cooking

I've been thinking about my grandmother recently. My dad's mom died in 2001. I can't remember now whether it was before of after 9/11. I'm inclined to think it was before because her coffin was covered in lilacs and you can't get them all year round.

She was my favorite grandmother. I probably saw more of her than my mother's mother. We lived with her until I was about three. We drove into NY to have dinner many, many Sundays. She was funny and did crossword and other puzzles in the newspaper.

One of the big things we shared was a love of cooking shows. I would come down to visit when I was in graduate school in upstate NY and the two of us would watch them together. This is back in the 90s, so the food networks hadn't taken off, but there was plenty to watch.

I inherited her set of Time-Life cookbooks, her toaster, and a common kitchen knife she used to use. It's bigger than a paring knife, but a little less slim than a boning knife. It comes in handy for lots of little cooking tasks.

And there are her recipe cards. She had a pile of them, tied with a piece of aging gold-covered elastic, which must have come off some gift or other. The handwriting changes, not to mention ink colors, so I think she was doing these over time. Some seem older than others, but I have no idea when or why she wrote these down. Was it memory? She had been a cook for a family living up in Pauling NY, when Pauling was the country. That was before she and my dad moved back to the city and she got a job with the city that she kept until she retired.

She was a good cook.

A much plainer cook than her sister, my great-aunt, who made the first paella I ever tasted. She was a very good cook of comfort food. She has a lot of them on these cards, recipes for cakes, stews, blintzes. She's got about five different BBQ sauce recipes.

I don't know whether she ever cooked any of these things or if they were placeholders, they way that someone now will pin a recipe, copy a link, or bookmark a page. I have recipes I've never made. To be honest, I haven't cooked out of more than five of the Time-Life cookbooks that I inherited, either. Having them on the shelf reminds me of the pleasure she took in food and in cooking. They remind me of her.

When I started this, I didn't know where it was going except that I think about my grandmother often. Just last week I mentioned her in interviews with some students I'm coaching at El Cerrito High School. I miss her still.