Liz Really Liked It!, BlackBerry Shots, vintage recipe card, November 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It’s almost Thanksgiving, a time of gratitude for our many blessings. And a time for good food. I walked over to the fridge this morning and under a Morton Salt “When it rains it pours” magnet was this faded recipe card for Chicken L’Orange. Liz’s mother (oliverowl) mailed it to us after a discussion on Memories, Writing & Family Recipes.
She told us that Liz’s maternal grandmother, Frances Oliver Biggs, loved that Liz liked the Chicken L’Orange. So much so, that she handwrote her comment on the back of the family recipe card she sent to Liz’s mom:
Does Liz remember the recipe for “Chicken L’Orange” that her Nana sent me? I still have the card in my recipe box. At the end is her comment, “Liz really liked it!” (Sent after Liz’s visit to CA.) It is probably similar to what you had on the Cornish game hens.
My contribution to yesterday’s meal was Grandma Caroline’s Green Salad (OLD family recipe) and a Cranberry Sauce that had orange juice and a whole jar of Orange Marmalade cooked with the fresh berries!
Now the recipe card with Liz’s grandmother’s handwriting hangs on our fridge. I told Liz I want to try Grandma Caroline’s Green Salad this year. It reminds me of my family’s version of Jell-O salad with whipped cream. Below is the recipe that Liz’s mom Marylin dropped into the red Ravine comments.
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Grandma Caroline’s Green Salad
1 large box of Lime Jell-O
1 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese
1 cup heavy cream, whipped
1 14-15 oz. can crushed pineapple, including juice
Take the cream cheese out of the fridge, so it begins to soften. Prepare the Jell-O, using 1 less cup of water than the recipe calls for. Chill it until it begins to thicken, but don’t let it solidify, or you’ll have a mess!
Since I only have one mixer, I whip the cream and place it in a small bowl. Then I cut the cream cheese in small chunks and place them in the mixer bowl and beat it well. When the Jell-O is a thick syrupy consistency, I add it to the cream cheese and mix until they are homogenized! (You’ll have to scrape down the sides of the bowl several times.) Next, the pineapple is mixed in and then the whipped cream, both at the slowest speed. Refrigerate until firm. Enjoy!
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We’re going to stop at the store today for last minute ingredients. What traditional recipes will you be sharing this Thanksgiving week? Are there any that have been passed down by your grandmother? Bob mentioned he’s making Aunt Annie’s Scalloped Oysters. ybonesy’s family always makes tamales for Christmas. And my family makes Southern Banana Pudding for almost every family gathering. Old recipes are invaluable to memoir writers. Family flavor.
Hope you enjoy Grandma Caroline’s Green Salad. And if you put together the two front and back photos of the recipe card in this post, you’ll have the Biggs family recipe for Chicken L’Orange — two great family recipes, one post. And any leftover turkey? Try Amelia’s Soft Dumpling Recipe.
Chicken L’Orange, When It Rains, It Pours, BlackBerry Shots, vintage recipe card, November 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Post Script: The Morton Salt girl has always been a favorite icon of mine. She’s officially called the Morton Umbrella Girl and according to the Morton website, the slogan, “When it rains it pours” first appeared on the blue package of table salt and in a series of Good Housekeeping magazine advertisements in 1914. The slogan is adapted from an old proverb, “It never rains but it pours.”
You can read more about the history of Morton Salt, view vintage ads, and see the transition of the Morton Umbrella Girl from the roaring twenties to the 1968 image that we still view on packaging today. They’ve also got a recipe section with Winning Kosher Salt Recipes.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
-related to post: Reflections On The Other National Bird*
A friend of mine who comes over every year for Thanksgiving brings the most delicious cranberry salad. It’s always a hit.
You guys have a super week . . .
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Brian, you, too. Happy Holidays. One year Liz made the best cranberry salad. I had never tasted one that I liked so much. Can’t remember where the recipe was now. I wonder if anyone else ever does that? Especially these days with everything online.
