I was recently in California visiting my family. I grew up in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, and it is always great going home. My whole family still lives there, so I got to see everyone. I had a really great time, but now I miss them all tremendously.
I went to visit my cousin Jack at the beach house in Malibu on Old Malibu Road. That is where I spent most weekends as a teenager, also every birthday, 4th of July, New Years Eve, and every other party that my Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Ed used to throw. It was one of the best places in the world to hang out. They built their house in 1958, and at that time is was very modern, but now is considered totally cool and retro. It was like the GE House of the Future at Disneyland. I don’t know if any of your are old enough to remember that ride, but I certainly am. It had Clarkson electric cooktop and oven and the Nutone appliances built into the counter. They even had a thing that looks like a speaker, but had all of the electrical cords for appliances built into the wall. The house was featured in Sunset Magazine in 1958 after it was finished.
My aunt passed away about 8 years ago, and my cousin restored the house to back to its original style and décor. My aunt had kept all of the original appliances in good shape, so it was mainly paint bathroom fixtures, tile, carpet, even a Murano glass light fixture that had to be remade. The house is beautiful I will post pictures of it in tomorrow’s blog, but for today I want to talk recipes.
All of this background is for a reason. My aunt and uncle loved to have parties. She loved to cook, and she also shared her recipes. After my aunt passed away, my cousin Jack, gave my mom all of my aunts cook books and recipes, because my mom and I love to cook. It was 4 boxes of cookbooks, so we have gone through some of it, but since we both already have so many cookbooks, it seemed overwhelming at time. I was telling Jack about my blog, and that I was having a hard time feeling like my weekend posts were cohesive with my blog. They just felt random. He suggested that since I was doing recipes, and since we have all of the cookbooks and her written recipes that I do a Retro Recipe day, and I thought that was a great idea. So we now have Retro Recipe Saturdays. We just went through one box of her cookbooks this time and I brought home quite a few along some of her handwritten recipes, which I will provide copies of in my blog. It is pretty fun trying to do this. I can’t wait to hear what you think of these new recipes. I have some cookbooks dating back to 1940. The pictures and graffics are pretty cool. When I have a cookbook I will scan in the front and the copy write page so you can see it also.
Today though I am going to do one of my aunts handwritten recipes. I hope that you give it a try. It is a really simple recipe and it came from her neighbor Mary Mac. By the way, Mary still lives on the beach also. So here it is, Mary Mac’s Brown Bacon.
Mary Mac’s Brown Bacon
Ingredients
1 lb bacon cut in half
½ box brown sugar
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cover cookie sheet with foil. Spray cake rack with non stick cooking spray.
Dunk bacon in water and then dredge the bacon in the brown sugar.
Put on a foil lined cookie sheet.
Bake for 20 minutes and remove immediately with a fork.
Put on sprayed cake rack to drain.
This can be made ahead and stored in a plastic container in the refrigerator until ready to use. Then just reheat. They of course wrote if not eaten first.
I hope that you like this recipe. Let me know what you think. It can be used for breakfast or as an appetizer. Send me your comments, and I hope that you like this new series, which is called Retro Recipe Saturdays.
Enjoy!!!
Debi
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