The former owner kindly gave us this beloved recipe box he found when he bought 5 Alexandra in 2014. This was in the Munro family and clearly used by sisters Nancy Munro Walls and Mary Munro Colter and perhaps their mother Maude. I am in love with the art deco recipe box. I use it and admire it multiple times a day. It has pride of place in the butler’s pantry.
I like the depression era basis of many recipes. I am from the prairies and have a predisposed love for depression era food like flapper pie and accompanying sayings like “as good as the cat’s meow”. The sisters clearly loved all things sweet – I would estimate roughly 80% of the recipes are desserts. I have made this butterscotch pie and loved it. Does not even need to be in a pie crust but can be served as a simple pudding.
There are many recipes for butterscotch – sauce, pie, squares, etc. See example below. Women after my own heart – I love butterscotch.
I noticed that the recipes do evolve when more packaged foods came in. For instance, there are many many recipe variations for rice krispy squares. Gives me a hankering for a pan of these this week (secret is real not imitation vanilla extract).
My heart softens with recipes that reference “mum”.
I have a few favourite recipes and this is one of them simply because of the personalized stationary for Ken and Nancy Walls living at 5 Alexandra. With the reference to Royden in the instructions I think that Nancy Walls wrote this out for her sister Mary and Mary’s husband Royden.
Another oldie and goodie is this recipe where I wonder what is the connection between Ray Conniff’s “Somewhere My Love” and pizza mixture on tea biscuits.
A small tangent…if you listen to “Somewhere My Love” and are a Zhivago fan you will immediately recognize the song as “Lara’s Theme.” [fun fact – Boris Pasternak shared the same birthday with me – fellow Aquarians]. When one of my brothers was reading Doctor Zhivago — and it was the first significant novel he had read — I asked him if he got to the part where Lara is raped. My brother was like “no! Lara gets raped?” and I was like… “um no, it’s a happy book with a happy ending, keep going”…
Anyhew, on to the third recipe I love. Me and the former owner still giggle at this one. Yes, that’s right “Don’t forget to prick your fucking duck!”. Advice to live by apparently.
I have a few recipes I plan to make including this insulin inducing beauty:
Enjoy!
Update: made the welsh rarebit today. Delightful and very gout forward.
And an update, I found a similar recipe box in a local auction so now I store my own family recipe in the white box with pride of place beside the blue Munro recipe box.
Great read! Thanks for posting Carrie.
Thanks!
Wonderful…thank you. Will have to send you photo of my Mom’s recipe box and hand written book. She was a housemaid/cook when she was young at a small hotel out in Ontario run out of their home. Full of antiques. The recipes remind me of some of Mom’s. Thank you.
Loved seeing the old dishes the food was displayed in. Are they from previous owners as well?
Thanks for the feedback and while the dishes are antique, they are mine.