Author Archives: Janell

Yes and No

12 Wednesday May 2010

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Another day, another celebratory meal, another pretty table.

No, not really.  Yesterday’s birthday dinner was more than just another whatever.  Yesterday, my newest granddaughter Tayler, turned eleven years old.  Yesterday, I worked my fingers, if not to the bone, at least to dry chapped wrinkly skin, to make a meal perfect for a young girl whose name I barely knew two years ago.

How is it that this young  lady can already have claimed a place in my heart?  Is it because, no matter what or when, she always wants to spend the night at her new Nana’s house?  Is it because she has the wisdom to know, at such an early age, how sisters truly make the best of friends — even when they are young kid sisters who have a bent to tell sibling tales to parents with wagging tongues — wisdom it took both her mother and me years — or should I say decades?  —  to realize about our own wonderful sisters?

Pensive one moment, giggly the next, Tayler is a “good egg”, to borrow a favorite expression of my mother-in-law Janice.  Tayler is not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve.  She asks for what she wants, come what may.  When she goes down in defeat with a circle of ‘no’s’, she bounces right back with a smile and a new plan.

We enjoyed a red banner evening together — spaghetti with red sauce, red velvet cake and her favorite cookies, swirled with red food coloring, that I bake, whenever a grandchild is promised to be in sight.  With two dozen cookies left over, Tayler asked if she could carry them to school today to share with her classmates.  “Of course,” I said.  Mostly, it’s easy to say ‘yes’ to Tayler.

Grandmother’s are better at saying ‘yes’ than ‘no.’  As a parent, I said ‘no’ too many times.  No. No. No.  Sometimes in a string, just like that.  My new grandson Ryan — Tayler’s older brother — wanted another piece of cake.  “Yes,” I said.  His new mother — my daughter, Kate — said “No.”  If I had been Kate, I, more than likely, would have said “No” too.  But I’m thinking the world is filled with too many “no’s”, that it’s up to families to speak the much-needed “yes, yes, yes.”

Of course, my final word last night was “No.”  Predictably, Tayler asked to spend the night.  After a rough night of sleeping, after working all day to make her birthday dinner grand, and with my husband, the disciplinarian, out-of-town, I spoke the safe and sorry ‘No’.

I wish I had said “Yes.”  I wish I had thrown common sense out the window and remembered what it was like to be eleven and spend the night at my Aunt Jo’s or my Aunt Carol’s.   Then maybe I would have said “Yes.”

Tales from the Fridge

10 Monday May 2010

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You can learn a lot about people by looking inside their refrigerators.

Today mine holds a large pot of spaghetti sauce full of meatballs, telling of tomorrow’s birthday dinner for my soon-to-be eleven year old granddaughter.  But other than this, there’s very little going on within the main stage.  Hardly no leftovers.  I’ve had such little interest in cooking, we’ve been eating out more than in.

This morning, it was the contents within our refrigerator door that captured my attention.  It began with the two bottles of fruit juice.  Bosom buddies of the elderly —  Grapefruit and cranberry juice — sure signs  that the house is inhabited by people entering their so-called ‘golden years.’  Back in the day of my youth, it was orange banana strawberry for me.  Or something else on the order of sweet.

These days, buttermilk is a staple in our fridge.  My husband uses it for his biscuits.  I use it for my chicken fry steak.  And tomorrow morning, I’m going to try to make Miss Tayler a Red Velvet Cake with it.

My mother was famous for her Red Velvet Cake, which she frosted with a short-hand version of German Chocolate Cake Frosting, holding back the pecans and coconut.

My grandchildren must believe that all grandmothers are created equal — that if Grandma Carol could bake red cake, that surely their Nana can as well.  And though my version looks like red cake, I can’t ever seem to get it out of the oven at just the right time.

As it approaches being done, I check it faithfully.  Toothpick in.  Wet.  Toothpick in.  Gooey.  Toothpick in.  Dry as a bone.

But God bless their little bones — their little hearts and especially their tummies.  Chock full of youthful bliss, as ones who surely believe in the goodness of orange strawberry banana or some other concoction of sweet juice, they consider this Nana’s red cake simply divine.

Puttin’ on the Dog

09 Sunday May 2010

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I began with flowers from my garden.  Today it was pink English roses.  No longer in peak form, but still lovely and fragrant, it didn’t take long for the room to carry their scent.

While my husband was in the kitchen cooking a Mother’s Day Brunch, I dressed our table with fine linens, and wondered about table settings.  I rarely use my fine china.   And today, true to form, I eschewed bone white for the antique hand-painted china my mother gave me long ago.  I leaned into the dark recesses of the china cabinet to pull out four old, hair-lined cracked blue and white  plates.  Small dinner plates.  Folks, back in the ‘good old days,’ must have eaten smaller, healthier portions.    And for brunch, small plates are perfect.

Next stop:  the upper kitchen cabinets, the ones so high up they are all but forgotten.  Up on the tips of my toes, I carefully lifted out four of my mother’s Fostoria glasses that I’ve had since my mother’s first bout with cancer.  It was 1994.  Mom thought she was dying.  And she was giving away all her treasures.  Probably thinking I’d have more occasion to use her prized Fostoria than my siblings, Mom wanted me to have them.

As I washed and shined the place settings for service, I remembered how Mom occasionally went though this same ritual,  whenever she was in the mood to ‘put’ on the dog,’  whenever she wished to serve her meal on something other than her everyday china.

Usually it happened when the preachers were coming.  “The Preachers’ was what she called her Southern Baptist preacher and his wife.  As a kid, I was always thankful that ‘the preachers’ didn’t come often.  Having ‘the preachers’ over always meant extra work for us kids — not to mention the pretense of good table etiquette.  The house had to be clean — no small chore in our house.  And Mom’s Fostoria glassware and Desert Rose dinnerware were always taken out of storage to dress the table.

Never ever was her food any different though.  The food Mom served was just her everyday finest, with the addition of some wonderful dessert for good measure.  As a general rule, Mom rarely made dessert when cooking for just us.  However, when company was coming, dessert was a fixture.

Today, in that same grand way of Mother’s entertaining, our meal was everyday simple.  My husband made breakfast tacos and I made Mom’s home-made hash browns.  But in keeping with the spirit of ‘puttin’ on the dog’, we had a lovely Strawberry Shortcake with my husband’s scratch biscuits, sweetened with a little sugar.

Setting the table with the good china and crystal and silver is always a little extra work.  But oh was I glad to do it, in memory and in honor or two great mothers.