So many people responded to my questions about what their grandmother cooked for them that I’m doing a Part 2!
My friend Nancy told me how her grandmother made her poached eggs on buttered toast. I’m not a fan of poached eggs but maybe if her grandmother made them, I could manage to eat them.
She said, “I have never had poached eggs that good since. She would put the eggs on a piece of buttered toast then cut the toast so every piece had egg on it. Gram was born in England and emigrated to Toronto. They moved to the States when my dad was a baby. She lived in Buffalo, NY and I would stay with her for a month every summer, then my parents would pick me up and we’d drive to southeastern Massachusetts to visit my mom’s family for two weeks.”
Neighbor Aaron’s grandmother was born in Modesto and eventually lived on a farm in Oklahoma. She made Penuche, a vanilla style fudge. Made from brown sugar, butter and milk with vanilla flavoring.
I loved any kind of fudge, I would have eaten all of it!
Each year my acquaintance Kim’s family would go camping across the country and would visit her grandmother in Michigan. Her grandmother cooked them potato pancakes and Pigs in a Blanket.
When I asked if they were like the Pigs in a Blanket I was familiar with (hot dogs wrapped in pancakes), Kim said, “No, they were ground pork with rice rolled in cabbage leaves. Tomato sauce on top.”
That reminds me of the stuffed cabbage my mom made.
Charuni, one of my favorite brides that I photographed, lived in her father’s ancestral home in Sri Lanka until she was a little over 3 years old. Both grandmothers made rice and curry and for Sri Lankan New Year they would make sweetmeats. One would be Mung Kevan, a batter fried diamond-shaped sweet made from green gram flour and treacle (thick, dark uncrystallized syrup that’s a byproduct of the sugar refining process). Her paternal grandmother also made a mini version of Gulab Jamun, a favorite Indian sweet, made from deep fried balls of milk based dough that are soaked in sugary syrup.
When I lived in Sri Lanka, I loved Kiribath, a traditional Sri Lankan dish served on the first day of each month and many other firsts. It was prepared by cooking rice with milk, cooled and cut in diamond shapes, served with spicy sambol made from chili, onions and small Maldive fish chips. Delicious!
Holly, who knew my mom, told me her Danish grandmother was born in a tiny farm town in mid-Michigan. Her grandparents eventually moved to a place well outside of Detroit.
“My grandmother,” Holly said, hosted Christmas Eve and those holidays are among my fondest memories of childhood. A special treat that was always on the Christmas table was a Danish Liver Pate called Leverpostej, pronounced “lee oh pah sty” and to this day it is the only liver I can bear to eat. I despise liver, you cannot pay me to eat liver, but I would kill to have my grandmother’s pate again.”
“She always made pumpkin pies,” Holly continued, “from scratch (including the crust) and it was always quite fun when she whipped the whipping cream in the mixer because, of course, somebody had to clean those beaters!”
My own grandchildren were young when they came to visit me, I mostly drove from Los Angeles to visit them in Marin County. I had three garden boxes and one time I fed them beets that I grew. To get them to eat the beets, I told them beets would make their poop purple. Of course they ate them! Grammie wasn’t joking!
What’s a girl to do?…maybe make some of the Penuche that Aaron’s grandmother made!
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a columnist for the Record-Bee. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
