The Old Recipe Box

My old recipe box isn't this cool-looking. Actually, I used to have one like this - wood, no lid - but somewhere along the way the cards were transferred to a hideous blue plastic box, also without a lid.

In it were some treasured family recipes, only a few of which I'd managed to type up and save on my computer. I say "were," because it disappeared some time ago. This was devastating to me. I knew it had to be around somewhere, but resigned myself to losing some of the recipes forever.

A couple of weeks ago, John was cleaning off a shelf in the computer room and found the box. There was nothing missing, not really, but there were recipes I'd imagined having that I really didn't. But there were some treasured old friends there as well, and I set about typing them up on Google Docs, figuring that if something happened to the box AND I had another hard-drive crash, I wouldn't survive.

I've managed to upload 27 files, only two of which have multiple recipes. I have recipes for my paternal grandmother's pumpkin bread, potato dumplings & potato pancakes. I have some of my mom's recipes: "six-week raisin bran muffins," taco salad, and Millionaire Pie. I even have what I believe is my maternal grandmother's biscuit recipe. There is no name on the card, but there is a space for one which has been cut away. Sounds like something I'd do.

This is good timing, since we had an offer on a house accepted. A house with a large kitchen! I haven't baked in years, and I can't wait! The inspection is Monday, and we expect it to pass without any surprises, since it had already gone through all that with another potential buyer whose financing fell through. If all goes well, we'll be moving around Thanksgiving. I'm not quite sure how we're going to manage that, but we'll figure it out.

The house is newish (less than 10 years old), biggish (~1900 square feet = big for us), and awfully rectangular. However, it has fabulous windows, a fireplace, a media room, two full bathrooms and a steel-reinforced basement. Ah. The basement. That was interesting. We finally figured out what it was used for, but our imaginations ran wild when we saw the black walls, sound-proofed ceiling and light rails/brackets everywhere. What we missed was the faux brick wall and the satellite uplink on the roof. Wayne's World, anyone?