Gail’s recipes – Discovering Mom (2024)

I was afraid the carrot cookie recipe was lost. I’d found one recipe labeled Helen King’s carrot cookies, but I wanted Mom’s recipe. She started making these after we were all grown up. She had a batch of the tasty cookies ready when I visited one time from Baltimore. They became my new favorite cookie.

It turns out that I had a copy of the recipe all along. I found it as I cleaned out my over-full, seldom used recipe box. As I tossed dubious-sounding jello recipes and any baked goods that called for Bisquick, I found the carrot cookie recipe written in Mom’s handwriting.

Gail Lee Martin’s Carrot Cookies

• 1 cup finely grated carrots
• 3/4 cup shortening or oleo
• 2 cups flour
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix the ingredients, then drop by teaspoon onto a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. (She doesn’t mention greasing the baking sheet, but I’d recommend it)

Icing for the Carrot Cookies

• powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup finely grated carrots
• orange juice

Mix these together to use as a glaze. Wait for the cookies to cool first.

What is lurking in your recipe box? Take a look tosee if some heirloom recipes are there. Treat your taste buds to a trip down memory lane.

Back in 2011, I asked Mom (Gail Lee Martin) to send me some recipes that I could put online for her. Here’s one she sent me:

“It is time to take the plain Rice Krispie bar recipe to the next level.Even though Rice Krispie bars are delicious, these chocolate-covered Rice Krispie bars are one step above delicious.

Rice Krispie bars are easy to make but these are easier than ever. With the use of themicrowave, this is a quick bar recipe.”

Chocolate Topped Rice Krispie Bars

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

1 cup sugar

1 cup Karo syrup

1 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

6 cups Rice Krispies cereal

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

1 cup butterscotch chips

9″ x 13″ pan

Pour the Rice Krispies into the 9″ x 13″ dish. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and the Karo syrup. Bring it to a boil, stirring frequently.

Take the pan off the heat and add the peanut butter to the mixture. Stir until smooth. Pour mixture over Rice Krispies and mix. Spread the mixture to fill the 9″ x 13″ pan evenly.

Put both the chocolate chips and the butterscotch chips into a microwave safe bowl together. Place itin the microwave, and heat on high for one minute. Stir the mixture and continue heating at 30-second intervals until all chips are melted. Pour over the bars to cover evenly.

I looked around online and didn’t find the exact recipe, so not sure where Mom discovered it. Most of the recipes used a double-boiler to melt the chocolate chips. I like the quick, microwave method she put in the recipe.

I don’t remember Mom making Rice Krispie bars for us when we were kids. We used to get our peanut butter in a small metal bucket that weighed 5 pounds. The oil would rise to the top, so you had to stir the peanut butter up before using it.

Gail Lee Martin originally shared this recipe on the eHow website in 2008. It’s a thrifty addition to a meal.

Breaded Tomatoes

This old-fashioned side dish is easy to fix when you need to fill everyone up cheaply. It’s one way to get more vegetables into your meals. Here’s how to make it.

1. Stewed tomatoes were just peeled tomatoes that are cut into chunks and cooked well before canning. You can buy canned tomato chunks at the store, but they probably need some extra cooking to soften them up. Put them in the microwave in a covered bowl and heat until soft.
2. When serving just a jar or two of the plain stewed tomatoes, I usually heat them in a pot over a low fire. Add chunks of day-old bread (several slices). This is a good way to get rid of the heels of bread if no one will eat them.
3. Salt to your taste. My husband likes his stewed tomatoes with a sprinkle of sugar. I never thought it needed anything but a slice of fresh bread and butter to go with it.

   

   Vintage Cook

   by rainsplitter

Here’s another recipe that Gail Lee Martin submitted to the Grandmother’s Legacy: A Collection of Butler County Recipes from the 1920’s and 30’s. The cookbook is out-of-print and is hard to find now.

Wilted Lettuce or Greens

Dandelion leaves, few flowers

Wild lamb’s quarter

Goose grass

Poke

Lettuce

8 slices bacon, reserve the drippings

Vinegar

Salt

Pepper

Sugar

Optional additions: green onions, radishes, hard-boiled eggs

Gather the wild plants in early spring while still tender. Wash well, tear into bite size pieces and drain. (Add chopped green onions and radishes if wanted). Fry the bacon slices crisp, cool, and crumble. Mix together one-half cup of bacon grease and one-half cup of vinegar (or equal parts). Cover and reheat.

Fry the bacon slices crisp, cool, and crumble. Set the bacon aside to use later on the salad. Mix together one-half cup of bacon grease and one-half cup of vinegar (or equal parts). Cover and reheat those.

