In the Beginning...

Several years ago, my grandmother Fobert gave away just about all of her personal belongings.  She was beginning to show the initial stages of dementia, and wanted to get rid of what she had because she was moving in an out of retirement homes.  Our family (well most of us) are not real pack rats, and she was getting rid of all of the stuff that she has.  While Grandma was not a pack rat, she WAS a great family historian.  She and Grandpa had served a full time mission for the LDS church in the mid 90's at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.  If you know anything about family history, the Mormon Church is one organization on the face of this earth who has the largest reserves of family history records in the whole world.  Our faith places a great emphasis on families, and the eternal nature of families.  Part of connecting with the people in our families has to do with the artifacts that we pass down from generation to generation.  My cousin Niki Allen (Sigleer)--my FAVORITE cousin-- and I got to talking one day about this LEGENDARY family recipe book.  It was fabled to be old, tattered, and full of weird things like how to dress a body for a funeral and remedies for rheumatism and gall stones.   One time when Niki came to visit, she handed over a SUPER old looking book, and entrusted me with a bit of family folklore.  Sure enough, I found not just family recipes for cakes, sauces and pickles, but I found those weird remedies I spoke of earlier.  I wanted to find a way to somehow share these recipes with the whole family, as well as with the world.  Being a former Social Studies teacher, I am always intrigued with primary source documents, and this is quite a beauty.  Food tells us a story, gives us comfort, and helps us celebrate the good times.
The recipes that will appear on this blog come from a recipe book that was compiled by my great-great grandmother Marsden.  She is my father's mother's, mother's, mother.  Half way through the book, the handwriting changes, and shows additions made to the book by my great-grandmother Workman (my father's mother's mother.  While I never knew my great-great grandmother Marsden, or my great-grandmother Workman, my hope is that through this recipe book, and eventually through making each of the recipes in the book, that I will be able to connect with my ancestors.
My dad is working on a comprehensive post that will go more into detail about who Grandma Marsden and Grandma Workman are....stay tuned.  In the meantime...look for the first recipes to be posted!