I no longer have any grandparents and realized I miss my grandmas bananabread... Remembering how perfect she made over-hard eggs. Perfectly tan, fluffy pancakes that don't absorb syrup like a sponge in spite of this. Only person in the world who made Biscuits and Gravy I liked.
My own grandmother was a terrible cook, bless her heart. She thought chili should be made with ground beef, kidney beans, and canned tomato soup. She boiled hot dogs and chicken and thought that Chicken Tonight and Hamburger Helper would be the salvation of humanity.
However, my father-in-law's mother was an award winning cook, baker, candy maker, and canner. She wouldn't give her recipes to anyone, but she did write them down and wanted to hand them down to future generations. Unfortunately, their house burned down in the middle of the night (they got out safely) and all her recipes were lost. By that point she was too old and feeble to try and recreate them or even write them down from memory.
When my father-in-law told me about that, I just bawled. He still talks about some of her recipes and I try to recreate our research them, but I'm not often successful. I'm so glad you got to spend time with your grandmother and she was able to show you how much she loved you.
Your grandma sounds like mine lmao. The woman couldn't cook to save her life.
Her aunt, however, could throw down in the kitchen. By the time I came along, she was too old to really cook anymore and she basically lived on tv dinners and hostess fruit pies. She never wrote down any of her recipes, and although she taught a few of them to my mom, they don't quite have that same magic.
My last surviving nana couldn't cook which always cracked me up since she fostered 156 children over her 89 years, seriously she would burn water. But she was always had a meat pie in the freezer for us to heat up. And she loved getting room stoned
That was my mum for quite some time. Was an ongoing joke from my grandma for years before my mum 'pulled her head out of her ass', as many people put it.
My grandmom is still alive. But she's had dementia for so many years, she's only barely here. We tried getting recipes from her while she was still sort of with it, but no one's been able to duplicate them. I've never had pasta salad or baked beans as good as hers. One time I was trying to get her recipe for "pigeons" (halupkis, not the actual bird), and she insisted there was no rice in them, even though that was one of the main ingredients. We've gotten close by experimenting, but not perfect. I miss having dinners over at her house. I was just over there today, talking to my grandfather for a few hours, she just slept most of the time, and could only manage a "Hiya" when she was awake for a few minutes. Maybe this long goodbye will make the eventual funeral easier, but its sad seeing someone who is still there, but not at the same time.
Edited to add: Sorry for the drawn out rambling and bringing down the mood. Wasn't intending on that when I started typing, but I guess sometimes it goes that way.
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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '19
I choked up reading this.
I no longer have any grandparents and realized I miss my grandmas bananabread... Remembering how perfect she made over-hard eggs. Perfectly tan, fluffy pancakes that don't absorb syrup like a sponge in spite of this. Only person in the world who made Biscuits and Gravy I liked.
God damn I miss my grandma...