I should mention, I ran into a recipe book that Liz’s Grandma Caroline had contributed quite a few recipes to. And a few that my mother had done as well. I’ve hung on to them all these years. It’s fun to go back and see these self-published books recipe books women used to do from different areas of the country. I still use them; they’ve got the best recipes!
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QuoinMonkey – thanks for the two recipes. I shall try them both. You are absolutely right – family recipes, handed down through generations, are invaluable to the memoir writer. A recipe written by hand, with comments such as Liz’s Grandma’s recipe for chicken a’lorange, provide both connection to the past, and prompts to memory. What a treasure. I think with the internet to find recipes for all sorts of foods, we lose some of this historical connection – the artifacts, the personalization by note of one family member loving a dish, a reminder that the same recipe comes out differently due to the change in the nature of common ingredients which are available for the cook now.
So much to consider! G
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A Jell-O recipe! I love it! And Liz loves it? Well then. There you have it. It’s a winner.
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I agree with Teri…a Jell-O recipe, hurray! I might make it to take to my sister’s, since we’ll only be there for dessert. I wonder if Jell-O is gluten free. Probably, since they use horse hooves and not gluten to make it all stick together, right? (Gotcha, Teri!)
QM, did you look at the vintage ads for the Morton Salt girl? I never recalled seeing television ads for Morton Salt, but I viewed one and it was so bizarre. I wonder when they ran. I should have looked, because I was a tv-aholic, so I’m surprised it didn’t look the slightest bit familiar.
Great post. And tell Liz that I love her grandmother’s name, the full name. And that cranberry sauce sounds good, too.
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I love the Morton salt girl. I remember that she was special to me even when I was a child. I have several pieces of memorabilia with different version of the Morton salt girl as she has changed through the years!
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I’ll be making a few things, but dearest to my heart is my Grandma’s fruit salad, which also includes cream cheese and pineapple..
Grandma’s Fruit Salad
Apples, chopped
Oranges, peeled and sliced
Bananas, peeled and sliced
Grapes, if you have them
Walnuts, toasted if you wish
Pineapple chunks, canned, reserve liquid
1 small package cream cheese
Lemon juice (a couple of tsp)
Pineapple juice from can
Mix together first group of ingredients. Smash cream cheese with a fork, mixing it with lemon and pineapple juice, forcing it to submit into becoming a yummy dressing. Toss dressing with fruit and nuts, and get out of J’s way, because she just might eat it all. 😉
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G., I agree about Internet recipes. Though I am guilty of using them when I need to pull something up quickly, I’d much rather go to one of our old recipe books from our mothers or grandmothers that are sitting on the shelf. All that history there and sometimes notes in the margins that are priceless. Thanks for stopping by. Always a delight to hear from you.
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Teri, Liz does love these recipes. I pulled our Butterball turkey out of the freezer this morning so it thaws for Thanksgiving. We’re making a small one. Liz and I both will be getting up to cook this Thursday while watching the parade. I may end up making the salads and Liz the dressing!
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Corina, what is it about the Morton Salt Girl? She has appeal which is I’m guessing why they are still using the last one from 1968. The one on the magnet I posted is the original Morton Umbrella Girl from 1914 (from what I can gather from their website). Liz actually brought that magnet home for me because she knows I like vintage things.
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ybonesy, I did look at the ads and all the history at the Morton Salt links. I’m fascinated by the way ads change (or don’t change) over time. I heard another radio ad when I was driving around yesterday. It was the “Buckle Up” ad for seat belts.
Does anyone remember that?
“Buckle up for safety, buckle up. Buckle up for safety always buckle up. Put your mind at ease, tell your driver please, buckle up for safety, everybody buckle up!”
