Grandma's Cookbook

In the winter, especially around the holidays, most of my memories of my Grandmother are of her in the big ranch house kitchen. The big, black "Home Comfort" range was kept stoked with coal, while I *helped*, mostly by tasting!

By some miracle, one of the very few keepsakes that survived the second fire in my life was Grandma's cookbook. I remember her telling me that she received it as a wedding gift when she married Grandpa, when she was just 16 years old.

The book itself is worn to the point where there is no title visible on the cover. Recipes that she cut out of magazines and newspapers over the years have been pasted on all of the non-recipe pages, most dating back to the early 1900s.


I am entertained by the recipes, which start with the basics. "To Roast A Goose". Having drawn and singed the goose ... can you imagine what the average housewife of today would do faced with a just-plucked goose? Further on, the cook is instructed to "tie the goose securely round with a greased string and paper the breast to prevent scorching" and adding that the fire must be brisk and well kept up.

The final note to the cook is a warning that "if a goose is old it is useless to cook it, as when hard and tough it cannot be eaten."

Even more precious to me are several recipes that were particular favorites, written down in her own handwriting, faded now as well as spotted and blotched from years of use.









One unexpected find as I paged through was a small lock of light brown hair, tied with a piece of string. It has to be a lock of my mother's hair when she was a child. Another amazing keepsake, preserved all these years.



The recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies I particularly recall, a favorite I often asked for and one of the first I *helped* Grandma make. She was so familiar with the recipe some of the ingredients don't show amounts, but some experimentation on my part has produced cookies "just like Grandma used to make".

Grandma's oatmeal and raisin cookies

1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 cups milk
2 cups oatmeal (do not use the quick-cook oatmeal)

Mix the above ingredients well.

1 to 2 cups raisins depending on how many raisins you like in your cookies and let stand for 15 minutes. Then add:

3 cups regular flour (plus, see below)
1 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 to 5 tsp cinnamon (depending on how "cinnamon-y" you like them)

Stir until dry ingredients are well mixed, then continue adding flour by the 1/2 cup until you have a moderately stiff dough. Place bowl in refrigerator to chill 30 to 60 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Drop dough onto cookie sheet in rounded spoonfuls. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until top of cookie is firm to touch and leaves no indentation.

I eat far too many of "Grandma's cookies" when I make them and they always take me back to the winter days when I sat at the kitchen table, waiting impatiently for the first cookie warm out of the oven.

Grandma: Memories of a pioneer lady

Elsie Lois Litchfield was born in 1892. She graduated from what we would now call high school in Chadron, Nebraska at 16, one of the very few young women of that era that finished school at that level. One of my treasures is a copy of the portrait photo that was taken of her then.

She was married later that year, to Bert Young, a dashing cowboy that started his riding career at 11 years of age, riding with trail herds driven from Missouri up into Kansas and Nebraska. They moved to Montana in 1915, where they homesteaded on 640 acres, with my grandmother and the two girls staying on the homestead while my grandfather worked for an established ranch some 40 miles away.

In 1927 they moved to the "home ranch" at the forks of Rosebud Creek, where General Crook and his cavalry spent several days trying unsuccessfully to win through the Cheyenne warriors to join General Custer on the Little Big Horn.

They lived there at the ranch until 1952, when they retired and moved to Sheridan, Wyoming, some 60 miles from the ranch. My mother, their youngest daughter, and my father and I continued to live at the ranch, with the ranch in a partnership until my grandfather's death when he was in his late 80s.

Most of my memories of her are of her in the kitchen at the home ranch, cooking on the big, black "Home Comfort" range, helping to make cookies, or waiting for the cinnamon roll to cool enough to eat. Evenings were often spent sitting in her rocker, but her hands were never still, crocheting or quilting, teaching me how to embroider pillowcases and hand towels.

I wish now I had listened more carefully to her stories, for I now suspect I saw just the surface and accepted that as "grandmother". But she spent weeks alone with two small girls at the homestead, with the nearest neighbors two miles or more away. A town trip was a 2-day trip in a wagon with a team, possible only in good weather, spring and fall and very few things were "store bought".

She was the only one of my family who was comfortable with me riding when I was pregnant with my first child, saying that she rode out to get the milk cow in until she couldn't fit in the saddle any longer and it certainly hadn't caused any problems. She was also one of the "hay hands" on the ranch, the one who drove the team to the buckrake, sweeping up hay windrows to take to the overshot stacker, not an easy job of driving with the team separated instead of side by side.

This later photo of my grandmother was taken on a visit to the ranch when she was in her late 70s and spending most summers at the ranch with my parents, though she continued to spend the winter months in Sheridan. During the last few months of her life, in her late 80s, no longer able to live alone, she lived with me at my home in Big Horn, Wyoming.
Looking back, I regret so much not asking more about her life and listening more carefully to those stories she told. It saddens me that so much has been lost now forever.