"recipe card" news and stories

For those times that you need to feed twenty-five women, here's a recipe you could turn to. The card is faded and stained, and I can imagine some harried woman trying to pull this dish together, while the kitchen wall phone rang and the pasta pot boiled over on the stove, putting the flame out. It looks like a little bit of water from the tuna splashed onto the recipe card. There are a few notes in pencil on the back for substitutions and serving suggestions. It's a time machine, back to another age, when salmon only came out of a can and pimentos seemed exotic.

Here is another one from the recipe card file I picked up at an antique store years ago. I was flipping through her salad section today, to see if she had any interesting thoughts on how to use the bunch of kale that's been in my fridge for the last week (I always make it the same way and was hoping for some inspiration) when I stumbled across this one. It isn't actually anything particularly special, but I found the idea of an arranged salad with a quick blender dressing sort of appealing. Very retro and yet appropriate for the time of year.

Here's another recipe from an old card file. This one comes from a recipe box I picked up at an antique store about five years ago. The wooden box is scarred and stained, the finish puckered from years of sitting near a hot stove. There isn't anything that would identify the original owner by name, but I've gotten to know her through the things she cooked. She served flank steak on Christmas Eve, a cheese ball with chutney as a cool appetizer for a patio dinner and kept a note taped to the top of the box on how to use low fat yogurt in place of sour cream.

This recipe is fairly seasonal, if you replace the canned peaches for fresh (which are flooding the markets in my area). I do believe that these peaches would be sensational over ice cream.

image by Marisa McClellan