Heirloom Meals: Savoring Yesterday's Traditions Today

Wednesday June 10, 2015

Heirloom Meals Recipe Project

Preserving your family food memories into a tangible legacy for future generations. 

  • Do you feel too busy to record and preserve your family’s stories and recipes?
  • Do you keep telling yourself “I’ll do this someday?”
  • Do you have that nagging feeling that if you keep waiting, these precious stories may never be captured?

Through the Heirloom Meals Recipe Project I will guide you in an easy and structured way, and give you the support and accountability necessary to bring your pens and your pots together to produce your heirloom family cookbook.

Because the reality is "someday" may never come!

Putting pen to paper and writing about family food memories is a lofty goal.  Many would rather do laundry than sit down and write.  A blank page is intimidating!
How many times have you looked at your recipe box/folder/binder you created OR the one you inherited, and longed to have them in one place to SHARE?
What about those recipes that aren’t written down – how do you preserve those intuitive concoctions that take you back to your childhood table?

The Heirloom Meals Recipe Project is an 8-week program designed to help you write your family food history, organize your recipes and result in YOUR Heirloom Meals Recipe Book.

MORE THAN JUST RECIPES

Unlike most online options, our program and template has ample space for your narrative story, recipes, family photos and scans of stained recipe cards.  While recipes are wonderful, it’s the stories that give them their full flavor.

In the workshop, I will guide you through the process of writing your family food narrative, headnotes for your recipes, and collecting all the supporting photos that will result in a treasured book to share with your family. Think of me as your Edible Legacy Coach!

Each week, I will email you a workbook with writing prompts and other exercises.  We will have an hour-long live call.  We will have a private facebook page to build community, post our progress and share our stories.

The goal is to chronicle your family food history.  Your written story will emerge as a result of responding to the prompts. We will ultimately combine that with your recipes with headnotes, and photos, and build it into your very own hard copy Heirloom Family Cookbook.

The workshop is designed to produce an end-product.  It provides that accountability we all crave to keep a project like this on track, and to get finished!!

The Details

  • 8 Modules
  • Live one-hour coaching calls with replays 
  • Homework each week
  • Access to me via email
  • 2 – 15-minute one-on-one coaching calls
  • No fussing with designing content – just upload and leave the rest to us
  • Approximately 4 weeks after you send in your final materials, you will receive one, 72 page hardcover, color Heirloom Family Recipe Book and a PDF (If you have more than 72 pages, it will cost an additional $2 per page. Additional copies available at an additional fee based on you final page count. A 72-page book is approximately $60)
  • Each Class is Limited to 8 participants
  • Private Facebook community
  • Price $997 - payment plans offered!
  • Next class begins on November 24, 2015.   

           

Module One: Let’s start at the beginning

Module Two: A Sense of place

Module Three: The story is the thing

Module Four: It’s all about feelings

Module Five: It’s all about the food

Module Six: Concoctions into Recipes

Module Seven: Headnotes

Module Eight: Putting it all together

I can design a group or family class - call me at 413-298-0173 or e-mail me for details.

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Testimonials:

It has been said that because so much of our lives today are documented in technology that we chance to loose our history and stories in these devices.  Carole Murko has offered a gift of leading us through the writing of our families’ food history and memories so that they are not lost and can be passed down for generations to come.  She takes you on a beautiful, emotional, supportive and loved filled journey that is a gift unto itself.  With her warm and creative guidance you create together a memoir that you never realized was inside of you waiting to be shared with those you love.   This is a gift to give to yourself, to a friend, to family.  Everyone should experience this journey with Carole Murko. 

Debby Edwards, Chicago, IL

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Carole takes you on a journey through all five of your senses as she guides you through the delicious and colorful food memories of your childhood and family. She taps you into the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of the food and traditions that weave our family memories into the tapestry of our lives. She takes you on a journey that will leave your mouth watering and your heart swelling with the memories of your cherished family traditions and recipes. While doing this project, I had the unexpected pleasure of connecting my children to the grandparents and great grandparents they never met. We combed through family photos, old cookbooks and scribbled on index cards, while we shared memories about the people and events we’d almost forgotten. I loved doing this with my parents. We laughed, we cried! We shared our favorite memories and spend hours one night talking about holiday dinners and our favorite dishes. What a fantastical journey through our family memories. I was reminded of the simple pleasures and the power of creating a meal and sharing it with those you love. I was reminded how powerful it is to bring the people you love together to share a meal and a life-long experience. Thank you Carole for creating the Heirloom Cookbook project and giving my family a treasure to be shared for generations to come! This was such a freakin’ blast! I loved it! My family loved! Thank you for reminding me how much I loved my grandfather’s past fagioli. I hadn’t made it in years, and it was such a pleasure to taste it and feel the love of this cherished recipe come back to life.

Laura Rothschild, San Diego, CA

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The Heirloom Meals Recipe Project has been amazing on so many levels.  Carole has organized the weekly sessions in such a way to get us thinking on a big scale about our memories, then working down to a personal, intimate portrait of individuals and their favorite recipes.  

