I enjoy baking more than crafts, but that doesn’t mean I do it often.
When I do bake, I tend to use my mom’s recipes, most of which come from her mother. I love my grandma’s recipes. They’re Depression-era farm recipes, which means they’re easy and economical and contain no bizarre ingredients like Cream of Tartar or Bourbon Vanilla Beans from Madagascar.
Plus, baking Grandma’s cakes and cookies brings me back to lazy summer afternoons in her farmhouse, where she and my mom would drink tea in the living room. My grandma would sit at one end of the couch, and I’d stretch out, put my head on her lap, and let her play with my hair while she and Mom talked easily. With my belly full of cookies, I’d lay still, afraid to move lest the moment end. Decades later, as I remember myself reclining on Grandma’s lap, I can almost feel the vibrations of her speaking.
Most of my grandma’s recipes only list ingredients and amounts; instructions are given rarely. Here is one of my favourites:
Last week, when we had no fresh food in our house, I decided to bake. I pulled out Grandma’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. It’s my favourite and it’s simple. In our bare fridge and pantry, we had all the ingredients.
I enlisted Twitter’s help on how to instantly soften a granite chunk of brown sugar, something Grandma would have known.
Then Vivian, William, and I began to bake.
We stirred, added, mixed, scraped. We ate chocolate chips. We spilled, laughed, spilled again. We rolled and got sticky.
Then we baked. William turned on the oven light so he could watch the magic. He needs no time lapse photography, only time.
Vivian kept stirring the remaining batter.
And then came that moment, the one that hangs there.
The bowl. The batter. The tile floor. The smash. The glass. The shards. The screams.
The comforting and the cleaning.
After I put the vacuum away, I removed my shoes and socks. I walked over the floor, feeling for missed shards, lazy barefoot steps once taken by my mom and grandma.
cute. and sad.
i inherited my great grandmothers bucket (yes a giant bucket, i think i get my organizing skill from her) full of her recipes.. and she too often only wrote the ingredients, and as a timid baker, it scares me to death to attempt to make them. but.. alas.. i want those memories that come with the food, so i attempt. its a challenge and i am nearly brought to tears if i end up successful.
I love the idea of a bucket! Your own bucket list, maybe. I think you have a blog post in there somewhere. Even better than Julie and Julia!
It’s like we’re twins.
One of my favorite recipes from my G-ma is chocolate chip oatmeal. I remember making them with her as a child, and I have the recipe, but it’s so involved (say, compared to buying cookie dough), I have yet to attack it.
Also: every recipe I’ve gotten from my G-ma or mother has required “extra” notes. I love to bake, but I don’t dabble or know intuitively what temperature and for how long things require.
Oh, the bowl… Ouch. Once again, why I’m leery of baking – the Lil Diva would not stay away should such a thing occur…
Done the Mommy Foot Test several times myself.
Love this memory.
The Mommy Foot Test is something I never would have though of pre-kids. It does kind of sum up motherhood, doesn’t it?
Love ya my Texan twin.
I’m just going to be all mushy and soft; that was so incredibly touching. I could smell the lilac powder ma Grandmere wore just reading your story. Nostalgia, sadness and warmth cascaded over my thoughts all at once. Which quite frankly is a nice addition to my quiet little office here at work. And now I need an oatmeal, chocolate chip cookie or I’ll never get through the rest of my day with a focused mind.
Thanks, Reba. I can smell your Grandmere after reading your comment. Lovely memories exuding warmth. We’re lucky.
Despite my jokes to the contrary, I actually don’t mind cooking and am decent at it.
This quasi-ability does not extend itself to baking.
I think it’s easier to add extra cheese or sauce or spice or cooking time to a dinner and not change the basic chemistry of the meal; whereas with baking, a substitution of baking soda for baking powder is tragic.
Cooking is more forgiving in my experience. Baking? Ends up off.
Lucky for me, my husband likes to bake my family’s old recipes (seriously). And I do the clean-up and barefoot floor check when the bowls smash.
Loved this post, Leanne. What a lovely tribute to generations of women you love.
Thanks, Julie. I never thought of it as “a lovely tribute to generations of women” I love. Well said.
Yes, cooking is a bit more free spirited, isn’t it? Drives my husband nuts how I don’t like to measure and can almost never replicate anything I make for dinner. In my mind, cooking is much more an art than a science. I might be better of it if I changed my angle.
