Favorite Childhood Meal

Being raised in a primarily Italian & Portuguese family, food was a big part of my life. As soon as anyone mentioned having a party or celebrating a holiday, the first thing that was discussed was the food that was going to be served.

 

When this prompt was provided by Carla at www.allofmenow.com I began thinking of what my favorite childhood meal was. Was it the ham dinner that we had every Christmas, was it my Grandmothers homemade waffles or could it be the July clam boil that was a family tradition for many years??? 

There are so many different meals that I enjoyed, and still do enjoy, but my favorites were the ones prepared by my grandmother (she was 100% Italian). Now, I was very fortunate to have my grandmother in my life until I was 31 years old, so that's a lot of meals. One of my favorite meals didn't involve what we were eating, but rather the conversation that went with it.

I remember it was her birthday and everyone was going over to my grandparents’ house, including my mother, my husband, and myself. My grandmother had made meatloaf (not my favorite), and as dinner was finishing, as we were finishing our clean up, my grandmother began opening her presents. You see, I was waiting to tell her that I was pregnant with my first child -  her first great grandchild!!! Needless to say the anticipation of sharing this news that she had been waiting years to hear was making me giddy. What followed next was a mix of happy tears, questions and lots of hugs. 

Even though the prompt for this blog was a favorite childhood meal, this was by far one of the most favorite meal memories of my life....in fact all meals I shared with my grandmother are my favorite.

Weekly Roundup

I am going to try something new in an effort to try and get my brain in more of a writing, adult mode rather than a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Kipper mode.  I am going to do a post hopefully every week of the little things that have either made me smile, made my life easier or that I just plain enjoyed, now I realize I may not do it on a Friday but nobody said a weekly roundup has to be on Friday.... So here it goes, while this summer has been anything but tons of fun for my family some of the recent little things have included:

Warm Bread - Yes in the dead heat of August I love a nice chunk of warm bread.  The other day C and I stopped for lunch at Panera and with my salad I got a nice warm chunk of a baguette, didn't think until after I inhaled it to ask for butter!!!!! YUMMY

Paper plates and plastic utensils - Yes, I know these things aren't great for the environment but they are great for quick meals and snacks, especially when you do not have a dish washer.  So I will admit to using these things and plastic cups but I do my part to help Mother Earth in other ways.

The other day I asked C if he knew where my Montessori Albums (large binders each containing all the lessons taught in a 3-6 year old classroom, that contain my sweat and tears) the answer I got was obvious "downstairs in the basement" I was looking for a more specific answer but oh well.  Later that afternoon we trekked down to the basement looking for the elusive binders and surprisingly they were easy to find, but what else I found was certainly better than any Montessori album....I found a cover to a photo album.  For a second or two I thought to myself "what is that and why is it here", upon closer inspection I realized that it was a cover to a photo album that belonged to my grandmother and in it were samples of her handwriting, one from childhood and one from adulthood.  This particular grandmother (LJP) passed away when I was 7 years old, I have memories of her and pictures but she is someone who is still very much loved and missed. She has away of showing up just when I need her, weird as this may sound it is true, there has been the occasional dream, the feeling of her presence at specific times in my life, or finding her photo album cover.  Now would I have found this eventually, sure but I can't help to think I found it now for a reason. My daughter Z shares the same middle name as my grandmother, Laura.  In fact the name Laura goes back 4 generations so far as we can tell, Z of course being the most current.  The picture below is of a quote that is taped inside the photo album cover, and applies so perfectly to this situation, even from the afterlife I know that my grandmother loves me and me her.

So there they are some Little Things from this week that have helped me out in one way or another recently.  I am hoping that as the summer comes to an end there will be more opportunities to experience all the Little Things around us.....