From the outset, Carole encourages her participants to consider all the influences that made them the cook, the foodie, the teacher they are today - through reflections on our most beloved childhood food memories, the marvelous old kitchens of our grandmothers and mothers, the stories we share during the fellowship of family mealtime (or informal gatherings with friends), and the anecdotes about our most beloved recipes.  The process has reintroduced us to many 'old friends' in the kitchen (both beloved family recipes and new discoveries), sparked conversations with family about their memories of cooking together and sharing meals, and above all, produced a collection of favorite recipes and stories that will surely become our go-to book for our favorite recipes.  

Through this process, I've not only reconnected with many, many 'old friends' in my kitchen, I have also captured the stories that gently cocoon those friends, warming my heart throughout the years and bringing joy to so many gatherings.  I've also learned that it's great fun to write about food - not only critiques, but the back-story, the genesis, and the emotional connection.  And I'm fairly good at it!!  What an utter pleasure it's been to share this journey with women who have equally great stories to share, all the while encouraging each other, asking questions, and having more memories stirred up!

Amy Holich Moscaritolo, Northampton, MA

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Under Carole Murko's thoughtful, sensitive guidance, I was able to complete a project I've been meaning to do since my Grandmother passed away in 1992: put together a family keepsake of cherished recipes that might otherwise have been lost, a unique and invaluable gift, that will last for generations.

Stephanie Ann Smith, Gainsville, FL

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If you get the chance to do Heirloom Meals, do it!  You will not believe how much fun it is to recall all the loved ones of your past, journey back to your childhood recalling the foods you grew up loving, and interacting throughout the whole program with wonderful women experiencing the same process.  Carole has a joyful manner for introducing each step in the progression of the book development and a meaningful way of guiding you and your memory back to the tastes and all the senses of earlier times.  The book you will create will be a treasure for your children and grandchildren.

I am so grateful I have had the opportunity to make this journey with Carole.

Nona Thompson, Hallowell,Maine

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Through Carole's prompts for memory and writing exercises, I realized the richness of the memories I hold around food and family! Tables and tableaux I had not thought about for years! The heirloom meals project wraps your family recipes with love and reminds you of what to hold dear. Ending up with a family cookbook is the treasure that results!

Laura Tiberi, Westerfield, OH

Saturday June 27, 2015

Carole's Cookbook Picks:
I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Giulia Melucci

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti

Cooking is meditative, healing, and therapeutic. Giulia Melucci understands these curative properties of food and uses them in her memoir I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti as she shares her quest for love through the meals she cooks for her boyfriends. The variety in her cooking follows the variety in her men, resulting in entertaining accounts of her relationships with writers, hipsters, and the all-too-common men afraid of commitment.

What I love is that this book is seemingly deceptive. We open it expecting to be amused by the various horror stories of men at their worst (and for some their best), but we are surprised to see a clear narrative come through this disarray. It becomes a quiet reflection on what Giulia learned in the kitchen from her mom, teaching her that where men are absent, she will always have cooking, and she will always have herself. She learns through the process of love and loss that the peace and meditation of cooking remains.


Giulia represents all that Heirloom Meals aims to capture - a love of one's past seen through food memories, and taking those memories and tweaking them for our current lives - "savoring yesterday's traditions today." She emphasizes this from the beginning, where the book’s dedication states: “For my mother, who taught me how to cook and how to love.” I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti is a witty, self-effacing, often funny account of Giulia's love life and the food she cooks - for love, to assuage a broken heart, and for pure joy.

Sunday June 21, 2015

Ode to Dad

With Father's Day upon us, which by the way always coincides with Dad's birthday, I wanted to share a little poem I wrote about him:

Straight dark hair

recognizable from afar.

Intense, happy

workaholic.

Best dad in the world.

 

Relishes his food.

What he is eating is

the best he’s ever had.

Eats in the present,

never in the past or

future.

 

Loves his sweets,

a midnight snack

Indeed.

Milk and cookies,

bread and jam, or

a banana.

 

Spare ribs are a favorite,

baked ham with a

sweet glaze, a

close second.

Tomatoes and mozzarella,

a year round staple.

 

Big green salad

with sweet dressings

usually bottled.

A frustration of my

Mom.

 

Cakes of all kinds -

lemon pound,

chocolate chip,

apple crumb,

babka.

Disappear in a flash

 

Always a hugger.

Affectionate to a fault.

Emotionally diverse.

My dad

the optimist

and happy eater.

Here are some of his favorite foods: Grilled Ribs, Potato Salad...but as I begin this process, I realized they are all his favorites. Just check out most of my recipes. They have all been inspired by the meals of my yeaith. He is every cooks dream. He devoured everything and truly always meant it when he said with a smile, "It is the BEST thing I have ever eaten."

Thank you for being the best dad. I love you!

