Scrunchies with Frank Sinatra

My mother married in 1959. She kept her loose-leaf recipes in a pale green index card tin, which housed a set of printed recipe cards and various dividers. She, and most of her children, had added our own recipes through the 1970s and beyond. The day I almost taught myself to type, I created a recipe for 'Cjeese and Fish Pid'. The ingredients include one packet of white sauce mix, and the instructions advise the cook to top the finished pie as follows:
'corer wity cheeae'.
I was witty even then!

The pale green tin survived the Great Kitchen Flood of 2010 ((most of the recipe books perished). When my mother moved out, or rather didn't exactly move out in the accepted sense of the word, earlier this year, she said that my niece F could have the tin, because F greatly admired its retro-cool looks.

F took the tin, and the recipes. She took the recipes out. A couple of weeks later, mother/grandmother phoned up. She needed HER mother's legendary recipe for drop scones. It had been in the tin.

Fortunately for everyone, F had not disposed of the recipes, just removed them. The day, and tempers, were saved. If only it had been as easy with her historic wedding and divorce certificates...

After this, my sister Kate decided that I should keep the recipes, as I was the one most likely to be interested in them. Of course, I would never be allowed to throw them out. They might be called upon at any moment. If I were to leave the country, I should make appropriate arrangements for the recipes...

The only problem was, I no longer had the lovely tin. F had it. Fine, I thought, I'll put something together. Yesterday, I finally managed to do so, flexing my creative muscles for the first time in many months.

Of course I then went through the printed cards, magazine cuttings, and scraps of paper. My mother seems to have been extraordinarily fond of making cheesecake! Another early souvenir is a recipe for chilled cream cheese soup (mousse). I'll pass on that. Half of the recipes seem to have vanished entirely. No great loss for me. The treasured family ones are still there.

What caught my eye in the printed cards, each featuring Royal Baking Powder, was the inclusion, in the recipe above, of a Frank Sinatra LP. That dates it! I also saw a hairbrush in the right, but CleanSteve assures me it's a pair of serving tongs, 50s-style.

As I have already mentioned, my mother married in 1959. She is marrying again in six weeks' time. She was never a Sinatra fan, nor a new-fangled teenager, but I'm glad that this piece of social history survives in the photograph. I shall take the card along to my 1950s Literature and Social History class next week, along with the leaflet for a Jaffle pressure toaster.

This amazing gadget promises the housewife that she can defeat rationing by making a toasted sandwich for her man's lunch, filled with leftover vegetables, chicken or rabbit, with the addition of a little gravy. It's equally delicious served either cold or hot!

Perhaps tomorrow morning I'll knock up a circular toastie filled with leftover cauliflower and chicken curry, and leave it to cool for Steve's packed lunch...