LONG LOST RECIPES OF AUNT SUSAN
ISBN 0-9624490-0-8

Some of the most delicious recipes in my recipe box were handed down from "Aunt Susan." For years I had assumed that she was one of the shadowy women who were part of the food brigade at our family reunions, but I couldn’t quite place her. Eventually my mother explained that "Aunt Susan" didn’t belong to us exclusively, since that was the pen name of the Food Editor for The Daily Oklahoman when my mother was a young matron. Those recipes from Aunt Susan’s newspaper columns had been lovingly preserved and recopied for me as part of my Oklahoma dowry.

Many years and pecan pies later, after I retired, as family and friends learned of my interest, they shared their own caches of "Aunt Susan’s" yellowed recipe columns, a well-thumbed copy of her only published cookbook and souvenir booklets of recipes from her annual cooking schools. My long search for all of Aunt Susan’s published recipes had begun. The research caused me to scan virtually every issue of The Daily Oklahoman from 1924 to 1943. When the Aunt Susan by-line popped up on the microfilm reader, I captured the column by a photocopy process.

For 2 1/2 years I perched on a stool at the library, I was organizing the columns and categorizing the recipes. I saved the narrative portions of her columns that revealed her philosophy and views on local or historic events, as well as her comments on food preparations. These have become the "fillers" for the book, a framework that gives it historical perspective and will help you readers get to know this remarkable woman as I have.

The ingredients given are from Aunt Susan’s hand, unless noted by brackets. The format and wording of a number of the recipes have been edited for clarity, readability and convenience; burying the list of ingredients in the narrative portion of a recipe is unacceptable today.

After I had unearthed over 5,000 of her recipes, I came to understand what Aunt Susan meant when she wrote in April 1934, "You know, I’ve been having a difficult time trying to figure out what recipes to give you and what to keep. Rather like the kittens, because they’re all so good and all so interesting, it’s hard to know which to drown and which to save." I pared it down to around 1,000 recipes, divided between this book and its later companion, Spiced with Wit. Each recipe shows the year it ran in the newspaper or was featured in her cooking schools.

I hope you will enjoy these recipes and columns in several different ways: as a glimpse of our culinary traditions; as a discerning woman’s window on her world of the 1930’s and 40’s (dust bowl and Depression years), and as recipes that are rewarding to include on your table. They remind us of how flavorful food was in the era of REAL home cooking!

PATTY VINEYARD MACDONALD
B.S., Home Economics
Oklahoma State University

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