Our Goals:
- To share basic cooking how-to’s and reliable recipes, and to focus on tips and methods that may have been forgotten over time.
- To encourage home chefs and to offer permission to make un-pretty (or even really ugly), un-gourmet things. And even use a few “wrong” methods to make tasty, nutritious food for the people you love (including yourself).
- To prove that you really can cook entirely without the use of preservatives, food coloring, or artificial ingredients.
Our Promises:
Clean Ingredients: All Legacy Kitchen's recipes are made using ingredients that are dye-free, preservative-free, unprocessed as much as possible, and easy to find.
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy: I love for food to be exquisite, but that often means a lot of work, dirty dishes, and expertise. While I have a deep appreciation for gourmet food, that's not what we're here for. All Legacy Kitchen recipes are made for families with little time, and are able to be made while wiping noses and reminding your little ones, "the stove is hot!" every 42 seconds. You might also notice that we skip over some common instructions. For example, we don't always separate wet and dry ingredients when baking, and we don't really care if you need a little extra water to help your pie dough come together. While these are often good practices, they're not strictly necessary to making great food. I believe the addition of many professional culinary methods into everyday recipes has made cooking seem more intimidating than it needs to be. We'll always tell you when it's important to follow stricter instructions or risk a failed final product. But sometimes it's ok to just throw it all in the bowl and get on with your day.
"Criminently" Good: There's finger-lickin' good, there's knee-slappin' good, and then there's Criminently Good. My Grandpa's favorite exclamation of surprise or delight was, "Criminently!" Legacy Kitchen recipes aim to extract such compliments from your own families.
No Lengthy Family Stories: I am aware of just how little many of you actually care about my grandparents, and that's ok. That's why we've separated the historical and family significance of these recipes from the recipes themselves. If you want to read about what the heck a No. 2 can of tomatoes is, you still can! But you won't be forced to, and you don't have to scroll for 18 minutes to get to the recipes themselves.
Real Humans Making Real Food: While AI certainly has its place, you won't find it here. The consistent use of AI-generated images, recipes, and content has created an unrealistic perception of food and expectations for perfection. All our recipes are tested in home kitchens, written by one person, and photographed as-is with minimal or zero editing so you can see what the finished product really looks like. We're not here to entice you with eye candy or shifty practices. Let's just make some great food for our families.
About Grandma Grace
After my Grandma Grace passed, my Dad graciously gifted me one of her favorite cookbooks. At the time, I assumed I would hold onto it as a keepsake, especially since it's falling apart and difficult to navigate. But over time, I found myself referring to it consistently. I eventually came to deeply appreciate its emphasis on simplicity, hospitality, and creating elegance with few resources. In studying it, I have developed a great love for the beauty of uncomplicated cooking.
Grandma Grace was known as a skilled cook, although perhaps not an adventurous one. She was a recipe cook, not an eyeballing cook. I assume her experiences in living through the Great Depression and World War 2 taught her to lean on things that were verifiable and certain, and therefore more comfortable to work with. While she may not have been a daredevil at the stovetop, she learned to be precise and consistent. She made wonderful meals with meat from her own beef farm and produce grown in her own yard. I remember she often lit candles at dinner. There was no special occasion, and the food wasn't anything prize-winning. But having good food with those good people was reason enough for her to celebrate it with some extra sophistication.
About Kaylynn
Anyone who knows me knows I can’t stand most internet recipes (ironyyy). So many of them don’t work, have janky proportions, or honestly just don’t taste that great. For many years as a younger cook, I occasionally made some winning meals, but it was very hit or miss. I eventually came to the woebegone conclusion that I just wasn’t very good in the kitchen. But one day my husband encouraged me to listen to my instincts more closely, and to give myself the freedom to modify recipes in the ways I thought were necessary to make them successful. Practically overnight, my cooking improved. I stopped being anxious about following the recipe exactly and stopped blaming myself for slip-ups. I re-branded my "failures" and "attempts." When I started looking at the recipes critically instead of myself, I was able to see why things fell through. Of course there are plenty of times in which a mistake in my kitchen is due to user error. But I'm now able to identify which ones are me and which ones are not, which is quite freeing.
After I had my children, my passion for cooking developed into a much more specific purpose. I felt an even stronger duty to ensure they were getting not just the proper nutrition, but that they were being taught how to provide and prepare that nutrition as well. After also listening to many adults speak shamefully about their lack of cooking skills, I felt even more drawn to make a place where it's perfectly ok to know nothing and be starting from scratch. A place where it's ok to experiment, have something turn out poorly, and not be so critical of yourself that you're terrified to try again. Basic culinary skills have been lost over the last few generations thanks to conveniences like microwaves and supermarkets. Our parents unfortunately didn't inherit the same knowledge that our grandparents did, and therefore had little to pass on to us. I intend to help others reclaim that legacy of food knowledge if they desire to.
I also believe that cooking doesn’t have to be hard or fancy. It just has to be enjoyable and nutritious. Social media seems to suggest that if you didn't go to culinary school, if your meals aren’t plated stylishly, and you’re not using wild and creative flavor profiles regularly, you aren’t doing food right. While I love making beautiful, fabulously flavored meals, that can’t be my day-to-day goal.
While Legacy Kitchen is a place to celebrate our ancestors and their culinary legacy, I’m also of the opinion that just because a recipe is old, it doesn’t mean it’s good. You know how when you make your Great Aunt Cindy's zucchini pie, it's never as good as when she made it? That's because Great Aunt Cindy probably took some liberties that aren't included in the recipe she handed down to you. Many of the recipes in my Grandma Grace's cookbook are fine, but they’re not good enough that I would make them consistently. Sometimes the flavors are just off for what we prefer today. Sometimes the ingredients are hard to find now. Sometimes it’s a cool idea but needs a whole new twist to be something worthwhile. I intend to modernize and test as many recipes as possible in this book, all while using the most efficient methods and refusing to sacrifice clean ingredients.
So welcome, whoever you are. I hope you find something of value at Legacy Kitchen, whether it's a new easy go-to recipe for your family, a new trick to save you time, or perhaps just permission to fail and try again without shame. All are welcome at this table.
From the Stephenson County (IL) Home Bureau Cook Book, 1957