Grandma Hanson's Cookbook Family Traditions: Recipes & Memories from Helen's Family and Friends If you would like to purchase a cookbook you may order one from Green Frog Gifts

Grandma Hanson is Helen Ada Hanson who lived nearly ninety decades in Iowa. Many of those years were spent on Iowa farms.   
On September 10, 1998 she and Leo Hanson celebrated 60 years of marriage. Helen dedicated her cookbook to Leo who died October 14, 1998. The recipes are simple ones gathered from years of cooking for a family which included four children, hired men, threshers, and large family gatherings. Stewed tomatos and salmon patties are included along with deviled eggs and a 24 Hour Breakfast casserole. The recipe for Grandma's cinnamon twists, included in this book, is worth the price of the book itself.  Two of her six great-granddaughters are represented with Aubrey's recipe for Potato Candy and Jade's Secret Cake recipe.  (Four of the six great - granddaughters arrived after the cookbook was created.)  Grandma Hanson passed away  on  October 9, 2009.  She was 88 years, 1 month and 18 days old.

Many of the recipes in this book were ones that we originated, developed, found, used and changed during our decades as farmers in Northeast Iowa. Leo had many favorites and helped to adjust others to fit our circumstances and tastes. I was in the fields as often as I was in the kitchen; and Leo was there too. At family dinners he was often the one who mashed the potatoes -- always including finely chopped onions. Nothing pleased him more than a meal of freshly caught fish or a slowly roasted chicken, potatoes - fried or mashed, and wilted dandelion greens. He wasn't much for creams and sauces on his food, and didn't relish casseroles but in the 1980s and 1990s he learned to eat some different foods. His favorites though remained the dishes we made on the farm. Those dishes were plain and simple, and always tasty.

When we were first married in the late 1930s we discovered that while we both liked Navy Bean Soup he preferred to add a splash of vinegar into his serving while I preferred to sprinkle a bit of sugar across mine. In the end, I gave up the sugar but even today a cruet of vinegar is always placed on the table when our Navy Bean Soup is served. That is one recipe that began as a recipe from home and over the years has evolved into the one you will find in this book.

I learned early on that creamed vegetables were not a favorite of his -- most of our vegetables would be served straight from the garden with no creams or special sauces. There were string beans, tomatoes, peas, and fresh sweet corn on the cob. Not much recipe to cooking those. Stewed tomatoes over bread was a treat and later, as our children grew, a favorite Friday evening meal included creamed peas, salmon patties, and mashed potatoes. But since turtle was not a mammal, fried turtle also became a savored Friday meal.

The recipes in this book, contributed by family and friends who have been part of our lives over the decades, brings back many memories of my own life.

My parents, Clarice Graham and Arthur Miller, met in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when my dad was a conductor on the Interurban. He stopped to let my mother off and a car hit her. He had to make out an accident report. They were married May 8, 1920 in Morrison, Illinois and came home to 860 Camburn Court in Cedar Rapids.

I was born on August 21, 1921 and six months later my parents and I moved to a farm north of Center Point. By the time I was three a brother Allen was born and when I was five a second brother, Donald, had joined the family.

I started kindergarten in a country school one-half mile from my home. The school had children in all grades through the eighth grade. There were only one or two pupils in each grade.

My first teacher was Alma Kouba. When I was in first grade my father got me books to read and after I had read eleven of them he asked Miss Kouba if I could read some books from school as I read the ones he got before he even got them to school. The teacher let me go to the blackboard and do arithmetic problems with the second and third grade students. She cautioned that I could continue to work with them as long as I didn't bother them.

I could hear the history and geography lessons and I read the books like a story book. At the end of the year she wanted to advance me to fourth grade but Mom only allowed her to advance me to the third grade.

That year we moved to another farm, the Chismore Farm. I was seven when my sister Eileen was born. It was a mile-and-a-half to walk to the school. It was while we were living on that farm when Allen and Donald began school. Later we moved to a farm know as the Porter Farm. Bernita and Loren were born while we were living on that farm. We all walked to school.

I had to pack school lunches for myself and my two brothers. Everything we made was made from scratch -- no mixes. One day I was making pudding for our lunches and the pudding wasn't thickening. I added some more flour, and then some more flour. I didn't realize that the mixture had to get hot before it would start to thicken. By the time it did get hot I had put in so much flour that it thickened into a big lump. We carried our "dinner" meal to school in a tin syrup or sorghum pail. The evening meal was called "supper."

By the time I was twelve I had completed the eighth grade. That was the same year that my dad had pneumonia. I began high school the following year in Urbana. There were no buses or other school transportation so many days I walked the three miles to the school. One time I stayed in town, for two weeks, with family friends. There was so much snow that my dad took me to town with a horse and sleigh. The snow was so deep that the sleigh went right over the fences. The year was 1936.

