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Cooking Up Some Family Flavor

Continuing Studies offers a variety of courses, workshops this semester

Continuing Studies instructor Debbie Moose says cooking together is a great way of learning family history

Food writer Debbie Moose says there are two recipes she wishes she had: her late grandmother's recipes for making coconut cake and potato rolls.  

 

"I've tried to find them but I haven't come up with them yet," she says.

 

Moose recalls her grandmother making cakes that "looked like angels' pillows, tall, round and fluffy, with coconut that she had grated by hand from actual coconuts."

 

Today, the award-winning, Raleigh-based writer is on a campaign to encourage others to preserve their family cooking history. Moose, a former food editor at The News & Observer, is the author of two cookbooks, Deviled Eggs: 50 Recipes from Simple to Sassy, and the new Fan Fare: A Playbook of Great Recipes for Tailgating or Watching The Game at Home.

 

On Nov. 10, Moose will teach a one-day Duke Continuing Studies class on making a family cookbook. She'll serve up stories from her own family history to illustrate the importance of saving treasured family recipes such as the one for her mother's baked chicken and rice.

Moose also will teach a class at Duke in October on food essay writing. Her classes are among the offerings from Duke Continuing Studies this fall, ranging from "Druids, Saints and Riverdance: An Introduction to Celtic Culture," to "An Introduction to Film Noir." See the full list at www.learnmore.duke.edu.

 

Moose will offer nuts-and-bolts information about writing and testing recipes, adapting old recipes to modern techniques (you may need to translate "slow" or "hot" oven) and interviewing skills to get folks talking.

 

She says sometimes the best way to get family members' recipes is to stand in the kitchen and watch them cook, so you won't be searching in vain for that special recipe, as she has been.

 

"My husband and his cousin wanted an aunt's recipe for turkey that she would marinade in Coca-Cola and orange juice and that would look like something in ‘Southern Living' magazine," Moose says, "but she never wrote it down. So they stood in her kitchen and held her hand," while measuring what she poured.

Participants in Moose's class are asked to bring in family recipes, "on hand or in their heads." If you don't, "we'll talk about how to start from scratch," she says.

 

Family cookbooks can incorporate pictures and stories and make great family heirlooms or gifts, she says. Computer printing and copy-store spiral bounding make it easy to gather family memories.

 

Moose says her cookbook class is not just about cooking. The process of making the book also preserves details about family life.

Talking about food is a great way to get family members talking about the past, Moose says. "Your grandmother may not want to talk about the Depression, but if you ask her how hard it was to get vegetables, you can start a conversation."