy to handle (knead) - Can add a little more flour - like a cup or two.
And the third...an abbreviated version of the same:
Grandma's Buns
Dissolve yeast - 1/2 cup water - I tsp sugar
1 1/2 boiling water - Add 1/4 lb butter or marg - Add 6 Tbsp sugar - 1 tsp salt - When marg melted add 2 well beaten eggs and 1 small can evap milk. Add 3-4 cups flour. Well mixed - Add remainder (2 cups) flour. dough should be sticky still.
As I said, I use a hybrid version of all three recipes...I usually start with 2 cups of milk and I knead in the last 2 cups of flour until the dough is smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes). I let it rise once, punch it down and let it rise again. Then I make one tray of buns (my favourite are clover leaf) and usually make a tray of cinnamon buns (my brother's and my certainly Keith's favourite iteration of Grandma's buns)
Cinnamon Buns
Make Grandma Erickson's bun recipe and roll dough into a 15"X10" inch rectangle. Spread 1/2 stick of softened butter (4 Tbsp) over dough - not quite to the edge. Mix 1/2 cup brown sugar with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Spread evenly over dough. From the long end, roll the dough...pinch the ends in and pinch a seam along the end. Cut into 12 equal pieces and place in a greased 9"X13" pan and let rise again for 40-45 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 and bake until golden brown (20-25 minutes)
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