MINERAL WELLS
PROFILE SADIE’S EATS
STORY BY DAVID MAY PHOTO BY SADIE HARRISON
Sadie’s Surprise
Mineral Wells cook, caterer using found recipes belonging to her grandmother
I
magine Sadie Oshi Harrison’s
surprise when she took a job
in a Mineral Wells kitchen to
find dozens of handwritten recipes
belonging to her grandmother where
she worked decades ago.
At the time, Sadie didn’t know
her grandmother worked in the same
kitchen. As far back as the early 1970s,
many of Dorothy Tanner Harrison’s
culinary collections were placed inside
a box and left on a shelf behind the
kitchen of the Resort Lodge nursing
home, which today is Serenity Estates.
The recipes survived and remained
on the shelf despite several facility
remodelings and re-arrangings over the
years. The recipes were inside a box
labeled “Transfer Numbers,” hidden
away like buried treasure for Sadie
find.
“How lucky am I that I
found this?” asked Harrison. “My
grandmother left them as a gift for
me.”
Now two years later through her
Sadie’s Eats business, Sadie makes and
delivers lunches to customers who
order via text messages or her social
media page. She also prepares and
delivers dinners for busy moms and
families, and caters small events.
She incorporates some of her
grandmother’s recipes into her
cooking and hopes to publish them
one day. She made a carrot cake recipe
that she said came out “bronze and
copper” from the amount of brown
sugar called for. Other recipes are for
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T H E T E X A S F O O D IE
“My grandmother left them as a gift for me.”
dishes called “Betsy Ross Pudding,”
“Potato Cake,” “Date Loaf ” and “Pink
and White Rice Pudding.”
One recipe is written on the back
of a Brady (Texas) National Bank note
from the 1940s.
“I have used a lot of her casseroles,
like her rice casseroles,” Sadie said.
“Things she had that were sugar-free
or low-sugar and gluten free. She has
a lot of stews, she has a lot of fresh
salads. Her broccoli salad that I make
is hers. The pimento cheese that I
make is hers. Some easy dips.”
Sadie also found recipes in the box
belonging to others, some with their
names included. She hopes to find
those people, or family members.
She recently offered her lunch
customers a sandwich based on her
grandmother’s pimento cheese recipe
and it blew up. She couldn’t make
pimento cheese fast enough.
“The pimento cheese was out of
town. It was everywhere,” she said. “It
was a big hit. I think a lot of it had to
do with the fact it didn’t have capers
in it like most pimento cheese does.
This is more like a Texas southern
version, so its heavy on cayenne
and you take the capers out and put
jalapeños in and use sharp cheddar,
and things like that, that changes it
up.”
Sadie returned to Mineral Wells
eight years ago from Hawaii. She
now knows why – to find that box
of recipes and use them to bring
happiness to her customers through
her cooking.