Food Central - Grandma's Cooking

Sorry mom, but I'm a waaaaaaaaaaaay better cook than you.  No offense.  However, you can sew awesome things and I struggle with mending simple buttons and hems.  Cooking is not your talent, and sewing is not mine.  Fair.

The inspiration for my cooking was my paternal grandmother.  Holidays growing up were always split between my mother's parents and my father's parents who homesteaded in the same region in western Minnesota.  My memories were of going to my mother's parents farm first on Thanksgiving and Christmas (where there were hordes of other relatives and cousins) but the food was not that great.  However, we did have a BLAST ice fishing, tobogganing, snowmobiling, etc. 

Then about 4:00 or so we would all pack up in the yellow '68 Dodge and head over to my paternal grandparents farm.  By this time we had all worked up an appetite.  I knew GOOD food was on its way.  I could smell grandma's wonderful cooking before we even got to the door.  Once inside it was like something out of a cooking magazine with the matching flatware, table cloths, crystal, perfectly placed centerpiece, and napkin rings.  Damn.  For a farm woman she sure did do it up all fancy.  The food was never disappointing and there was always plenty of it.  Save room for desert?  Not really, but I ate it anyway.  She always made the most amazing pies served warm (from scratch of course) with an ice cream that I can still taste to this day and it has never been replicated anywhere. 

Did grandma ever serve anything processed?  NEVER.  Everything was home grown.  If she had to stoop to purchasing something she was very picky about it.  Not an easy task in rural Minnesota in the winter when the nearest town was 10 miles away and the snow plows had not been out.  Quality was everything.  Maybe that was her secret.  My mom's cooking?  Open a can or a box and slop it.  No imagination.  Spices were never anything more than salt and pepper.  Boring, uneventful, and without feeling. 

My paternal grandma did come out and visit me a few times after I moved to California and helped me with my early Thanksgiving attempts.  She was also an incredible interior designer (a talent I sorely lack) and she could make a house look awesome with minimal monetary resources.  Yes, we painted walls and got rid of furniture that did not meet grandma's standards.  I wish I absorbed her natural flair for design from her along with her cooking talent.  My daughter inherited the design flair.  Thank GOD it's still in there somewhere. 

I know my mother did not get along with my paternal grandma.  I'm sorry about that.  The tension was always present.  When it's all said and done it was an incredible waste of emotional energy.  To be honest, both have strong personalities.  Maybe that's why they butted heads.  Anyway, I get very sentimental this time of year and I long for just *one* more trip to grandma's house to the smell of her cooking upon entering the porch and shaking off the cold.  I miss grandma.  God rest her soul. 

Happy Thanksgiving.  Yes, I'm an emotional pile of goo right about now.  The full moon and the sentiments of the holidays gets the best of this overly-sensitive woman.  And yes, grandma, I have a 22 pound turkey, stuffing, gravy, and home made pies with your memory all over them.