Great post. I love the universal power of food, especially in the way it ties generations of us together. We always speak of great-grams recipes, treats she whipped up a century ago. Those tastes and flavors connect us in time somehow.
Great-grams. Love that. Do you still have her recipes or just memories of them?
All this remembering almost makes me want to cook more. Almost.
This made me cry and miss your Grandma, even though I’ve never met her. I LOVE the image of her stroking your hair while chatting. And I’ve found that food – smells, in particular – is the best way to time travel.
And thank you – today is perfect baking day AND it’s grocery day. Gonna pick up some chocolate chips and see if I can’t create lasting, fragrant memories for my own kids.
Nice, Bellymonster, nice. And you know what? I still love having my hair stroked. My daughter does it sometimes. Pretty sure Grandma’s present, too.
Happy Baking, my friend.
Great post. Woman, you are so dang prolific. This reminds me when my grandmother’s Fiestaware collection came crashing down around me. It. Was. Awful. I cried because the dishes had been hers. And I felt the loss. I have slowly been rebuilding over the years. I think she would be pleased.
And like Bellymonster, I’m off to the grocery store – strangely craving chocolate chip cookies. Maybe I should just buy them off the roll, eh?
I’ll take prolific, thank you very much. It may be the only “pro” I can claim. I read your fiestaware post. (Ahh. Trying to find the link. I’ll look later. Post it though. It was a great post. Tragic. And beautiful too).
Yours in Searchbomb(shell)iness,
Leanne
I feel like I have missed a major part of my childhood because I didn’t know my grandmas going up. A couple of their recipes are floating around but Nestle Toll House stole them.
🙂 Yes, grandmas are lovely. Do your kids know their grandmas?
I actually heard myself let out a sympathetic sigh at the picture of the batter and shards on the floor 🙁
Christi Corbett
http://christicorbett.wordpress.com
Yup, a thousand pieces, I’m sure. Tile is unforgiving. Come back Wednesday, when I show you Vivian’s apology note. It’ll make you sigh again. Promise.
Loved this post, Leanne…except for the ending! Ouch!
I’m not sure if you saw this post where I posted my Grandma’s molasses cookie recipe…it would be fun for the kids to help with…pretty easy. You need a really big bowl (go with stainless steel this time!):
http://writerwoman61.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/molasses-mozzarella-mountains-and-mom-time/
Wendy
A great farm recipe, Wendy: molasses, lard, flour, sugar. What more is there, really?
Yes, looks like I’m baking with stainless steel bowls now. Stay tuned for a future post: “What Happens When You Microwave Stainless Steel.”
It’s amazing anyone allowed me to have children.
Granny came to live with us one summer shortly before she died. I was eleven. Just old enough to learn her secrets of cream pies and candy, and not too old to know that heaven was that spot of ground where I tagged at her heels. I have many of her recipes that, like your grandma’s are just a list of ingredients. Now, my daughter will pull them out, and I get to relive those days by explaining to her all of the generations of secrets written between the lines. Thanks for your post. I’m off to bake a pie. 🙂
Umm, hello, I love this: “not too old to know that heaven was that spot of ground where I tagged at her heels.”
And this: “the generations of secrets written between the lines.”
Thanks, Piper.
Your mom, my mom and my gaggle of aunties all have the same handwriting! I am willing to bet that your mom also has a drawer of smeared and stained Women’s Institute and Ladies Church Auxiliary cookbooks (made on a ditto machine and spiral bound) that contain 15 variations of Tomato Soup Meatloaf, Shepherd’s Pie, Baked Beans, Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and Church Supper squares. I now have a strong craving for my “Great Mum’s” tea biscuits fresh from the oven with homemade strawberry jam – eaten at the kitchen table while telling her all about my day at school. Growing up as a farm kid in Alberta = Growing up as a farm kid in the Ottawa Valley.
Yes. Farm is farm. My mom does have that drawer of cookbooks (and purchased many for me, too). And those list of recipes! Yes! The only one I’d add is a whole section of jellied salads (shredded carrots and yellow Jell-o was my personal favourite). Thanks for commenting from the Philippines, my friend.
Lemon Jello, shredded carrots and canned pineapple at my house. Was my favourite “salad” for years. If it wasn’t for the fact that we are physical opposites – I’d swear you were my twin! 🙂
Vicki, next February, when it’s your birthday, I’m making that “salad” in your honour. I swear. I’ll likely grate my knuckles while shredding the carrots, but that’s part of the masochistic nature of this pledge.
