This is a guest post written by my husband Jeff Greene, initially published 9 May 2010 on our now defunct food blog to celebrate Mother’s Day. I am migrating our family history-related food blog posts (with recipes) into this genealogy education blog since they are a form of family history storytelling, and I am republishing them with newer dates so these posts appear in my RSS feed and subscriber emails. We hope you enjoy these recipes from our ancestors!
Someone on Facebook this week was asking for the three greatest gifts their mom gave to the world. I’m guessing they were looking for words of wisdom, or love, or sacrifice, or something, but my answer was a bit more tangible: 1) Me 2) Her bran muffins 3) My brother. If the list was longer I’d have added things like her lifelong work with Bible Study Fellowship, her years with the American Cancer Society, Meals on Wheels, and founding the library at Calvary Baptist Church in Bakersfield (which I think they named in her honor when she died). She also taught me to cook, which obviously became a focus of my future life.
Many of my standard dinners (meatballs and rice w/mushroom gravy, chicken and rice w/chicken gravy, pork chops and rice casserole, fried chicken and mashed potatoes w/country gravy , mashed potatoes, crock-potted roasts, and I’m sure a few others) are derived directly from meals I grew up with. I’ve made some adjustments along the way, but they’re still pretty true to her originals , and all made off the top of my head now.
There are only two actual hand-written recipes I have from her. One was this abomination called African Chow Mein, which I remembered being awesome from childhood. Much later in life, I asked her for the recipe, and upon reading what was in it, I have no idea why I thought it was so good. Or why it had anything to do with Africa. It’s a very 60’s sort of dish with two different canned Campbell’s cream soups, Minute Rice (Minute Rice???), ground beef and a few other things. The only thing I can figure that attracted me to it was it had ground beef in it, it was topped with chow mein noodles (always a hit for a kid), and we could add soy sauce to it, which was sort of a novelty to us as a kid growing up in the Midwest. I’ve never made it, but I still have the recipe card.
The other was her bran muffins from scratch, which was always a special occasion when she would make up a big batch to eat with breakfast. We’d frequently freeze some of them for use on a future weekend. I have made this recipe many times, and that is what I’m sharing with you here.
Muffins ready for eatin’!
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