Band name!
My grandmother used to make beautiful bento boxes of which the items were a bit hit or miss. I liked the sushi and teriyaki, but the vegetables were kind overcooked with some sort of bizarre flavor which I never liked. The cucumber salad was a bit too vinegary and the azuki bean rice was horrific.
She used to have those beautiful mung bean “omanju” deserts which my dad loved but would make me gag. I mean beans and sugar? WTF?
She had a rather spooky little house in south L.A. and my step grandfather was a shriveled up old scary dude. Neither of them spoke much English and none of the kids spoke any Japanese, so we had pretty limited conversations. One of the rituals she had was to clean the earwax out of all us kids’ ears with a little golden spoon. Very creepy. I don’t think she ever punctured any of the kids’ eardrums though.
My grandmother didn’t cook well, and she passed that on to my mother. So I don’t have any fond memories of great food. Mom might have done me a favor of sorts, though, as I’ve never had a problem with institutional food at school and such places. I eat what’s there.
What my grandmother did, though, was keep store-bought cookies in her bun-warmer. Iced oatmeal usually. Those still bring back memories. She also usually had Diet-Rite, which was special because we never had pop at home. That and the orange-pineapple juice that lived in her refrigerator. She kept it, just in case, because she was diabetic. We were all trained from a very early age to make her drink a glass of juice if she started acting funny. Nana bought me my very own pint of peach ice cream once and let me eat it out of the carton. Oddly enough, I have no memories of any food she actually made.
My grandma is boring, but my friend has an interesting one on his Irish side of the family.
His grandma and uncle would open a bottle of whiskey and toss the cap, since they knew they weren’t going to need it again. :eek:
Now that I think about it, my mom made fudge.
Whenever she was in a good mood she enjoyed it, whenever she was in a bad mood or pissed off she would take out her aggresions with the beating. When I was a kid I learned to make fudge and was not too bad myself.
Of course I’ve forgotten the recipe. And every recipe I look at just seems wrong. No other fudge has ever tasted quite the same.
My grandma used to make this concoction called “suet pudding” every Christmas. Man, we loved that suet pudding. It is the stuff of family legend. Neither the kids in my family nor my cousins could wait to have a big bowl of the Christmas suet pudding.
When I asked my grandma years later why she made it, she said that she did it for her husband (who died in 1947) because that’s what “his people” ate at Christmas. Her people were German, his people were English.
So, in-laws and boyfriends come into the family and have heard nothing but how wonderful the suet pudding is, how we all wax poetic at the thought of suet pudding!
Which, of course, is absolutely disgusting to anyone outside of the family. Turns out what grandma called suet pudding is just Spotted Dick!
My faith was so much stronger then
I believed in fellow men
And I was so much older then
When I was young
My grandparents lived about four hours away, and my parents didn’t like them much, so we went to visit once a year only. Because her cooking was different, I imagined it was good, better than Mom’s. Now I know that wasn’t true, but the one thing I loved over there was Grandma’s tapioca pudding. Of course it was probably from a mix but my mom didn’t make it at home, so it was special. She also made sandtarts and almond cookies that were just OK but special because Grandma made them.
Mom was the one who let us lick the bowl/beater/spoon–evenly divided between bro and me.
My mom was not a good cook, but she learned one good dish from her mother-in-law: red beans and rice. Now, this MIL, my paternal grandma, was a vicious harpy and she and my mom did not get along well at all. However, my mom did indeed need to learn how to cook and somewhere along the way she broke down and learned this simple dish. Mean grandma was from Louisiana and knew by God how to make good biscuits and red beans and rice.
The rice dish was served frequently in our house because it was cheap and filling and made lots of leftovers. It’s my favorite childhood comfort dish and I make it to this day. Mom never did learn how to make biscuits, though.
My Gran used to make excellent scones, and we’d sit in the booth seating in the kitchen/dining room in Gran and Grandpa’s old house (a typical villa in Remuera – for those that know Auckland) and eat hot scones with butter and home-made jam, and Grandpa would sit in his comfy chair in front of the fireplace with the clock on the mantelpiece that you could hear when it ticked and chimed the quarter hours, and he’d carefully make himself a “roll your own” cigarette, and quietly smoke in front of the fire.
Or later, when he wasn’t supposed to be smoking – since he’d got cancer… and really, what’s the point of telling the man who’s smoked for 60 years and got terminal cancer that he should stop smoking – he’d go out into the garage/workshop where they still had a round washing machine with a mangle and Grandpa kept his mowers and last season’s potatoes, or we’d wander through the garden with the neat rows of vegetables growing and the beans and peas on the frames, and he would have a quiet smoke before we helped Gran shell peas on the back porch.
sniff
My paternal grandmother died when I was quite young, but I remember that she was a solid country cook, and could conjure up wonderful biscuits in about half the time it took anyone else.
My maternal grandmother is still with us, happily, although age and some recent injuries keep her from cooking as much as she used to. When I was a kid, Thursday nights meant dinner at Gramma Ree’s, and were much anticipated. Her fried chicken, rice and gravy, and venison steaks have never been matched, and she could bake virtually anything. I didn’t like everything she cooked, but I knew then and know now that it wasn’t because there was anything lacking in the preparation. (I just never much cared for squirrel.)
I’m a decent enough cook, when I take the trouble to do it right, but I’m no match for a good Granny.
I’d forgotten about the pea shelling.
My Granddad had a small allotment and used to grow all manner of veggies, also blackberries and rhubarb.
Like you, we also used to shell the peas and pull and wash blackberries and rhubarb
End result was some wonderful pea and ham soup followed by blackberry and rhubarb crumble with the most delicious custard imaginable.
double sniff
I love this!
Mind you, as my gran was an alcoholic, I probably shouldn’t… 