Sunday Gratitudes

I spent Thanksgiving in Utah with our extended families. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it is all about family, love and food traditions. Instead of posting a landscape pic, I wanted you to meet one of the instigators of our family food traditions, and my gratitude subject for this post.



Meet my maternal grandma. She just turned 94. This woman taught my mom ( and me and my sis) how to grow a garden, how to bottle, can and preserve, how to quilt. Thanksgiving has to have her homemade cranberry sauce recipe as well as her 'Yucky Rolls'. I always make her chicken noodle casserole, clam chowder, sugar cookies. Her style is not gourmet. It is straight forward, honest food. I remember how she would look away and pretend not to see the first time I would try to snitch a piece of bread dough from the Yucky rolls she was rising every family dinner. If she caught me again she would threaten to get the lickin' stick.



Grandma's daddy died from the flu when she was young. She became the homemaker while her mom worked. She is fiercely independent because of this. Grandma has her quirks like everyone else. But if you ever needed anything, she would be first in line to provide a meal, take care of kids, or do whatever was needed.



Grandma wanted to be a writer. She always bought books as gifts. Life got in the way of her original goals but she doesn't complain about it. She mentions it wistfully, once in a while. She has penned a few children's stories that she showed me once and then tucked away again. I want to find those stories and have one of the grandkids illustrate them and then publish them if just for her great and great-great grandchildren.



I could never express enough how grateful I am to her. I write her every week now that I am not living near enough to see her weekly. She can not write back but I know she loves me.