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Erin Napier credits her “Mammaw” — her dad’s mother — with her love of cooking. But she may have never known how to make many of her family’s favorite recipes if not for a bit of divine intervention after her grandmother’s death in 2020, she says. As Napier celebrates her favorite holiday traditions, the HGTV host is sharing new details about the story that has captivated fans ever since she first shared that her family’s search for her grandma’s missing recipes ended in a miraculous way.
Erin Napier Shared Special Bond With Her ‘Sweet Grandmother’
When Napier’s grandmother, Ouida Walters Rasberry, died in May 2020 at the age of 97, the “Home Town” host shared her grief on social media, but also wrote that she was so glad her grandparents could finally reunite in the afterlife, given that 19 years had passed since her grandfather died.
Napier told Southern Living magazine in May 2022 that after her grandfather’s death, she started occasionally staying with her Mammaw to keep her company, and got to learn some of her special Southern recipes, including making biscuits from scratch, as well as spicy rice and tomato gravy.
Napier thought she had plenty of time to learn other recipes, but her grandma had a debilitating stroke in 2008 that impacted her memory and ability to communicate. Though she eventually regained limited vocabulary and was able to cook simple meals for herself, Napier wrote that it would have been too hard for her to remember and teach old recipes, so she simply hoped someday she’d come across a written collection of her grandma’s recipes.
In a new essay for Guideposts magazine published in December 2022, Napier shared that when her Mammaw died, the family still couldn’t find any of those recipes as they went through all of Rasberry’s material things.
“We helped Daddy sort through her belongings: the crocheted doilies, the Blue Willow dishes, the glass tea pitcher, the dented aluminum biscuit bowl,” Napier wrote. “I took photos of each room, exactly as she had left them, so we would always remember the Christmases and birthdays and Sundays spent around her dinner table and her out-of-tune piano. I found a few cookbooks but not her recipes.”
Napier, by then married to Ben and a mom to daughter Helen, was sad she wouldn’t be able to continue making some of her grandma’s beloved recipes for her family, like one she called Mother Goose’s Sunday Rice — a “concoction” of rice, chicken broth, onions, bell pepper and Velveeta cheese,” which Napier wrote was “one of our many favorites.”
“Finally it was time to give the last of her things to Goodwill,” Napier wrote in her essay. “We were hoisting her dining room console when its door flew open, nearly spilling the contents onto the pavement. Inside were two ceramic canisters, one shaped like a ripe peach, the other like a basket of strawberries.”
For Napier, opening up those canisters was like finding a treasure chest.
She wrote, “They were stuffed to the brim with her hand-written recipes. Peanut brittle, my cousin Jim’s favorite Christmas cake, spaghetti and meatballs, her famous creamy layered dessert called Chocolate Delight. It felt like a wink from heaven, God letting Mammaw give us one final gift that would carry on in us and in our children.”
Erin Napier Turned Her Mammaw’s ‘Wink From Heaven’ into Family Gift
Thrilled by the last-minute discovery — and that the recipes didn’t unintentionally wind up in a donation pile — Napier wanted to make sure they never get lost again. So she turned them into a meaningful gift for the whole family that Christmas.
She shared, “I took those recipes, scanned them into my computer and put them together, along with the photos I took, in a book. Everyone in our family got a copy on Christmas morning. They all cried.”
Napier called the cookbook “The Book of Ouida,” and shared a video of her using it as she prepped for Easter in 2021. It shows that she divided her grandma’s recipe book into several categories — Mains, Sides, Desserts, and Tips — with all of her hand-written recipes inside.
Wish you could try some of Napier’s favorite recipes from her Mammaw? She’s now shared one of them with Southern Living: her Mammaw’s ‘famous’ Chocolate Delight dessert. And Napier’s mom, Karen Rasberry, included her mother-in-law’s biscuit recipe in Volume 1 of a booklet of family recipes she created for Laurel Mercantile.
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