I seldom was involved in any school activity as I had no way to get there. I was lucky to be able to walk back home before dark. I always hated for weekends and holidays to come as in the fall I had to go out and help pick corn by hand. I would get really cold and did freeze my fingers several times. I used a peg to pick with.

We often had to pull Morning Glory plants away from the corn to keep the plants from choking the corn off and we shocked oats in July. Another field chore we had to help with came before school started in the fall. Our dad raised sorghum cane and then contracted to process the juice into the sorghum. Dad planted the cane and when it was mature the cane had to be stripped off and cut. The cut stalks had to be piled in a wagon -- a hay rake. We had to help with the stripping of the stalks and piling them into the wagon. The wagon filled with stalks was hauled to the sorghum mill. The mill would extract the juice from the stalks and process the sorghum. The mill would keep half the sorghum and our family got the other half. We used that sorghum all winter long for cooking and to put on piles of pancakes. Dad insisted that the family had pancakes every morning. I got so tired of sorghum I sometimes ate radishes, potato salad, or anything else I could pile on the pancakes to avoid the sorghum.

In school I remember arguing over Presidential elections. I talked for Franklin Roosevelt. When I was in the eleventh or twelfth grade I started the first "walk out day" -- it was a spring picnic break. We all left school and went to a small park, donated a quarter, and had a picnic complete with hot dogs. For years afterward the picnic in the park was a tradition.

I also started a school newspaper. I taught myself to type and got a couple more to help gather news. I got ads, designed them, and typed them up. We sold the newspaper for 10¢ and the ads for $1 a month. I wrote my first poem and published it in this newspaper.

I met Leo on August 1, 1937 - the summer before my senior year in high school. A week or so earlier I had helped a neighbor, Mrs. Sam Porter, cook for a group of oat threshers. Leo said I saw him there because he was the "best looking one there." But if I saw him I did not single him out as with overalls and all the dust they all looked alike. A few days later I walked over to visit a girl friend 1 & 1/2 miles away. The route took me by Leo's folk's place, but I did not know it at the time. When I came home from my friend's house I saw someone coming down an incline from a house, but I turned the corner and headed home. That night Leo came over to the house all dressed up ready to go someplace and asked my dad if I could go with him. Leo said if he's had known my dad was so tall he might have backed out. We went to the Coggon festival. Leo said he had tried to ask me that afternoon but had not made it down to the road in time. We dated all year and three months after my high school graduation -- on September 10, 1938, just after I turned seventeen we were married. We had a wedding license for three weeks before we were able to marry. The priest thought we were too young and my mother saw the license in the paper and said to wait. Unable to be married there we went to Manchester, Iowa and was married in Delaware County. The mayor of Manchester married us. With our marriage official we returned to the priest, Father Holsters, who said now that we were married he would marry us in the church. Our church wedding was in the Sacred Heart Church in Walker. Forty-five years later we renewed our vows in the Sacred Heart Church in Monticello, Iowa. Father Braack presided at that ceremony.

His parents were Carrie Crim Hanson and Peter Hanson. Leo was born on a farm and as his father couldn't do much work, Leo began planting corn and doing a lot of the farm work very early -- at age thirteen. He was the youngest son in a family of six children. His older brothers were: Lafayette (Fay), Earl, and Arnold. His older sister was Bernice (Johnson) and his younger sister was Evelyn (Bertling).

His parents died shortly after we were married. His father died on Christmas day in 1938 and his mother died three weeks later on January 15, 1939. We had to rent another farm and became responsible for his twelve-year-old sister, Evelyn. I was seventeen and he was twenty-one.

We became parents to four children: Dwayne, Keith, Sharron, and Joyce. The oldest was born in 1939; the youngest in 1945. The second poem I wrote was one I sang to the boys, and later to the girls, as I rocked them to sleep. That was my resting time.

During the war we farmed and Leo worked at Wilson's packing plant. He boned picnic hams which were sent overseas to feed the servicemen. When we rented a larger farm he quit his job at the plant.

When I was growing up at home I had plowed corn with a team of horses. After we were married I started to work in the fields, first with horses walking behind the harrow. Later we had tractors. Our first tractor was purchased around 1945. It was a steel wheeled Avery. I drove that tractor and every tractor we owned after that. We started getting Fords later and I never drove anything but a Ford if I could help it.

Around 1947 my dad retired from his own farming operation and bought a grocery store in Urbana -- The Clover Farm Store. The top floor was a big dance floor. Leo and I had many dances there and made many friends of dance bands and customers. One of our top entertainment was going to dances. We danced to Tom Owen's Cowboys, Leo Greco's Dance Band, Floyd Warren's Ramblers, and to the music of Tiny Hill and many others. We saw Danceland in Cedar Rapids and the Coliseum in Oelwein in their heydays and we saw them close. We watched the Armar Dance Hall in Cedar Rapids being built and we saw it being torn down. Floyd Warren's band was at Armar the night that Tiny Tim got married. We watched them in the Armar office on the television.

