The place that we hung out when visiting my Grandparents was always the kitchen. My Grandma’s kitchen must have been at least 20 x 20 and I am not exaggerating. She had an old oil burning oven/stove as well as your standard electric stove, a fridge and a huge kitchen table. Oh sure there was a dining room and living room along with three bedrooms, but the place to be was the kitchen.
Grandma would be up at the crack of dawn and begin cooking and I don’t think she ever stopped all day. Breakfast at Grandma’s house consisted of: a huge plate piled high with fried eggs, a plate piled high with sausage (in the earlier days, it was their own homemade sausage), another with bacon, bread, toast (half a loaf), cookies (I am not fooling), some type of banana bread, always a fruit which she had usually peeled and quartered, jams, jellies, olives, pickles, any leftover desserts from the night before, i.e. cake…whatever. I am sure there was more, but I can’t remember! I am seriously NOT exaggerating either. If anything, I am probably understating it.
Then she would clear the table and begin lunch preparations. About a half hour after you pushed your chair back from the table….sitting there trying to digest breakfast, she would put out “snack bowls.” God forbid you should go hungry between breakfast (usually served at 8 a.m. and lunch served at noon). The snack bowls would consist of corn chips, potato chips, cookies, cake, chocolate, candy and anything else she happened to scrounge up. By this time, each person had gained about 10 pounds and began to worry about how they would stuff lunch down without hurting her feelings. We always managed to do it, but I have no idea how.
Lunch was a duplicate of breakfast except instead of the customary breakfast fixings you now had lunch fixings. At this point Grandpa always went outside for a pipe smoke and us kids would usually tag along. I know why I did it. I loved the smell of pipe smoke and to this day when I smell it, I stop dead in my tracks and get a little teary eyed.
Dinner was usually served at 5 or 6, with snacks available around the clock. Dinner was always a big production. Pork chops, steaks, hamburgers, chicken, turkey. Whatever happened to be available for the best price from the town butcher. Grandma never followed any recipes. My most favorite dinnertime accompaniment was her special waxed beans. I have never been a vegetable lover, but those beans were like eating candy. First she would boil the crap out of the beans (I am sure removing any and ALL nutritional value). She would then add the already cooked bits of bacon and vinegar and sugar, and who knows what else and then cook the snot out of it some more. I think it gave her great pleasure that I enjoyed that particular vegetable with such gusto. Then there was the piece de resistance; the dessert. I have never in my life had such fantastic desserts as hers. She was very creative with them as well. This was probably about the only time she would follow a recipe because she was always trying something new she’d seen in a magazine or newspaper. Our favorite was the banana/Nilla wafer dessert. I have tried to duplicate the waxed beans as well as her various desserts and they never come up to par. I think perhaps because she put the magic of love into each and every meal, and it’s just not something you can duplicate; a grandma’s love.
I miss her cooking and wish that I had spent more time with her in the kitchen learning the tricks of the trade. My brother had that special skill as well. I can cook alright and have turned out some yummy eats, but it doesn't have the magic and pizazz that her cooking provided.
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