Grandma Today: Traditional Treats for Busy Cooks

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Today, grandmother is as likely to spend her days at the computer screen
as at the oven door. Yet grandmothers are expected to be good cooks,
producers of wonderful dishes no one else in the family has the time or
skill to produce. Grandma Today, a sequel to Grandma’s Touch, can help
perpetuate the myth.

Compared to those in use when grandmother was learning to cook, these
recipes are simplified, lightened, and touched with shortcuts. Yet they
suggest hours in the kitchen, near-mystical skills, and the quality we
associate with an earlier time.

Grandmothers, of course, can be of any ethnic origin and the collection
includes favorites from British, Mexican, French, Irish, German,
Italian, Chinese, Russian, Canadian, Scandinavian, and Ukrainian
kitchens.

The collection covers the usual range, from soup to dessert, with
sections on bread-making and recipes for children to make. U.S. standard
and metric measurements are given, although the recipes have not been
tested in metric. The recipes use ingredients that, for the most part,
are readily available. There could be some confusion when a recipe calls
for wheat (whole? cracked? ground? hulled?) or gives directions to use
gelatin when a flavored and sweetened gelatin dessert powder is
intended. However, these situations are infrequent and do not seriously
detract from this substantial, practical collection.