Gransie’s Recipe Box

Cocktail Meatballs, yum

My home in Munds Park is a cabin that my grandpa designed himself. He built it with his own hands (and the hands of my grandmother, mom, and aunt) over the summer of 1979. He tells me that back then, all the roads in the village were still dirt. Our little corner of town off of Mustang only had around 4 houses in it. He made sure to buy a lot adjacent to the National Forest so nobody could ever build behind the house. To this day, you can still see hummingbirds, skunks, javelinas, and other critters from the living room, unobscured by any signs of civilization or development.

The cabin is my grandpa’s masterpiece. It’s a cozy haven of unfinished wood and 70s orange surfaces, filled with windows that let in sunlight and views of the trees. As in many vacation homes, no object ever seems to leave once someone brings it here. Over the decades the house has accumulated a record of our family’s story, with mementos collecting in waves like sediment washing up on a beach.

The cabin, most of the way completed

Not everything in the cabin makes me feel sentimental. I got rid of the two dozen phone books that filled one bookcase, and I don’t think I’m ever going to use the 22-volume encyclopedia that sits on a shelf gathering dust. I’m not sure why the cabin needed four coffee machines, five teapots, and 60 towels, but I have them available in case I need them. Even the junk serves a purpose, though, because I often discover gold while sorting through my family’s forgotten belongings.

Gransie and Grandpa

My grandmother, who we call Gransie, loves to entertain. The albums in the cabin are filled with photographic evidence of parties from decades ago attended by people I don’t recognize. The kitchen closet still has chafing dishes and a coffee urn left over from when this house was a social hub. Gransie needed recipes to feed all those hungry guests, and brought up some cookbooks and a box of recipe cards for inspiration.

The source material

Most of the cookbooks are at least 40 years old, and they’re fascinating. They open a window into a departed era of American cooking when jello ruled the land and anything with mayonnaise on it could be called a salad. Some of the books haven’t aged well (The Magic of Microwave Cooking is particularly horrifying), but many of them have great recipes hidden amongst the gloopy midcentury casseroles. My favorites are the community cookbooks, because they have the recipes homemakers were actually using, not just the ones that some author thought were fit to print. The community cookbooks capture the feel of the place and time they were made better than almost any other kind of historical artifact. 

Even more precious than the community cookbooks is Gransie’s recipe box. This unassuming grey container is filled with neatly organized index cards with recipes on them, sorted by labeled tabs into different categories. Gransie typed out most of the recipes herself, citing the magazine or neighbor where they originated. I feel very close to her when I read her scribbled notes on the cards, imagining her 50 years ago sitting at a typewriter copying a recipe out of the newspaper.

I decided to cook a dinner entirely using recipes from the community cookbooks and Gransie’s recipe box. I made a recipe for spinach knishe, a kind of filled savory pastry, from Other Than Peanut Butter, published by the A. & A. Meyer elementary school PTO in 1972. I found a recipe for classic cocktail party meatballs in 1979’s Cherished Charger Recipes, written by parents and students from McClintock high school. Both schools were (and still are) located in Tempe, where my family lived in the 70s. I took a recipe for “Chinese cole slaw,” also known as ramen noodle salad, from Gransie’s box.

All three recipes turned out great, and I would highly recommend trying them out. Not only did they taste delicious, but they made me feel like I was at a potluck in the Phoenix suburbs in the late 70s. I was able to time travel, and all it took was an evening in the kitchen.

Cocktail Meatballs (adapted from Cherished Charger Recipes)

1 lb ground beef

1 egg

¼ cup minced onion

1 burger bun or 2 slices of white bread

¼ cup heavy cream

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp white pepper

2 tsp salt

1 bottle Heinz chili sauce

½ cup grape jelly

Preheat oven to 350. Toast the burger bun or bread and then grind into bread crumbs in the food processor. Mix the crumbs with everything except the chili sauce and jelly and form into meatballs slightly larger than a golf ball. Place meatballs in an 8”X8” baking dish. Microwave the chili sauce and grape jelly together in a bowl and mix until combined. Pour over the meatballs, then bake for 1 hour.

Spinach Knishe (adapted from Other Than Peanut Butter)

For the dough:

⅓ stick of butter, sliced

⅓ cup boiling water

½ tsp salt

1 tsp white vinegar

1 cup flour

¼ tsp baking powder

1 egg

Sesame seeds

For the filling:

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp flour

⅓ cup heavy cream

¼ tsp nutmeg

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

¼ medium onion, diced small

A few handfuls of spinach leaves

Preheat oven to 350. To make the dough, add butter to a heatsafe bowl. Pour the boiling water over it and mix until the butter is melted. Add the vinegar, salt, flour, and baking powder, and mix until combined into a smooth dough. Cover and chill in the fridge while you prepare the filling.

To make the filling, saute the onions in a little oil, then add spinach a handful at a time and saute until cooked. Take the spinach and onion out of the pan and chop finely. Melt the butter in a small pot on medium heat and add the flour, whisking to combine. Cook for about a minute, then add the cream, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, stirring vigorously to make a thick white sauce. Combine the sauce with your chopped spinach.

Take your chilled dough and roll into a rectangle about 3 times longer than it is wide and about ⅛ inch thick. Spoon the spinach filling on the dough and roll it into a tube, pressing the seam to seal the dough. Place the roll seam-side down on a cookie sheet, brush it with beaten egg, and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for about 45 minutes, until lightly golden. Cut into 1-inch slices to serve.

Ramen Noodle Salad

For the salad:

¼ head purple cabbage, sliced thin

¼ head green cabbage, sliced thin

2 small carrots, grated

1 bunch scallions, sliced

⅓ cup sesame seeds

⅓ cup slivered almonds

1 packet ramen noodles, crushed into small pieces

For the dressing:

½ cup neutral oil

⅓ cup apple cider vinegar

½ tsp sugar

1 tbsp soy sauce

The seasoning packet from the ramen

In a large bowl, whisk the dressing ingredients together until emulsified. Add all the salad ingredients and stir to combine. Let sit at least half an hour in the fridge before serving to allow the noodles to absorb some dressing and soften up.