Hi there! I’m Mark Andrew Rankshew, and this all started as a quiet tribute to my grandmother, Val, whose kitchen was the heart of our family long before I ever knew what “good food” meant.
Her cooking was simple, but never ordinary. Every dish had its own rhythm, the way she hummed as she stirred gravy, the handwritten notes she scribbled on her recipe cards that somehow said more about life than cooking.
After she passed in 2014, I found myself sitting on the floor one evening with that weathered box of recipes in my lap cards splattered with oil, corners bent, ink faded. Each one felt like a little time capsule. There was her chicken pot pie in that familiar blue pen, a gravy recipe on the back of an old grocery list, and the note I still laugh at: “Add more butter -always.”
In that moment, I realized something: these recipes were more than instructions. They were love letters to her family, her friends, her way of showing care when words sometimes fell short. They deserved more than a dusty box in a cupboard. They deserved to live, to be cooked, and to keep connecting people the way she always did.
So I started Val’s Recipe Box first as a digital archive, then as a living collection. Over time, it’s grown into something bigger than I imagined: a place where I share not just Val’s timeless dishes, but my own experiments inspired by them a bridge between her kind of kitchen and mine. Because even tradition leaves a little room for evolution (and yes, maybe a splash of bourbon in the apple pie).
What You’ll Find Here
Family Recipes, Unfussy and Full of Flavor
The kind of food that tastes like home hearty meatloaf, flaky pies, casseroles that can feed a crowd, and pancakes that taste like Sunday mornings. Recipes that remind you good food doesn’t have to be complicated to be special.
Stories Behind the Dishes
Every recipe comes with a memory: why Val’s lasagna was legendary, how her biscuits never quite turned out the same twice, and how I still manage to burn garlic bread no matter how many times I’ve made it. The stories are half the recipe here because food without a story just feels incomplete.
A Community of Home Cooks
The best part of this blog isn’t the recipes it’s the people who make them their own. I love hearing how readers swap ingredients, adjust measurements, or share a memory that one of Val’s recipes brought back. Every message, every photo of a recreated dish, feels like another thread in her legacy.
Why It Matters
Food connects us in ways that nothing else can. A smell, a bite, a recipe card they all have the power to pull us back into a moment we didn’t realize we missed. For me, Val’s Recipe Box is proof that the simplest dishes often carry the deepest meaning.
It’s not about fancy plating or reinventing the wheel it’s about honoring where we came from while finding joy in what we create today. Whether you’re pulling out your grandmother’s casserole dish or discovering your own family’s version of “the best pie crust,” these recipes remind us that we all come from somewhere delicious.
So, whether you’re here for the nostalgia, the recipes, or just a reminder that butter solves almost everything welcome.
Dig in, make a mess, and keep the stories going.
Because the best kind of cooking isn’t perfect it’s personal.
Thanks for being here,
Mark
