The dear woman next to me in the photo at right is my Aunt Mercedes. She is my mother’s sister who lives in Santa Ana.  My aunt Mercedes is the last surviving child of my maternal grandparents (Dr. Frank & Barbara Geraci).  One of the things we share in common is that we each moved across country to California at a relatively young age and made it our permanent home. But no, that’s not the secret…

When I was creating the “Secret Recipe Fairy” which just happens to have been released, I put out a call to many of my family, asking them for special or “secret” family recipes that I could include in this Fairies recipe book. I did have to coax and prod a little bit, but by and large, they came pretty freely, their keepers honored for consideration of inclusion into this recipe book. (I too considered it an honor to include their recipes in this Fairies book as I can greatly appreciate culinary expertise…especially since I am culinary challenged!).

Well, the most exciting thing to come from this was that my Aunt Mercedes dug into some of her oldest recipes for something special…and something special she found! She found on a dated calendar notebook from April 1948, of her mother’s (my own grandmother who had died before I was born!), in her original handwriting of an old “secret” family recipe called “White Fruit Salad.” We tried it out at a family gathering last Spring and it is pretty good. There are other recipes in the booklet in the Fairies hand, and you can download them from the RECIPES tab on this website also. Try some of them out and let me know what you think of them.