Grandma's Cookbook

This is my grandmother, Mattie Blanche Nace, when she was still young—probably in her teens. She hadn't yet gotten married.

She had many beaux, but in her early twenties she married Howard Ruble—a railroad man—and moved to Roanoke. Before long she had three children—her oldest son, Howard Lawrence; my mother Sulmena Alene; and the baby boy William Raymond. They were all called by their middle names. Grandma went by her middle name, too.

The pictures of Grandma and her children might have been taken on Hanover Avenue. I know that's one of the places they lived.

    

The other day I came across her cookbook, Larkin Housewives Cook Book.

She wrote her name on the fly-leaf. My mother would have been four years old then. Grandma probably got the cookbook about the time the above pictures were taken.

Apparently the Larkin Company produced lots of different kinds of foods. 

Besides recipes (sent in by "customers and friends of the Larkin Co."), the cookbook also contained helpful hints:

A lot of pages were dog-eared. Recipes that Grandma used frequently must have been there. But which recipes?

Mama had told me that they ate a lot of potato soup when she was young. I wonder if either of these recipes might have been the one.

Browsing through this well-used cookbook was like a trip into the past. You can read the cookbook online here.

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