Food From the Farm

Earlier this week I traveled with just my mom to visit my grandparents.  I love my kids dearly, but it was nice to spend some quality time with my mom and to be able to sit uninterrupted and visit with my grandparents.

One thing my grandpa has always been good at is sharing stories from his past.  He has spent countless hours researching our genealogy.  He's even worked hard to document the genealogy of Steven's family. Basically, a family tree full of Swedes and Puerto Ricans.  What a combination!  If you're wondering what happens when you cross a Swede and a Puerto Rican, this is what you get...

{A pretty great merger if you ask me}

On this particular trip, my grandpa wanted to share a story from the 1930's when he was a boy.  The story really reminds me of how much we've lost our connection to food.  We go to the store, buy our food, and cook it up.  We forget what really had to be done to put a meal together.  Let me remind you...

When my grandpa was a young boy, his grandmother handed him a cast iron skillet and told him to take a trip to the smokehouse.  He was to cut a slab of pork, stop by to pick up some eggs from the hen house, and hand her the ingredients in the cast iron skillet.  By the time his task was done and he was headed back to the farm house, his grandmother had buttermilk biscuits baking in the wood stove.  She took his pork and eggs and cooked them up. 

Can you even imagine the taste of that breakfast?  Everything so fresh.  You knew exactly where your food came from.  You were connected to your food.  You worked hard for what you ate.  Convenience and food weren't words that were ever associated together.

What was even more amazing was as my grandpa was talking of his past, another woman, who was also in the dining hall, stopped at our table.  She recalled times of a similar past.  If I could go back to one time period for one day, it would be the 1930's.  I would like to experience the smokehouse, the hen house, the wood burning stove, the fresh food, the work to prepare a meal, all of it.  Since that's not going to happen, I guess I'll continue to listen and cherish the memories told by my grandpa.

{A gigantic me listening to an amazing grandpa}