I heard it in my head like it was yesterday. NPR was doing a piece on the time when seat belts and car safety measures were just being passed in the US. I was probably coming of age as a driver back then! There was a time when there were no seat belts or air bags and cars weren’t at all built for safety.
BTW, Liz’s family does have some great names in the history. She and her mom were working on the family history last summer and it was fun to read all the old-style names going way, way back. When I work on the tree with my mother, we find many names that are passed down over time. Her name Amelia is an old family name.
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J, that recipe sounds fabulous! Thanks for leaving it in the comments. I might just have to make it sometime. One recipe I keep wanting to ask my mother for is her ambrosia. I think it might be a Southern type of fruit dish. It’s got a lot of the ingredients you mention but with a lot of coconut thrown in and floating around in the juice. Has anyone else had ambrosia, nectar of the gods? I wonder where it comes from.
I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to the long weekend. It’s been a strange week at work because someone I work closely with got fired yesterday. It was a surprise to all of us. So sad at the Holidays for that to happen. Strange how it throws you off, too. One minute a person is there, the next, you never see them again. The Holidays already seem to be going quickly this year.
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My sister has been in possession of Big Mama’s tea cake recipe for years and I recently found out. Must make them soon. I swear those tea cakes are the reason for my revulsion to anything with a lot of sugar. You see, there was a war going on when we lived with Big Mama and sugar was rationed. To make sweets for her grandchildren, she used much less than the called for sugar. Now any delicately sweetened recipe is a favorite for me, but especially these tea cakes.
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OMG, my Aunt Zelma made this same recipe! Always a hit & it I recall she topped it with coolwhip & called it better than ice cream!
I’ll be making my Mom’s baked corn recipe to take to Amelia’s on Thanksgiving & then on Sunday it’s dinner with the boys, K & J, & Brant. I’m going to attempt Peanut Butter pie for the first time. Fingers are crossed that it will be good. Hope everyone has a wonderful day with family & friends! D
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Uh-oh, I should have replied sooner! This is Liz’s Mom, telling you that I forgot the end of the green salad recipe, which is to pour the mixture into an oiled 9″x13″ pan before placing it in the fridge. But, you are all probably savvy enough to have realized this. I did something a little different this year, which works even better. After the jello had thickened, I placed it in the mixer bowl and added the cream cheese by spoonsful while the mixer was running. This eliminated the need to scrape down the cream cheese from the sides of the bowl.
I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!
D. You had an Aunt Zelma? I had an Aunt Velma. She married my Uncle, Callaway Oliver. (Love those old names!)
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Yes, Aunt Zelma still lives on & she married my Dad’s middle brother Francis! Love those old names, too!! I was telling QM today that on top of the coolwhip (probably her homemade whipped topping) She topped the salad with crushed graham crackers, but now I remember that it was crushed walnuts! It was so wonderful to see this recipe & bring back the memories of when the rest of the family was living & we got together for Thanksgiving! D
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anhinga, you called your grandmother Big Mama? If I recall correctly, my mother’s grandmother (I guess that would be my great, great) went by Big Mama, too. Seems to fit the South where she lived. How did yours get her name? The tea cakes with less sugar sound fab.
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diddy, Aunt Zelma, what a great name. Glad to hear she made this Jell-O salad, too. I was explaining it to Mom on the phone today and she said the recipe reminded her of a Jell-O salad she remembers from the South, except it had nuts. I’m guessing pecans. She said everything in the South has nuts in the recipe. I love pecans.
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving at Mom’s. I told her I miss her on the blog. She’s starting to miss her computer, too. I have to keep her posted on what’s happening on red Ravine since her computer died. 8)
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oliverowl, great to hear from you. Good to talk to you this morning, too. Did Thanksgiving go well with the homegrown brined bird? I talked to my brother and he said he brined his turkey this year, too.
Hey, I’ve got a question about Grandma Caroline’s Green Salad. It’s a clarification about the amount of water. Is it a cup less of ALL the water? Or a cup less of the hot and a cup less of the cold? Liz was wondering when she checked the Jell-O box today.