I heart you!
Love it. For a Christmas gift I managed to muster up enough time to put all my moms recipes in Word and print out a notebook for her. She loved it. Recipes always bring back memories.
Annie, that’s fantastic. I once tried to do that with my own recipes. I’m not even sure what folder they’re in on my computer.
You are a better woman!
That’s nostalgic and hilarious (the shards, the shards)! My mom has a box of those recipes cards with hand-written recipes passed down for generations (okay maybe one generation ;). I love handwriting. *sigh* I love cookies too, and farmhouse and lazy, pre-Internet days.
I don’t miss ASPIC molded salads though!
Smiling at “the shards, the shards.” Yes, those Aspic salads. Another one I remember contained green jello and cream, I think. It looked like a molded blob of goo. With marshmallows inside. Hello, 1970s, decade of my birth!
The green one would be my Aunt Jerry’s Green Salad, which is actually pistachio pudding, Cool Whip, mini marshmallows and pineapple…wrote about that one too! Love it!http://writerwoman61.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/tastes-of-the-past/
That’s the one. Hilarious!
Love this. Why is it everyone’s grandmas are gourmet chefs?
I recently found a notebook in my grandmother’s beautiful, loopy handwriting that she started for me when she stayed with me after my first was born. Authentic, cannot-be-duplicated-via-mass-production Filipino recipes. Yummers.
Beautifully written. Now I’m going to try that cookie recipe soon. (We don’t have glass mixing bowls in my house because I, yes, I, broke them all.)
I love that you break bowls. When my kids were 2 or 3, I remember them witnessing their dad break a glass. Weeks later, my son still remarked, “Daddy broke a glass.” It was their first realization that their parents (especially their father 😉 ) made mistakes. Yup, welcome to that epiphany, kids.
Love your grandma’s curly writing already!
Hold up wait a minute…you walk barefoot to check for broken glass? What are you the John McClane (Die Hard – he walked on glass barefoot and it was epic)? You are more like supermom with moves like that.
Great Die Hard reference.
Trust me, Rob. You’ll be doing it soon enough. I’d bet those newborn twins are already peeing on ya. It’s gradual training of a dual pain/gross threshold.
There is truly something about baking cookies that is like a story passed down over and over. I baked with my mom and now I bake with my kids. Sometimes new recipes, but often the tried and true ones from my childhood.
I wrote a blog about it a couple of months ago. For me cookies are comfort and love and fun. The comfort part gets me in a bit of trouble when I eat 11 of them.
Loved this post.
I too can’t resist cookies. I try to give most of them away the same day I make them. It bugs my kids, but I just can’t resist that combo of crunch and chewy.
I think you’re right: there is something about baking cookies that’s a story passed down. Well said.
Oh – I love the nostalgia of this post and I haven’t had an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie in so long. That is the absolute best mash-up of two fantastic cookies.
Once, a few days time after I smashed a glass on our tile floor, I walked barefoot and felt something dig into my foot. “Oh no, I think I got a glass sliver!” I exclaimed and the ever-solicitous D carefully checked my sole to find a broken sliver of… hard candy. That was 10 years ago and I still haven’t lived it down.
The hard candy sliver. That could hurt! Funny, though. Yup, nostalgia. I love it.
You were literaly willing to walk barefoot over glass for your kids. Fantastic parenting!
Or psychotic. I think it’s all a continuum.
My Great Grandma’s recipes did have instructions.. sort of… “bake over low fire” that sort of thing. Through trial and error, i’ve figured out that a low fire is about 350.
Either way your post (or my vodka) made me weepy and miss my Granny and her farmhouse.. also.. her mincemeat tarts.
A low fire: I love that.
If you lived down the street, I’d come over for a drink.
Thanks for commenting.
Baking with my granny is one of my favorite memories too. I just wish I had more of her recipes. She didn’t have a ton b/c she was of the era where they started using some “non-scratch” ingredients but the ones she did have were great. Not sure where they ended up. 🙁
I too wish I had more. I think I’ll have to ask my mom. It’s so often the things that appear valueless that have lasting value, isn’t it?
Leanne-
This is beautiful! I can remember sitting with my head on my grandma’s lap, legs stretched out on the couch, and feeling the vibrations from her talking to the rest of the family. A feeling I had long forgotten until I read your post. Thanks!
Justin- Writing Pad Dad
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