I’ve blogged about my mother; I’ve blogged many times about my father. I have mentioned my sister and my grandfather (promised post about him is coming). Now I feel like it’s time for my grandmothers. Last night thoughts led me to realize that like any good grandmother, mine have strong associations with food.
My father’s mother, Grandma Judy as we called her, lived in a small town in Wisconsin. Every year the town, like any good Midwest town had a festival in honor of a fruit/vegetable. In Grandma Judy’s town it was the Rutabaga Festival.
I remember going regularly. Our family would make the two hour drive and arrive in time for the festival. There were rides, fireworks, street fairs. Now to be honest, I have no idea what a rutabaga looks like, smells like, or tastes like. I wouldn’t know a rutabaga if it bit me in the ass. Yet rutabagas (isn’t that a fun word to say?) will always remind me of my Grandma.
My mother’s mother, Grandma Rose, lived up in northern Minnesota. I am talking way up north. You could sneeze and spray Canada. We went to visit her and she made regular visits to see us and my aunts in St. Paul. There is a picture of me, not even one year old, on my grandparents’ farm. I’m sitting in my dad’s lap and sucking on a piece of rhubarb. This struck my mom and me as funny because rhubarb is tart and not something you’d think a baby would want to suck on. As a child, I used to eat rhubarb dipped in sugar to cut the tartness, but apparently as a baby, plain old rhubarb was ok with me.
When my Grandma Rose would visit us, she and my mom would break out rhubarb from our back yard that sometimes had taken a detour to the freezer. They would make marmalade with the rhubarb and oranges and apricots. I remember our counter lined with empty jars waiting for the marmalade to be poured in and stored, giving us enough until next year. My mom also makes a great rhubarb cake with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled over the top, a recipe she got from Grandma Rose.
Of course, if my grandmothers only made rhubarb jam and took me to a festival, then the traditional food and grandma association goes out the window. No, my Grandma Judy was an Italian grandmother. Every time we visited her we’d walk into the kitchen which I remember as steamy, and my grandma was putting the finishing touches on a homemade Italian dinner—pasta, sausages, bread, sauce. Grandma Rose’s visits held much anticipation over the baking she did for us—caramel rolls, strudels, and a Czech favorite kolacky (pronounced Koe-lotch-kee)—rolls with apricot or poppy seed fillings. I never tried the last one, but I think now I would enjoy them. We also waited with bated breath for the night she made us dumplings.
Sadly, Grandma Judy stopped cooking and feeding when I was in my preteen years. That is when she began to slowly drift away in a sea of Alzheimer’s. She never was the same again, and after a long time, she passed away when I was 21. Grandma Rose is still going strong as she approaches 93. But she doesn’t get around like she used to, so she can’t prepare our favorite foods. Grandma Rose never had recipes, it was all in her head. So we can’t recreate her delicious expressions of love.
There was pasta; there was baking; there were dumplings. But there were also rutabagas and rhubarb, and those two things, for me, will forever be entwined with the Grandmas.
