Meet the Family
For the Christmas of 2011, our mother gave us a copy of Grandma Betty’s personal, hand-written recipe notebook. With that in hand, we have decided to work our way through the notebook and make her recipes…and decipher what she was trying to say! As we cook our way through the notebook, we will post the adventures on this site and give you the recipe and the variations that we found worked. Peabody will probably only call us by our nicknames, so here’s the family:
Dandylion
Actual name: Amanda
Rank: Betty’s 9th Grandchild (Barb’s youngest)
Nickname Origin: Peabody gave it to me…she’s a clever one!
Chef Notes: I’m the adventurer, as Debbs states. I like to try the new recipes, change the recipes and make a mess of the kitchen!
peabody
actual name: debbi
rank: betty’s 6th grandchild (barb’s 4th child)
nickname origin: originally nicknamed sweet pea by her lovely boyfriend, it morphed into peabody over time because of her love of reading.
chef notes: i’m the rule follower of cooking. i will follow a recipe exactly and not vary at all. if it works, why change it? on the other hand, this can make me pretty difficult to cook with as i must have it the way the recipe says. there have been a number of… ahem… personality clashes in the kitchen of barb who is the antithetical cook. i am also the one who has the most kitchen implements: including a mortar and pestle. i could read cookbooks each day and spend all weekend perusing sur la table.
Snickers
Actual name: Vicki
Rank: Betty’s 3rd Grandchild (Barb’s oldest)
Nickname Origin: It’s from Babs!
Chef Notes: My sly and cunning plan is to introduce my children to Grandma Betty’s cookbook and nuture their love of the kitchen so I have two chefs to prepare me dinner each night while I read my backlog of books!
babs aka ruffles aka mom
Actual Name: Barb
Rank: Betty’s 2nd Child
Nickname: Another Peabody special!
Chef Notes: peabody here and i can take this one. babs is bizarro peabody. she picks out a recipe and swaps about half of it out – if she swaps at all. she is the full on cook-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type. she is also incredibly adventurous but married to a man who likes his steak and potatoes. she eagerly anticipates her daughters coming home so we can experiment!