We ended up not making the salad today. But plan to make it this weekend. We ran out of time with the rest of the dinner! Boy, was it good though. Liz did most of the cooking. I cleaned up after dinner and helped her with a few logistics here and there. She had to shoo me out of the kitchen at one point; I think I was bugging her! I try to stay out of the way. But, you know, it’s Thanksgiving and I have to hover!
One more question oliverowl. Did you adapt this recipe from Grandma Caroline? We were looking at one of her old recipe books and it looked like she used half lemon and half lime Jell-O which got us to wondering. And it looked like she may have added a little lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to taste. It made me curious if you liked it better without the lemon. Or if she changed it over time herself?
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Let us know how the Joan Baez DVD. We thought it was fantastic. The parts about Dylan were wonderful. And she is aging so gracefully. A beautiful woman.
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QM & Liz,
I usually cut way down on the hot water, (it is a total of 1 cup less,) and it doesn’t matter which. You only need enough of the hot water to dissolve the jello, making the ratio of hot to cold uneven, but using the larger portion of the cold speeds up the cooling process. I heard Tracy telling Liz that she uses ice, but I don’t, because you have to stir llike mad as the jello wants to freeze its little cells up into chunks, and this is not aesthetically pleasing! I started using all lime simply because it was a slightly deeper shade of green, which I thought made it more “Christmas” like.
As far as the lemon juice omission, I had forgotten about it. (I misplaced the little cook book it came from.) Sometimes, for Easter I use orange jello and cut up canned Mandarin oranges. But DON’T use the water in the Mandarin oranges, as it tastes weird. I never tried using fresh oranges, as I was afraid it might be too acidic, resulting in confused jello cells that wouldn’t jell!
BTW, that’s why you can’t use fresh pineapple in a jello mixture. I have also made this with black cherry jello and canned black cherries, very pretty and delicious, as well.
The turkey was great! The brine, which features Juniper berries, hand picked by Tracy, while in the mountains on hunting weekends, makes the bird so tender and juicy! When J.J. and Paivi ate it a couple of years ago, they have used the recipe ever since, as has Tracy. I think I found it in a Gourmet magazine. I’ll have to send that to you, as well.
Hope to watch the Baez CD tonight. Last night I enjoyed the back to back specials on PBS with Sting and Paul McCartney.
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oliverowl, that makes sense, that you want to use all lime Jell-O for the more green Christmas color. I like how you adapt the recipe for black cherry and mandarin oranges. Liz and I both love mandarin oranges!
I might go back into the post and add some of the tidbits you’ve written in the comments. But I’m going to wait until Liz and I make the green salad. Maybe I’ll add a little photo of it, too, kind of an update. I might add Grandma Caroline’s original recipe to the comments, too. Then people can have the choice of the lemon/lime combo if they want (though I like the idea of having one kind of Jell-O at a time like you).
Tracy’s bird sounds so good with the handpicked Juniper berries and the brine. And she raised the turkey herself. I can’t believe how much she gets done in a day! Yes, do send us the recipe for the turkey brine. I read your comment to Liz and she said it sounds great.
Hey, BTW, I noticed that you said Sting and McCartney? We had Beyonce and McCartney broadcast here in the Twin Cities. I don’t know if we had Sting here. Did you have Beyonce on your channel?
Let us know how the Joan Baez CD is. I was glued to the documentary. And the other that Liz taped on it, too. Hope you enjoyed!
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[…] have our health (Chaco died mid-year); there was good food on the table, Christmas ham and Grandma Caroline’s Green Salad; the Wonder Woman stocking stuffer (made by Magnet Man) and Mandalas Stained Glass Coloring Book […]
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oliverowl, happy to hear that you made Grandma Caroline’s Green Salad yesterday for Thanksgiving. YUM! Hope it was a good one.
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