 The way recipes used to look.
The person who wrote the recipe would hand-copy it, usually as part of a Sunday "visit", maybe after chicken dinner and all the dishes were washed. I have no idea who "Virgie Mathias" was. If you complimented a dish, you were offered the recipe or you might just out and ask for it. Like many scripts distributed by hand-copying, the original source is usually lost. It might be either an old family recipe or it might have come from a box of Quaker Oats. All recipe boxes had a few extra cards to accomodate the unprepared visitor. This one is on a color-printed card, done with ball point pen (except for the "credit", which is pencil), and the handwriting is my mother's. It contains vegetable oil, not lard, so my guess is that it probably was copied in the late 1950s.
The cheap jalapenos and habaneros I bought last week were getting a little soft by yesterday, so I cut of the caps and simmered them in just enough vinegar to cover for about 30 minutes. When that cooled, I ran the mixture through a blender, than strained it through a sieve. I used a baster (the kind with a bulb) to fill an old Worcestershire bottle. It is thick and green, not as hot as you might imagine. A friend at work liked it and offered some garden tabasco peppers to round it out. I accepted - tabascos are my favorite pepper. They look evil, in the same way as a scorpion, and beautiful, Christmas red and green, in the same glance. The existing sauce will become a base for a late-garden pepper sauce potpourri. Wonder what color it will be in November...
The Scuppernong Blush Jelly is still in the conceptual stage. Pectin has been extracted, the wine is here and so are the sugar, jars, and lids. I think a chilly day might get them intermingling.
5:01:41 PM 
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