Welcome to Recipe Rewind! My name is Laurie and I’m the mother of three kids.
Back in the early 2000’s, we built a new house and in the process of designing it, I had the idea of putting a 50’s diner in the basement. My husband gave up his thoughts of a home theatre and gave into my dream of a diner. At first when we entertained, we served the typical 50’s food of burgers and pizza but then I had the idea that it would be fun to serve authentic dinners from that time period instead. I’ve always loved collecting cookbooks and trying lots of new recipes and now I had a mission to find some good oldies from the years when diners, poodle skirts and sock hops were in.
In the past few years I’ve been able to collect 1000’s of recipes from the 1950’s and 1960’s. I thought others might enjoy seeing some of my great finds. I actually cook many of our family meals from these cookbooks because I’ve found the recipes to be quick and easy and the ingredients are sensible. Housewives weren’t running to the store everyday so most recipes use staples you’ll find in your cupboard.
On occasion, I have found some fabulous recipes books from the 1930’s and 1940’s so I will share those as well. My goal is to help preserve and keep alive the older recipes so my listings will be mainly recipes from the 1960’s or earlier.
During my childhood, my grandma Ella lived with us. In my searches for vintage recipes, I have found some of her old recipes. I have put “from the kitchen of” on her recipes and others that came from relatives and friends. Please enjoy them and pass them on to others. Good recipes should be shared! If you have any family favorites you would like to share, I would love to hear from you through my contact form.
Thank you to all the people who have been willing to share their family favorites with me and loan me their old cookbooks. I also owe Deb a big thanks for always being on the lookout for vintage cookbooks. She makes my day when she leaves a pile of cookbooks at my door! Recently, I received a huge gift of the whole collection of Edna Schmidt’s recipes. She had a fabulous selection of handwritten, newspaper and magazine acquired recipes from the 1930’s-1990’s. Thank you so much to the family for sharing these with me. I’ve now gotten them grouped by years but need to start inputting them. So many great recipes and not enough time to enter them all–at least not yet.
Please enjoy the beginnings of my collection and keep checking on the progress of the site. I’m thousands of good recipes away from completion!
–Laurie