We organized and arranged for dances at my dad's dance hall in Urbana, in Independence and for a time in a dance hall in Manchester. In August of 1955 my dad passed away and the grocery store, and dance hall, was sold. However, for many years, Leo called square dances for many of the bands. Whenever we were among the people at the dance the band leader would ask Leo to come to the stage to call the square dances. The final time that he called a square dance was for a school social at the Squaw Creek Park in Cedar Rapids.

Church Work

Many things have happened in my life, but one incident in the 1950s left a lasting impression. One day Father O'Sullivan, the priest at Immaculate Conception Church in Masonville asked a group of women to go to a meeting in Dubuque as they had an organization that he thought we should be in. We went and as a result I have worked in the ACCW (American Catholic Conference of Women) ever since. I have been president in two deaneries for a total of twelve years. In addition, I have served on the Archdiocese of Dubuque board and have been a commission chairperson.

From Walker to Cedar Rapids and Other Activities

Our early farming years were spent in Linn County near the area where Leo and I met. When our four children were young we farmed just outside of Masonville, Iowa and later moved two miles East of Delhi. It was here that Jim Hutchinson came into our lives. He was an eight-year-old when he came and sixteen when he left. He and the rest of our children: Dwayne, Keith, Sharron, and Joyce moved away and established their own homes. Dwayne settled in Nevada, Iowa; Keith in Boca Raton, Florida; Sharron north of Cedar Rapids, Iowa in Linn County; Joyce in Cedar Rapids; and Jim in Strawberry Point, Iowa. Leo and I were proud of their achievements and the achievements of their children.

We moved from the farm in Delhi, to a farm just outside of Hopkinton, and eventually retired to an acreage West of Monticello, Iowa. With our children gone, and no longer farming, we had time for other activities.

One Sunday, each spring and fall, Leo and I always helped at the Camp Courageous Breakfasts. We helped seat people and in general served as a host and hostess to help the many people attending to be served as efficiently as possible. I continue to help at Camp Courageous's events as well as being active on several committees and working as a volunteer receptionist, each Friday afternoon, at St. Pius X Church. I belong to the Good Earth Garden Club and to the Painting Club, both in Cedar Rapids. Currently I enjoy painting and have taught community painting courses through Kirkwood and even taught a few private classes. I sew, do crafts, garden and raise many flowers. I enjoy taking bouquets of flowers to friends and family. Many of my flowers have decorated for special events at church and for family functions. My flowers have been part of fund-raisers for political candidates and have decorated halls for dinner events honoring visiting authors.

Changing Times

There was a time in the 1940s and 1950s that we raised a big garden and canned a lot. One year we canned 90 pints of peas. We always canned two or three hundred jars of vegetables, fruit, and meat. In the 1930's Leo's mother had preserved cooked meat: pork chops, ribs, steaks, for a month or two by putting them in a large crock. First she packed a layer of meat and covered it with rendered lard. She repeated the layers until the crock was full. As the meat was to be used, a layer or two would be unpacked. Canning was also used at that time but the process involved packing chunked but uncooked meat loosely into quart jars. The filled jars would then be sealed and covered with water in a large cooking vessel. The water would have to be brought to a boil and kept boiling for three to four hours. This was all done on a cooking stove fueled by wood or coal. By the time Leo and I were canning meat we were able to use a pressurer cooker on the wooden stove. The process took an hour or so.

It was not until in the late 1940s that we got an electric stove and nearly a decade later that we got a refrigerator. Regardless of where we were at or what we had, we always treasured family events. For many years Leo and I hosted a party for my mother's September 6th birthday. We held the party for twenty-three years until she died at the age of 93, in 1994.

In August of 1998 we held a 60th Anniversary party to celebrate our September 10th anniversary. All of our children were home and many of our dozen grandchildren: Denise, Michael, Deborah, Sandra, Brian, Thomas, Matthew, Steven, Shawn, Suzanne, Dustin, and Katherine; and seven great-grandchildren: Michael "Mick," Nicholas, Matthew, Rebecca, Jade, Aubrey, and Victoria.

Now I am enjoying my flowers, my friends, my neighbors, and all of my family. The following poem was written in 1968 in honor of our 30th wedding anniversary. The poem and this book honors the memories I have shared with my husband.

This book will be published as part of the first annual party (1999) to gather my family -- all my children and their children -- and my friends and other relatives to celebrate memories, good times, good food, and friendship.