Cooking as Autobiography - Zucchini Bread

 

Cooking as Autobiography .

Zucchini Bread

In years gone by, people kept recipes on 3.5 inch cards in files in boxes. I have a box like that and I also treasure the very old box from my deceased mother-in-law. The cards told us how to prepare specific dishes, with more or less detail. But they do more than that sometimes. They remind us of the circumstances that prompted us to write and save them. That can be reminders of our life experiences or events. When I dig around in my old box, I see recipes from old friends and relatives, from old cookbooks of the past, from forgotten but newly remembered times. And then there are recipes about how to prepare something without having to find the old cookbooks that provided them. Boxes of memories.

Here’s a happy example from when we lived in Green Bay. I was surprised one day when daughter Elizabeth (Libby), then about eight or nine years old, came home with a card in her hand. She had been playing with neighbors Leah and Erica. It was summer and the zucchini was ripe. The girls’ mom, Randee, had a recipe for zucchini bread, which Libby wrote onto a new recipe card and brought home. It is written in Libby’s little-kid writing with associated little-kid misspellings. I didn’t ask for it but was glad to have it. I look at it now and it warms my heart for all the good times those kids had when they were little. It reminds me of Randee’s neighborliness in offering me a way to cook something. Zucchini bread is very good.

I have been making zucchini bread from that recipe on the old card ever since. I made it again yesterday, with a bit of modification. When I eat and share the bread, I share the memories. Recipe cards can be autobiographical. Now my recent recipes are word processed and placed in a 3-ring binder. The old box is obsolete but remembered.

Here is the recipe as given to me on that beautiful summer day, with misspellings corrected. Libby is a smart adult person who now spells words better. She cooks well too. 

Zucchini Bread (2 loaves)

2 cups sugar                                                1 teaspoon salt 

1 cup oil                                                       1teaspoon baking powder

3 eggs                                                            3 teaspoons cinnamon

2 cups chopped zucchini                        3 cups flour

2 teaspoons vanilla                                  2 teaspoons baking soda

Mix sugar, oil and eggs until well blended. Add zucchini, flour, soda, salt, making powder, vanilla and cinnamon. Mix well. Put in 2 medium sized greased and floured loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. Use tooth pick test. 

p.s. My modification is to use less sugar. It’s still good with 1 ½ cups sugar.

 

Pumpkin Bread - One Loaf

My daughter Sarah has a shelf filled with canned pumpkin, which she bought for a purpose that is not part of this discussion and no longer matters in her life. In response to her need to find something to do with it all, I offer her and the world a recipe for pumpkin bread. She lives alone with her cats, so this continues my theme of preparing foods for one or two instead of a family of humans. Here is the opportunity to make one loaf of pumpkin bread.

Great recipes often turn up in church cookbooks. Often the contributors to these books have simple and delicious ways to prepare foods. I found this in a book that I bought long ago in my Green Bay years, St. John the Baptist Church Family Cook Book, created by the church in Howard in 1982. I shrank the quantities and revised ingredients a bit. It is sweet and almost cakey.

One problem might be what to do with the other half of the can of pumpkin. I suggest pumpkin soup, which exists elsewhere in my blog. On the other hand, one can double it and make more pumpkin bread.

For Sarah and not her cats, but maybe her deceased dog, here it is.

Pumpkin Bread – One loaf

1/3 cup shortening                                                          1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup sugar                                                                         ¾ teaspoon salt

2 eggs                                                                                   ¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup canned or cooked pumpkin                             ½ teaspoon cinnamon

1/3 cup water                                                                    12 teaspoon ground cloves

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour                                            ½ cup raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour one standard loaf pan. I learned the hard way that just greasing the pan caused the baked bread to stick to the pan, so I suggest sprinkling a dusting of flour on the bottom and sides as with cake.

Stir together until well mixed the flour, soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and cloves. In a large bowl cream the shortening and sugar. Add eggs, pumpkin and water and stir until blended. Mix in the flour mixture. Last add the raisins. Nuts can be added. Pour it into the bread pan and bake about 70 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the loaf from the pan immediately.