This is the oldest recipe notebook of my grandmother’s that I have.
It has been wrapped in more recent years, maybe the 1990s, with recycled giftwrap.
This is the actual cover. Can you make out the faded logo? It says ‘Federal Stationery 250′.
Here are some of the first few pages. Note the date: Dec 22nd, 1957.
9/3/08 update : I’ve just come across a page on Rose Syrup dated 24 October 1955! So it appears that this notebook was not started in December 1957 as I noted above. Grandmother did not fill in the pages sequentially, so the front page dated 22 December 1957 simply indicates that she had added in that information at that point.
In some of the entries on this blog, I’ve made some observations about changing perceptions of food in the decades that these cooking notes were made. Came across this British Nutrition Foundation page which points out some of the changes between 1952 and 1992.
do you know how to make chinese rice wine for confinement mother
Hi Sharon,
I’m sorry, I don’t know and there’s nothing in my grandmother’s recipe notebooks either.
If you haven’t already seen this book, you may want to refer to “The Chinese Pregnancy and Confinement Cookbook” by Ng Siong Mui (Singapore: Landmark Books, 1990) which is available at many branches of the National Library in Singapore.
Good luck finding an appropriate recipe!
awesome! i have been looking for grandmothers’ notebooks world over and yours is amazing!! thanks for putting it up
Hi, you might be interested in this recipe – I am a Hakka chinese woman married to an Portugese Eurasian hubby.
I used to drink a glass of my mum’s rice wine every Chinese New Year since I am a little girl.
30 斤 glutinous rice, soak overnight and steam till cook.
bring it out to cool
2 – 3 pcs of wine biscuits (depends how thick/strong you want it) – you can get it in any chinese medical hall. Grind it till powdery and spread it evenly onto the cooled glutinous rice. Mix it together. (my grandma used a glass bottle to grind the wine biscuits)
Transfer to a ceramic pot (the type that soak the salted veg in the market) or any glass/clay pot that you have.
Sprinkle with 红漕, put a muslin cloth around the pot and cover with a lid. Have to put a stone or something solid on top to sit on it. On the 9th day, use your fist and press the centre of the glutinous rice to turn it over. Keep it cover for another 21 days. U can squeeze the wine out using the muslin cloth. This recipe makes about 20/30 bottles.
Remember, do not bring any food near the pot as the smell will over-right the wine. Chinese saying 小气!
Sorry, there is a mistake on the wine recipe. After checking with my mum, she said it should be 1 to 1 ratio and that is for every amount of glutinous rice is to one wine biscuit.
The rest of the steps are correct.
1 斤 glutinous rice = 1 pc of wine biscuits.
Thank you for sharing your family recipe, Carly.