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The Aunts in the Kitchen: Southern Family Recipes

When my sister, Marie, and I were growing up in the 1950s, Sunday afternoons occasionally called for our family to get in our parents’ Ford two-door sedan and ride a few miles to visit our mother’s paternal aunts. I knew that the elderly ladies we visited were Aunt Lula, Aunt Sallie, and Aunt Ella, but we always referred to them collectively as “The Aunts.”

“The Aunts” lived in the house their father, Lee, (our great-grandfather) built in the 1860s. He had married our great-grandmother, Sarah, in 1862. My hunch is that the Civil War probably postponed the building of their house until at least 1865. Perhaps they lived with Sarah’s parents until they could get materials to build the house.

Nevertheless, the house fascinated me. For starters, there was always a fire in the fireplace and my mind can still conjure up the smoky smell of a house of that era that was warmed only by a wood-burning fireplace.

One of “The Aunts” was bedridden. We sat around the room in which she was confined by illness. I was enamored by the crackling fire in the fireplace because we did not have a fireplace in our house. Our house was heated by an oil stove in the living room. It’s where Mama would put yeast dough to rise. But I digress.

I spent so much time staring at the dancing flames and glowing wood embers in the fireplace at The Aunts’ house that I have no recollection of what my great-aunts looked like. I was seven years old when the last one of them died.

I was too young to appreciate the fact that my Great-Grandpa Lee had built the house or that my Great-Grandma Sarah had died there just hours after giving birth to their tenth child in 1881, leaving Lee to bury her and the baby born the day before and to raise their seven surviving children alone.

Fast-forward to the 21st century

Marie and I are “The Aunts.” It is a moniker we carry with pride and affection when our niece, nephew, and their young adult daughters refer to us as “The Aunts.”

We have very few recipes from those original women who were known as “The Aunts.” We have fewer still from our grandmothers who died in 1930 and 1946; however, we had many aunts on both sides of the family and our mother was a beloved aunt to our cousins. They were all good cooks. They all spoiled us with good food and helped make us the people we are today.

All our aunts are gone now, along with our mother. We hope this cookbook will help keep their memories alive by sharing the recipes for some of our favorite dishes they made, as well as some of our own, and recipes from other women in our family who were or are aunts.

Although we especially hope that our relatives will treasure this cookbook, we also want it to introduce you to the special aunts and cooks in our family even if you have no knowledge of or connection to them.

How the cookbook took shape

A couple of years ago Marie or I had the idea of compiling the recipes from our aunts. The project soon took shape and it seemed only right to name the book, The Aunts in the Kitchen: Southern Family Recipes.

The book’s 289 recipes run the gamut from the early 1900s hot salve “Pneumonia Receipt” Grandma Morrison used to treat people suffering with pneumonia, to potato yeast for making bread, to Depression and World War II Chocolate Pudding, to dozens of cakes and pies, to our niece’s slow cooker hot chocolate that’s to die for, to peach ice cream you prepare in a microwave oven, to Mrs. Anne Baker’s Award-Winning Pulled Mints.

The writing, editing, and book formatting software from Atticus.io (a Progressive Web App) enabled us to format 289 family recipes in a way that was acceptable to Kindle Direct Publishing, an arm of Amazon. Bookbrush.com made it possible for us to design the book cover in a way that Amazon could use. A friend who is a wonderful photographer took the photographs for the front and back cover, along with a separate photo of a treasured Morrison Dairy Farm milk bottle from the 1920s/1930s.

Milk Bottle from 1920s/1930s Morrison Dairy Farm, Harrisburg, North Carolina

The items on the front and back cover are all from our family, so each piece holds a special meaning to us. We describe each item in the book.

How you can purchase a copy

The Aunts in the Kitchen: Southern Family Recipes will be available around mid-October in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, North Carolina, and it is already available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Aunts-Kitchen-Southern-Family-Recipes/dp/B0CJLKFDPR?ref_=ast_author_dp.

If we can get other independent bookstores to sell it, we will do so and will give that information in my blog and on my website, https://www.janetmorrisonbooks.com. Most independent bookstores will not sell books printed by Amazon, so we are depending on word of mouth to publicize the cookbook.

We do not anticipate publishing the cookbook in electronic form.

Since my last blog post

Marie and I still look at last week’s proof copy of The Aunts in the Kitchen: Southern Family Recipes. Imagine our excitement in finally holding that 303-page cookbook in our hands! It is no longer a figment of our imaginations and dreams.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. By the way, I can sit and read a cookbook for hours. Perhaps you can, too. (Hint, hint.)

Treasure your time with friends and family, even if you disagree on politics. Record their stories (and their recipes!), even if you disagree with their politics. I think you will be glad you did.

Remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet

26 thoughts on “The Aunts in the Kitchen: Southern Family Recipes”

  2. Congratulations Janet! Wonderful! I am sure it is full of interesting and delicious recipes for smashing good dishes! Outstanding work as I know you and your sister have been working on this book for quite a while to get it ready as you both wanted it. I know it will be a success! All the best to you! We’re in the midst of an Indian Summer here in Spain. Temps in the south reaching almost 40 degrees C. At least here in the Mediterranean coast it is mild, sunny but breezy and nowhere near as hot. We haven’t surpassed 30 degrees C. yet and don’t expect to. What we do expect is for the weather to get more autumnal… I might not be posting as much or as detailed as I used to being that I am doing the final preparations for the opening of my show at the museum whose doors open on the 12th, the feast day of Spain, so there will be many tourists and people from all around as the museum is right in the heart of the city, next to the cathedral and in a small pedestrian street between two of the most important plazas of the city. Lots of work but the team here is getting it done!

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  4. Thank you for your good wishes for the cookbook. Marie and I are very pleased with the final product… and now I look forward to concentrating on writing fiction and the devotional book I’ve drafted. After having to put the cookbook aside for several months this year when I ran into formatting problems, I am delighted the book is now a reality. We’re having temps in the low 80s and lots of sun this week, too. Very pleasant. The dogwood trees are starting to turn red a bit early and the hickory tree in our front yard has dropped a bumper crop of nuts. A heavy crop of nuts could foretell a hard winter. Time will tell, but I’m enjoying the warmth this week. I wish you a wonderful show at the museum. I just know it will be well-received. It sounds like a prime location coinciding with the feast day and lots of tourists in the city. I wish you the best and will look forward to hearing all about it when it is over. Take care. All the best from North Carolina!

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  11. Thank you, Carol. I hope our great-nieces will come to treasure it when they’re a bit older. The up side for my sister and me is that we now have all our favorite recipes in one book instead of scattered in various index card boxes, cookbooks, and scraps of paper.

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  16. Thank you, Vicki. It was a two-year labor of love, and I almost lost my religion in the formatting phase! It’s a relief to finally hold the book in my hands. I look forward to concentrating on writing historical fiction in the coming months and years.

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  17. We were a close-knit family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Sadly, all the aunt and uncles are gone now as are most of the cousins. We especially wanted our four great-nieces in Atlanta to have this bit of our family history.

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  24. I can, too, Barbara! I’m trying to purge my cookbook collection. It has taken over the kitchen! I had some technical problems downloading and then keeping your novel, Unexpected Passion. I got some assistance from the folks at BookTunnel and I think I finally have it in my library to stay. Have started reading it and enjoying it. I just have to find time to read it. I know you need reviews as soon as possible. Thank you for making a review copy available to me!

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  26. My sister and are laughed and said we needed to eat our way through this one. No excuse is small enough! I was awake until 3 a.m. this morning reading your book! Can’t wait to get back into it later tonight. Thanks again!

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