♥ Book of my Heart ♥

Unlike what most people mean when they say, “the book of my heart” this isn’t a book I wrote. This is a book I own that grows dearer and dearer to me every year and lives deep in my heart.

Do you have a favorite cookbook? Mine’s called Fancy Country Cooking from the First Christian Church. (I have another extra-special-to-me cook book my friend Marilyn made for me, but I’ll tell you about that another time.) Fancy Country Cooking is one of those cookbooks that churches put together, then sell to each other and their friends.

This book means so much to me because it has recipes from so many of the people I’ve known most of my life–many who are gone. Some have moved away, some have died, even some who’ve grown up and moved to other towns and churches.

Sometimes when I look through it, like this morning, I can barely see the pages for the tears. I see “Ruth Wiles Sugared Popcorn”, and remember my piano teacher. Everyone who knew her called her Mitten.

We always scheduled my lesson for the last one in the day so afterward, we could have hot tea and sugared popcorn (I call it sticky popcorn) and knit together. Mitten was one of the last people I said goodbye to when I went to college.

On another page I find Poppy Seed Bread by Jean O’Kief. Mrs. O’Kief was one of the most loved women in C-Town. She was a teacher who didn’t believe there was ever a bad child. She wouldn’t listen to gossip and wouldn’t even let a kid talk bad about himself.

I didn’t have her for a teacher, but I did have her for a customer at Four Seasons, the dress shop my mother owned. She appreciated everything in the store, the hard work we did and the fact that we had such pretty things in a small town. 

Grandmother’s dressing is in this cook book.

Miss Holler, my 6th grade teacher’s sugar cookies.

And more pecan pie recipes than I ever knew existed.

On page G-2 is a recipe my mom put in. It’s called Momma’s Blue Ribbon Hot Rolls. To be honest, I don’t remember Mom making them very often (if at all.) But oh, my goodness! When Grandma made them, the house filled with the wonderful perfume of rising yeast. (To be honest, I like the dough better than I did the baked rolls.)

When Grandma lived on the west side of C-Town, we had several holiday meals in that rambling old two-story house. There wasn’t much heat except for a gas stove in the living room and the cook stove in the kitchen, but that made the rolls that much easier to smell!

Grandma Reeves’s rolls won the Blue Ribbon at the Cherokee County fair at Tahlequah two years in a row.  

Image via Wikipedia

 

Here’s the recipe:

Momma’s Blue Ribbon hot Rolls

• Scald 2 C. milk

Add:

• 1-3/4 C. cold water
• Pour over
•              2 tsp salt 
•              5 T Crisco, melted
•              1/2 C sugar

Stir until the milk, water, sugar mixture is lukewarm.

Add 2 cakes yeast mixed with 1/4 C lukewarm water.

• Add 10 C flour, working until dough is stiff.
• Let set on floured board 10 minutes.
• Work down (knead) and put in greased pan (or bowl).
• Let rise 45 minutes to 1 hour.
• Work down.
• Let rise again until finger prints stay in dough when pinched. (I don’t know how long that is. Probably at least 30 minutes.)
• Make into rolls
• Let rise 30 minutes.

Bake 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

 I tried making rolls once when I was first married. I used hot water with the yeast instead of lukewarm. Needless to say, I killed the little beasties and the rolls didn’t rise. My bil named them “eggs”, because they looked like brown hen eggs.

I won’t make that mistake again! But I don’t make hot rolls all that often, either. And if I do, that bil won’t get any. LOL!

Do you have a cook book that has a place deep in your heart? Care to share???