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Just realized writing down my grandmother's tamale recipe beat any photo I have of her
I tried to make her tamales from memory last Christmas and got the masa all wrong, way too dry. Called my aunt in San Antonio and she walked me through the lard to broth ratio, and the next batch came out right. Now I keep a notebook in the kitchen and write down every old recipe anyone in my family mentions, has anyone else started doing this after losing someone?
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the_diana9d ago
The "walked me through the lard to broth ratio" part really got me because that's exactly the kind of thing that never makes it into a written recipe, it only lives in someone's hands and memory. I used to roll my eyes at my mom for scribbling notes on index cards while her aunts talked in the kitchen, I thought it was a waste of time when I could just look stuff up online. Then my uncle passed and nobody could remember how he did his chile colorado, and all those food blogs with their perfect photos were useless because none of them tasted like his. Now I get it, the notes are not really about the food, they're about keeping the person around in some small way. I keep a little notebook now too and I bug every older relative I can for their recipes before it's too late.
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