G's Blue Eyes: The Joy of Cooking (ok, this is one book I don't actually own)

I am the proud owner of 4 generations of family cookbooks. I love having these treasured books and clippings and recipe cards in my kitchen if for nothing more than inspiration. There is the tattered Better Homes and Gardens ubiquitous red and white checked tome that belonged to my father's mother, the grandmother that I never met. She passed away while my mother was pregnant with me. This book came to me surprisingly when my step-grandmother passed away. She had it in her cookbook collection. While my mother and I cleaned out her little kitchen in her retirement apartment I surreptitiously eyed those books and the overflowing recipe box that sat beside them. My mother must have seen my desire and I went home with several well-worn volumes spanning at least 4 decades and the aforementioned recipe box. I was thrilled to discover later, when I sat down to flip through my treasure, that that old BHG had belonged to my grandmother! I also have about a dozen pieces of a McCall's homemaker library from the early 60's that were my mother's when she was a new bride. I have another entertaining guide (complete not only with recipes, but centerpiece designs, etiquette rules, party games, cocktails, etc.) that was inscribed from my great-grandmother to my grandmother in 1959 "for your love of entertaining." And I have a cookbook that must have been my great-grandmother's as it is dated 1936. This is the one I consulted to make blueberry jam, which turned out to be blueberry conserves.

I have to admit that I cheated a bit and used store bought blueberries. Unfortunately I haven't found the time to go blueberry picking. I also decided to make stewed rhubarb using a recipe I learned in my childhood. My grandmother (who we lived with, my maternal grandmother) would pick fresh rhubarb from her garden right outside the back door and cook it down with sugar, a little water, a little salt and lemon juice. Then we would eat the warm stew over crunchy toast-rye is the best. YUM!!

The blueberry conserve in my great-grandmother's recipe book turned out to be so easy I really didn't even need a recipe. 1 cup berries to 3/4 cup sugar, smash some berries to start the juice and cook till desired consistancy. This is literally about all the recipe consisted of. I love that old cookbook. It doesn't bother with temperatures or even necessarily measurements. This was a book designed for women who knew their way around the kitchen and just needed the barest guidelines to produce something wonderful. "A temperate flame," "a handful of flour," "a hot oven"...I love it.

Here are my smashed blueberries, perhaps my favorite part of this exercise. I do love to smash produce!

G, of course, accompanied me in the kitchen. She had a wonderful time banging on the dog's water dish. It makes a delightful clanging sound! (This proves I am not uptight about a few germs, right?)

And, G too, appreciates my vaunted cookbook collection. Hopefully these books survive long enough to be passed on to her.

While I was at the store, these delicious concord grapes called out to me. I had to pick up a quart. Aren't they the very essence of those first days of fall? Before you really get into the whole pumpkin, apple, corn-husk fever that overtakes you somewhere around late September.

Here is my finished blueberry conserve. I think I may have let the sugar crystallize a bit...hmmm, that old cookbook forgot to warn about that. Those women...they just knew. Anyway, I won't make that mistake again. But I am pretty proud of my blue jelly jar.