Week 2: Don't Eat Anything Your Grandmother Wouldn't Recognize as Food

It's already been established that my Silk soy milk creamer is going the way of the do-do bird.  However, thinking about what my grandmothers would recognize as food takes me down an entirely different and completely sentimental pathway.  There are so many food products available these days that would not have been technologically possible during the lives of my grandmothers.  I will steer clear of these this week.  Now, a little about the eating habits of my grandmothers.

image courtesy of David L Nelson

Grandma Ruby raised her family on a few acre piece of land in Jenks, Oklahoma.  Visiting often as a child during long hot junebug and firefly filled summertimes, I used to help Grandma pick veggies from the huge garden. This was pretty much the entire source of produce for meals, which also included the apricot tree on the side of the red house near the usually filled clothesline.  Okra, fat tomatoes, green beans, dirty carrots and prickly zucchini plants.  Grandma also kept laying hens, one year a goat, and way back when, a cow even.  I don't recall a lot of interaction with the livestock. But it's been a long time.

image courtesy of Sunset

During our visits, Dad's sister and brother would often drop in for dinner or who knows when, bringing some or all of my cousins.  The red-checked oilcloth covered kitchen table had food on it all day long, starting at lunch and not being cleared until long after dinner.  Fried chicken, hamburger fixings, and always every night all summerlong, Grandma's lemon meringue pie. Grandma Ruby was a good cook.

image courtesy of  Red Wagon Antiques

Every summer we also used to drive out to visit Greatgrandma Kent in her little house on the Cherokee Nation lands.  Chris and I used to sit on the front wooden steps munching on biscuits made from the giant yellow Bisquik box, watching a few people walk by the dirt yard and smelling the coffee she would make in the blue speckled metal coffee pot. No percolator. How did she do that? That coffee smelled amazing.

image courtesy of Arranology

At the other end of the spectrum were more frequent visits to Aunty Olive's condo in Reno.  Aunty Olive on my mom's side is the closest thing I had to a Grandmother, although she was decidedly un-grandma like.  Mom did all the cooking, usually bringing with us giant quantities of homemade French onion soup, a roast and in later years oxtails, and making the rest of our meals during our visits herself. Aunty Olive and Uncle Lloyd kept us entertained playing cards and watching football while drinking scotch on the rocks, discussing point spreads and the benefit of one type of gun over another.  Aunty Olive was first married to a cattle rancher, and later to a man who owned a grocery store.  Mom was primarily reared by Olive during the cattle ranching phase, and meat has always had a starring role in our diets. Red meat, and plenty of it.  Having said that Mom, Olive and all the women from that branch of my tree are tiny, delicately boned creatures. There is an oft repeated story about my dainty mother's legendary appetite. An acquaintance once remarking on her figure said, "You must have an appetite like a bird." Someone who knew her well replied, "Yes. A vulture." Mom can eat.  In homage to her, I think I will have a steak this week.


Started this week off, again, with sushi.  I ordered simply; salmon and scallop nigiri and a small sashimi salad. While the grandmothers listed above might not recognize raw fish as a food item, Grace my Japanese step-grandmother would approve.