One of my most treasured inheritances is my Grandma Cleo’s battered 1925 edition of the Pennsylvania State Grange Cook Book, with recipes now so strange-sounding they border on exotic—for corn oysters, vegetable shortcake, Punch for Sixty Grangers, and much more.

Although the recipes are entertaining, my main interest lies in the cookbook’s inside front and back covers, which my grandmother used to record the first snows of many years (see the image below), and various other seemingly ordinary details. None of these strike me as overly personal, but they offer an intriguing glimpse into the life of a woman I was just getting to know when she died.

I never got the opportunity to ask my grandmother how she decided what facts or observations were important enough to write down, in a cookbook of all places. My desire to explore this mystery, ultimately an unsolvable one, inspired a short story that I was pleased to see published in the Mulberry Fork Review.

If you’d like to attempt corn oysters, here’s the recipe word for word, and its author:

 

One cup corn grated (may used canned corn), 1 egg, 1/4 cup flour, salt and pepper. Beat the egg until foamy. Add to the corn. Mix flour, salt and pepper and add this to the corn and egg, beat well. Drop by teaspoonfuls in deep hot fat, fry a golden brown. They should be about the size of a large oyster. It is well to use about 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder in the flour.”

–Mrs. Helen E. June