Our Family Cookbook.

My paupau is on the left with her two sisters on the right.

In my family, cooking Chinese food is something really special. My great aunt carries around a book of all of her handwritten family recipes from the restaurant our family used to have and recipes handed down through the family. She recently let us photo copy them and we put them in binders. My mom added some recipes from other family members that she had and now we have a giant book full of family recipes, both Chinese and not. It seems like half of the book is desserts, I guess we love our sweets.

Aren't those hairdos amazing? I'm in love.

In the top left is my great-grandma and below her with the birthday cake is my grandma.

In addition to the recipes we added a couple pages of old family photos. This is a book I'll cherish and if for some reason I ever decide to have children, this will be passed down to them, after adding my own recipes of course. I can't wait to try out some of the traditional Chinese recipes.

Along with the cha siu bao, soy steamed chicken, and sui mai, there are some killer more recent creations, like a casserole my sister made up in Girl Scout camp and the snickerdoodles we made in kindergarten.

One of my favorite recipes in the book is the famous recipe for Elephant Stew:

1 African Elephant
10 lbs. salt
38 bushels of potatoes
Wine to cover
2 rabbits (optional)

Cut elephant into bite-sized pieces (allow 2 months).
Marinate in wine one month.
Add salt, any pepper, and potatoes.
Simmer over kerosene fire 4 weeks.
Serves 3,000.
If more are expected - add rabbits, but do this only if necessary as most do not like to find hare in their stew.

Apparently when we were kids this was my cousin Emma's favorite and it was almost enough to feed my little brother, Cory. I laughed when I read that but my mom assured me that one night at dinner Cory ate almost the entire dish himself. 8 chicken breasts, really kid?

This particular page is really special to me because of the little note written at the bottom. Mr. Bowman passed away a few years ago so I'm really happy to have this. There is also a recipe written by my Pau Pau (grandma) who passed away before I was born. I've marked these special recipes with the little scalloped circles I made. 

This is my Auntie Alice. She always wears the most fantastic clothing. The reason we all got together last week was to celebrate her 95th birthday.

I wish I had that dress. Amazing!

This is my other Auntie, Daisy or (Dae-dae as we call her). Dae-dae is a busy bee and hilarious. Auntie and Dae-dae are my grandma's sisters. Every year growing up my brother and I would go live with them for a month or so in California and drive them completely insane. They are the closest thing I've ever had to a grandparent and although I couldn't say, because I've never actually had a grandparent, I feel like in many ways, they are better than grandparents. I am so thankful to have these two amazing women in my life.

I've linked up here and here.