Saturday June 20, 2015

Carole's Cookbook Picks:
The American Lighthouse Cookbook Becky Sue Epstein and Ed Jackson

The American Lighthouse Cookbook: The Best Recipes and Stories from America's Shorelines

We visit lighthouses for the charm of their unique structure and the scenic beauty of the sea. However, little is known of the lighthouse keepers themselves. Becky Sue Epstein gives a voice to these arduous workers through the recipes representing the foods they and their families relied upon in The American Lighthouse Cookbook. The book will give you a new perspective on these little-known figures; its incredible menus will encourage you to buy locally and depend upon the land just as their demanding schedules forced them to.

In its pages, the stories of different lighthouses along our country’s coasts are highlighted, going into detail about their individual characteristics and particular pasts. Chef Ed Jackson, who developed the majority of the book’s recipes, supplements these backgrounds with menus inspired by the foods and cooking techniques native to that region. You’ll find Sautéed Fiddlehead Ferns and Asparagus alongside boiled Lobster with Melted Butter to feature the flavors local to the coast of Maine. Also included is a “Dinner for Company” menu starting with a Hearts of Palm Salad with Grapefruit Vinaigrette, finished by a Key Lime Pie to show the mix of cooking styles true to Mayport, Florida.


By exploring so many geographical locations and representing them through the foods native to their region, Becky Sue Epstein creates a culinary adventure for those readers wishing to be swept up by the lighthouses’ history and romance. The American Lighthouse Cookbook impresses upon its readers a lifestyle which relies only upon locally-gathered ingredients. It shows that food is a statement of how we eat, an indication of where we come from, and an expression of who we are.

Monday June 15, 2015

Carole’s Concoctions:
The Golden Door Moroccan Harari Arancini

When the box of Golden Door Spa food products arrived, I was excited to see that the ingredients are all organic and locally sourced. Kudos to the Golden Door! As many of you know, I eat a very clean, organic and primarily local diet. It all began as a kid with my live-in Italian grandparents and it now it is paramount in my life because my husband Jim has celiac disease and I have some weird stomach issues.

So, how do I create a recipe that is both a nod to my Italian past, and embodies my current restrictions and my philosophy? Easy, peasy! I took one look at the packages that arrived and knew I would use the red lentil soup mix: Moroccan Harrari Soup Mix.

I am an old-fashioned concoctor. I mostly cook by feel, flavor and what I have on hand. I keep a rather stocked pantry and fridge, so I can run wild most days!! I had some cooked jasmine rice in the fridge. So, it occurred to me that if I made the soup recipe and added the rice and let it simmer for a while, I would have the consistency of risotto.  And who doesn’t LOVE risotto?  Better yet, who doesn’t like leftover risotto re-imagined as “Arancini” – risotto balls or cakes? So, this recipe is really a two for one!! First by simply adding the rice, we create the Moroccan Harari Risotto and then with the left overs, the arancin! I love getting two meals out of one dish!!

So, I present….The Golden Door Moroccan Harari Arancini….golden fried balls of perfection. The Moroccan flavor profile that Chef Michael Stroot created combined with a little Italian juju…… and voila. Truth be told, I didn’t want to challenge the wonderfully balanced spice blend that Chef created. The hints of coriander, fennel, cumin, cinnamon, paprika, black pepper, turmeric, salt, red chili, onion and garlic were enough to carry the day. I just doctored them up to provide a different delivery vehicle!!  And I didn’t have to do much. Some rice, cilantro, red onion, mozzarella cheese and gluten free breadcrumbs.

They are as delicious as they are inviting. I had to slap Jim’s hand as he went to grab one before I finished cooking all of them. I served them with a lemon wedge over an arugula salad dressed with a little olive oil, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. A perfect way to devour the leftover Moroccan Harari Risotto!!

Saturday June 13, 2015

Carole's Cookbook Picks:
One Big Table by Molly O’Neill

One Big Table

The American tradition of cooking at home is a practice that has been threatened by our modern-day mindset of emphasizing convenience as our primary goal. Molly O’Neill spent ten years collecting recipes and stories from across America, investigating whether or not this custom had really been destroyed. Thankfully, through her many miles covered and the countless stories shared with her, Molly discovered that across the country, Americans are still honoring their heritage with the foods that give their family a place on the map.

She compiled these findings into her book One Big Table. It is part-cookbook, part-reference guide, and party-history book. However, Molly herself gives the most comprehensive definition, describing it as a well-balanced portrait of American cooking.

My favorite section is titled “Bread: An Unrefined History”, which highlights one of my favorite spots as a student as Smith College, Hungry Ghost Bread. It dedicates an entire page to the bakery’s history, and goes into detail about the steps the owners, Jonathan Stevens and Cheryl Maffei, have taken to establish themselves as a self-sustainable business. The book’s dual focus on recipes and stories is shown in Molly’s supplementing the bakery’s background with a recipe for the owners’ friend’s, Jamie Pagana's, Rich and Herby Cornbread. The experience of enjoying this “soul-satisfying companion to hearty soups and stews” will be enriched by knowing the story behind its creation.


This is the ultimate Heirloom Meals cookbook. Not only does it share the foods indicative of a nation ground in culinary history, but it also includes their stories, advertisements of ingredients from the period, and the family photos which show the many people a recipe can touch.

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