Weekend Cooking - What's in your recipe archive??

This post will be linked to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads, which is open to anyone who has a food-related post to share.  Take a look.  There's always something tasty to talk about each weekend.

I have been acquiring quite a few new cookbooks recently, and I've done a weeding of the ones I had on my shelf for a long time that got little use.  And I've been considering whether to document some of my older recipes somehow before the paper they are on actually falls apart.  Age, it gets to all of us, right?  Even your old recipes.

My husband and I have been married almost 35 years.  When I had my wedding shower, all those years ago, one of my mother's friends presented me with this little beige box, filled with index cards.  On those cards, she had taken the time to write down probably close to 100 recipes that she used day in and day out for her family.  Such a kind woman and I remember her so well.  She didn't have a lot of money for a wedding gift, but she told me that she wished that someone would have given her some tried and true, tested recipes as a young bride.  I have used that little box and those suggestions ever since, stuffing it full of other recipes that I wrote out on cards or clipped from magazines.  As you can see, it is well loved.

One of the recipes that I have displayed is for Baked Beans and it is one that lovely lady shared .  I've used it for baked beans forever.  It may not be the healthiest anymore, but my family loved it and it's one that my daughter copied out for her kitchen when she got married.  The other recipe there is one that my husband, who was my boyfriend then, wrote out for me when we were teenagers, probably 5 years or so before we married.  It's for Jiffy Cobbler, his Dad's recipe, and it is still a good one.  I noticed a cobbler recipe very like it in one of the Pioneer Woman's cookbooks.  As you can see, both of those recipes have been used often and are well stained to prove it.

Do you have a few recipes such as these?  What I would call a recipe archive.  I bet you do.  Have you transferred them to a more permanent home?  I'm still on the fence as to whether to scan all of mine.  I have a feeling that looking at them on a computer or iPad screen won't be the same as pulling them out of my little recipe box.  I'm going to share the Baked Beans recipe below, just as she wrote it, and thank you Miss Beth for your kindness.  I miss you.

Baked Beans

 1 large can pork & beans

1 dash maple syrup

1 tbsp. brown sugar

1 cap hot sauce

1 tsp. curry powder

1 med. onion (minced)

1/2 green pepper (minced)

1 stem celery (minced)

1 cup ketchup

2 tbsp. bacon drippings or Wesson oil

Stir together all ingredients and pour into large baking dish.  Bake at 300 degrees for 1 to 1-1/2 hours.

Kay's notes - I usually use more celery and a whole green pepper and a really big can of pork and beans or 2 or 3 regular sized cans.  No bacon drippings, but some olive oil instead.  If you don't like curry powder, it could be left out and other ingredients adjusted as well to suit your taste.