Edible DFW is a local food magazine I work for, and the winter issue features family farms and family recipes. Not much of a foodie myself, working on this magazine is a bit like copy editing in a foreign language. But typos are typos no matter where they lay lie, and I have learned to spell Aioli and pomegranate.

Unlike me, my two grandmothers expressed themselves several times a day creating in kitchens that were in overdrive during holidays. The grandmother whose porch I write from never spent time sitting there. She was always ginning around the church, the chicken coop, or kitchen.  As a 16-year-old bride homesteading in New Mexico, she stood her .410 shotgun next to the door ready to kill rabbits and squirrels.

Settled for good in Alpine, Nina Odessa lived to deliver fudge and divinity (should that be capitalized?) to friends and strangers, and not just when they had a tragedy. Her index-card-sized recipes were typed on a 1920s Underwood typewriter. The keys imprinted an all black ‘a’ and  ‘K’ without a top. (Karo syrup was a routinely appearing ingredient.)  Jelly rolls, doughnuts, Mexican Pecan Candy (pralines), pecan pie, and ‘Different’ Pecan Pie.  I didn’t like  Karo so she made a special pie for me.  Before her children were born, Odessa drove a chuck wagon on at least one cattle drive from a Midland-area ranch to Wichita Falls.

Early on, my Alpine grandparents had a cow out back of their place where they got milk and from which they made butter. My uncle and grandmother did the milking since Grandmother decided, for unknown reasons, that her daughter shouldn’t have to milk the cow.  They also had chickens, and we chomped on her fried chicken and mashed potatoes made with creamy milk. With a blue-specked metal bowl, I trekked out each morning I was there to the henhouse and gathered warm eggs. I used the same bowl when scattering chicken feed.

It was only as an adult I connected the missing chicken I’d fed that morning with what lay glistening on the dinner platter.  (They called lunch dinner and dinner, supper.) She went to great pains so I didn’t see her wring that fowl’s neck.

My other grandmother, Margaret Elizabeth Camille Ann Bryan was from Alabama. She could play the organ and was the daughter of southern farmers. She had nine children, one every two years.  I’m betting the Jeff Davis Pie recipe I inherited is hers. When her brood came in from the fields, she served ham and roast beef or fried chicken and pork. There was never just one entrée. After all the children were grown and gone, and visitors arrived at her home—two or 12—she’d fix two entrees every time.

I received recipes from both grandmothers, along with embroidered aprons, pillowcases, tablecloths, and day-of-the week dish towels.

Their typing and handwriting are so familiar that I’m instantly nostalgic looking at their recipes.  I don’t get that subtle connection using a cookbook recipe or one printed from a website. Grandmother Lizzy gave me her Banana Bread recipe, which I optimistically attempted as a newlywed, only to get the batter made and realize I had enough for two gigantic loaves. I had to go door-to-door at our apartment house and borrow loaf pans. Remember,  she fed 11 people three times a day.

I was also befuddled by the instruction: “Bake in a moderate oven,” or “Bake in a slow oven.” My favorite was, “Bake until sides pull away from pan.” Directions such as those didn’t leave time for multi-tasking in other parts of the house.

The blue cup is a measuring cup from my grandmother’s days as a chuck wagon cook. Grandad made it for her from a can, and it holds about 7/8 a cup of sugar.

Grandmother Odessa liked me as her sous chef—of course she never used that term—and I helped by pinching as much sand tart dough as I could get away with or fishing those doughnuts from the hot oil, dusting them with sugar and devouring them while they were too warm to hold. Nothing better.

Promoting local and seasonal foods, Edible DFW is a handy guide to cooking healthy in an urban setting. Hard to imagine that a hundred years ago, there was no other choice.