Add salt, pepper, and sugar. Add enough sugar so the mixture is slightly thickened. When hot, pour this over the greens, onions, and radishes. Cap the skillet on the top to wilt the greens. Stir the wilted greens, then serve. Garnish with bacon crumbles and slices of hard-boiled eggs if desired. Lettuce, by itself, can be served this way also.

Originally published on the eHow website.

Gail Lee Martin taught her daughters to cook in the farmhouse kitchen as they were growing up. They made the recipe below for no-bake cookies and passed the techniques for making this easy, chocolaty taste treat on to their own children. You’ll find that it is more similar to fudge than to traditional oven-baked cookies.

Mom submitted this “recipe” to a book of Butler County recipes of the 1920s and 30s. The title of the book is Grandmother’s Legacy. She emphasized that this was a just for fun recipe and not actually for consumption.

Gail Lee Martin said, “This is an oil camp kid’s memories of making this wine. There was never a shortage of dandelions.”

Pick 5 cups of dandelions. Keep only the yellow part of the flower and discard the green part. The green part makes the wine bitter. Always wash and drain the petals. Put the petals and a gallon of water, more or less, into an empty glass gallon jar. Stir in 1 pound of sugar.

Put the lid on tightly and bury the jar. Oil camp friends are needed to help dig a big enough hole. Of course, they would be in on the taste testing too.

After two or three weeks, the mixture should be dug up and taste tested. If needed, add more sugar to suit taste.

“This recipe is for historical purposes and reading enjoyment only,” Gail said.

I’m amazed that back in the 1930s that her mother would let her have a pound of sugar for what definitely sounds like an experimental project. When I looked up real recipes for dandelion wine, they call for additional ingredients like lemons, oranges, and wine yeast.

You could go to the Commonsense Homesteading blog to try her recipe for dandelion wine.It appears to be adult tested, at least.

Gail Lee McGhee wrote this memory for the recipe book,Grandmother’s Legacy: A Collection of Butler County Recipes from the 1920s and 30s.

“In the thirties, we didn’t get to town very often to buy groceries. I don’t remember my parents ever having bought syrup. Mother would make ours from these directions.”

Browned Sugar Syrup

Brown some white sugar over a slow fire, constantly stirring the sugar as it slowly browns. When there is not any white left, pour a cup of water into the sugary mess. The mixture will instantly become a hard crackling texture. Slowly the boiling mixture will dissolve and thicken to a sweet tasting brown syrup.

In 1999, Mom started sending recipes to an online site called Kitchen Happenings and More. She proposed that they add a section for heritage recipes and she would supply them with recipes and the stories that went with them.

A Heritage Recipe June 10th, 1999
Margaret, publisher and editor of Kitchen Happenings and More wrote, “Gail Martin shares another of her favorite recipes from yesteryear.”

Mother’s Potato Cakes
by Gail Martin
One of my favorite recipes handed down from my frugal mother, who never let a bit of food go to waste, is potato cakes. She used a cup or more of leftover mashed potatoes, with two farm fresh eggs, 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder and a dash of salt and pepper. Then mixed all together and dropped by the spoonful on a greased, hot, iron skillet. She would reduce the heat and fry until brown, turn them over and brown the other side. Mother used a dab of plain lard or bacon drippings to fry the small cakes. Of course bacon drippings add to the flavor.

The eggs Mother used were from her own New Hampshire Red hens. This breed of chickens laid large, brown shelled eggs and Mother’s chickens ranged on the open prairies of Greenwood county, Kansas where they ate grasshoppers, bugs and Bluestem grass. If you haven’t experienced the joy of fresh farm country eggs you are in for the treat of your life. In the summer time the yolks will be a brilliant orange globe. No comparison to the store bought eggs that have been in cold storage for who knows for how long.

My daughter Cindy says she always peels an extra potato or two when she is making mashed potatoes so she will have leftovers to make Grandmother’s potato cakes.

Mom also posted the story and recipe on the Our Echo website with this comment, “When this was published on June 10th I was so pleased as that was Mother’s birthday. I couldn’t have planned it better.”

I thought of this story and brought it here for more readersafter my sister Cindy mentioned potato cakes today. “Using up the leftovers is part of the after Thanksgiving tradition: I fixed fried-potato-patties for breakfast this morning with the leftover mashed potatoes. They weren’t as good as Mom/ Gail used to make but I tried,” she said. Cindy said she adds a dash of garlic powder when she makes them.

Mom’s sister, C.J. remembers, “Ah, how this takes me back! Our Mother’s potato cakes were a sumptuous repast from the gods, and I’ve never been able to duplicate the taste. Not surprising since I only have access to store eggs, but perhaps not having Mother’s hand on the spoon has something to do with it!”