Day 12: Ultimate Comfort Food

Only one comfort food? Since this was my idea, I guess I can't complain too much, right?

If I had to pick, just one, I would have to go with chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes.

However, I have not eaten them in a very very very long time. (Mostly, because my intestines have decided that gluten is of the devil) When I think about my childhood however, I remember the containers of noodles in our freezer. The ones Grandma made from scratch. And even the ones she made with noodles from the frozen food section.

Noodles have always been served at Christmas and Thanksgiving in my family. And Easter too. So they remind me of a time when everything was perfect, and it seemed as though my family was very functional.

I look back now and see that really, we're just functionally dysfunctional. But we eat well. So it's all good.

Day 7: Quotably Quotable

I love quotes. Mostly, because I can usually find someone else's words for something I can't say myself. There is usually a perfect quote for every situation.

I came upon my current favorite quote a couple of years ago. Through some random search of the Google. When I stumbled upon it, I can't say I thought about it too much. Just a fleeting thought of "that's so true", and I didn't think of it again until September of 2008. When my beloved grandmother passed away.

Even then, I didn't remember it right away. It wasn't until my phone rang while I was in Gram's apartment taking a few of her things as mementoes that Bill Cosby's words crossed my mind again.

The caller asked me what I was doing.

I don't think "pillaging Grandma's house" was the expected answer.

With that, I give you the quote that has since bolstered me through many many things.

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it. ~ Bill Cosby

LIttle things...

I have a pair of red shoes. I love my red shoes. I bought the red shoes to go with a little black dress I wore to Hubs' ALS graduation. The day I bought the red shoes (online) I called my Grandma to tell her about them. (Because I told Gram about everything I did. Called her once or 12 times a week.) She reminded me, that I would turn into my great grandmother if I wore the red shoes enough... (insert flashback wavy fingers here) ...my Grandma Great had a pair of red Naturalizers that she wore for years and year and years. Every time Gram tried to talk her into getting rid of them, she would protest. And her only reason that she couldn't throw them out, was because they were Naturalizers. I remember these red shoes as a very important part of the memories I have of Grandma Great. What Gram forgot to mention when she was making fun of me and my red shoes, is that she too owned a pair of red pumps. Not a high heel, but enough that they were church shoes. And they were red. (I don't know if they were Naturlizers, but knowing Gram, it's a possibility...) So, when I took this picture of Little Z today, I could only hope that my daughters grow up to be like their Great Grandma. And not just with a love for red shoes.

HOW much butter?

While I was home for Grandma's funeral, we went and looked at things that she had "hidden" in her apartment. I was really only looking for a piece of jewelry, and her knitting needle bag, but I just discovered I have in my possession, the HOLY FREAKIN' GRAIL of recipes. Gram was the head baker at one of the high schools in our town for 22 years. That's a lot of brownies (and broken cookies that she smuggled home for her grandkids to devour later). I have the binder that she had the recipes in. I took it to type some of them up, not thinking that it would be the school cookbook. But in this binder is a copy of the only recipe that I know I will make. The ROLLS. The Hubs' step grandmother makes a similar recipe. But knowing that I have the actual recipe, the one that is really used, it would be impossible for me to part with this old index card, that was definately typed on a typewriter. The funniest thing about this binder however, is that all the recipes are scaled to serve a high school cafeteria. The brownie recipe makes 960 brownies, and calls for 14 POUNDS of butter. No wonder those things were so good!

Reason #4,900,778,923...

... that I miss my Gram. On my 25th birthday, she asked us (my entire family, on my mother's side) if we knew the first thing she said when she saw my granddad. Of course we didn't, because no one thinks to ask "Hey, when you first saw Grandpa, what did you say?" Well, here is what she said, and this is a direct quote, because one does not forget something like this. "You know, when your grandpa walked into the factory, I looked at him, and then said to the lady working next to me..."He can put his boots under my bed any day."" **If you read this when I posted it last year, I don't care. It ain't your blog, and you can kiss my grits!**