Iced In...Comfort Foods

Do you have those foods that you make that immediately take you somewhere else? There are so many things that I make on a regular basis that remind me of the person that taught me to make the dish. My life has been blessed with many people that shared their love of cooking with me.

Pancakes and omelettes remind me of cooking with my Dad.

Gravy and biscuits, pasta salad, peanut butter cookies and vegetable soup take my back to my Mom's kitchen.

Fried Cornbread brings back my Mamaw.

Scrambled Eggs remind me of my cousin Iris and the summer she visited us for a while.

Dumplings remind me of my Granny and my great grandmother.

Several cakes I make, remind me of my friend Yvonne.

Jalapeno cornbread brings to mind my friend Allyson.

Pat taught me to make homemade pizza.

Some of these people are no longer here with me in this life, and several more are separated by many miles. Cooking is something that makes me happy and complete and I am so grateful for those that shared their skills and recipes with me.

But this post is about the picture above.

I ate a lot of meals of my Granny's house and she made so many good foods. My absolute favorite time to eat at her house was on Thursday nights. You see Friday was grocery day so on Thursday nights she would pull out all of the left overs and make a meal out of them. It was like a feast with the variety of foods! Some dishes only had a few spoons left, but it was still good. One of the favorites of mine was this simple dish of jumbo elbow macaroni and a jar of home canned tomatoes. 

So simple, just two ingredients.

When I made it in my kitchen last night I was immediately transported back, to me ten years old, in my Granny's kitchen. 

The reality though, my kitchen is about 175 miles from her kitchen, Granny lives in the world of her memories as Alzheimer's disease takes her present knowledge and leftover night at her house is a thing of the distant past. But last night my memories took me back there.

And now? There is a little girl in my life, that I am teaching to cook from my memories. And she knows that while cooking can be learned from a book or the internet, that there are many, many more things that can be learned by one person, passed on to another and then another connecting hearts across miles and generations.