Today’s entry has nothing to do with chicken recipes. Since I haven’t shared a food memory for a while, I thought it would be fun to write the first of several anecdotes concerning my late grandmother’s cooking ability—or lack of it. Forget those wild rumors you hear about all grandmothers being good cooks, because my grandmother definitely was not, but she did have a good sense of humor about it. She was always the first to say that she was a lousy cook and that she should not be permitted in the kitchen.
One often told story concerning Grandma’s total lack of culinary expertise was the time that my sister, Lori, and her husband, Rick, visited Grandma shortly after their marriage. My sister warned her husband, “If she offers food, say no! Don’t eat anything!” But, against her advice, Rick accepted one of Grandma’s infamous hard-as-steel rectangular icebox cookies, apparently prepared with equal parts of flour and Portland cement. When he clamped one between his teeth, he finally understood what it must be like to bite into a piece of floor tile. The only way that he was able to conquer it was to soak it in the mud-like coffee that had been on the stove for ten hours.
When Grandma offered seconds of the concrete cookie slabs, Rick said, “It’s tempting, but no thanks.”
Lori was not given that option. She had declined to have one on the first go around, but this time she was ordered to “Eat it!” My brother-in-law thought, this woman is a sadist!
While Grandma returned to the stove to fetch the coffee pot, Lori proceeded to slip the cookie under the table and pass it to Rick, who, for lack of a better place to hide it, stuck it in the front pocket of his shirt. When Grandma topped off his cup of tar, she noticed the weighty pocket. “You got a cookie in your pocket.”
“Yeah, well, I liked ‘em so much I thought I’d have one for the road—hope you don’t mind.”
Never before had Grandma experienced such an honor. “Well, in that case, I’ll send along a few more!”
I was afraid of that.
After they concluded their visit, Rick pulled over near the city park and pitched the cookies. He always swore that one struck the band shell and cracked the stucco. My sister was more worried about the possibility of some poor animal stumbling upon the rock-hard cookies, trying to bite into them, and losing half of its teeth.
Subsequent visits to Grandma’s always resulted in Rick having to choke down at least one of his “favorite” cookies. The rest of the batch was always sent home with him, because Grandma knew how much he enjoyed them. My good-hearted brother-in-law could never bring himself to tell her the truth. Several years later, we all learned that Grandma knew all along that he hated the cookies, but she couldn’t resist seeing the look on his face whenever she hauled out another monstrous batch prepared especially for him. Yep, Grandma was quite the prankster.
