Yesterday, I traveled down to Middletown to help my parents with the long and arduous process of cleaning out my grandparents’ house following their deaths this summer. What a task. More than 60 years of accumulated “stuff”, exacerbated by at least 5 years of no housecleaning (due to physical inability). Many, many trashbags were put on the truck, and much more still awaits hauling.
My point? A very strange thing happened to me while I was there, something I am hesitant to even describe, since I’m typically what you would call a “disbeliever”. Remember back in June when I posted the piece I wrote about my Grandma’s banana bread? In it, I mentioned that I had never acquired my Grandmother’s recipe, because I didn’t think she had one. Anyway, while Mom and I were cleaning out the food cupboard, a pile of papers fell out onto the counter. My mother scooped up the papers, and went to toss them into the trash bag. One (and only one) piece of crinkly yellowed paper fluttered to a stop on the counter in front of me:
What would you think? I was a little freaked, to say the least. And not because she spelled bananas wrong (twice).
I think that your grandmother wanted you to have her recipe. Use it only for good!
BTW, what is spry?
Hey, I blogged about getting sunflowers from dead people….no stone throwing here.
I agree with Marlene. Your grandmother wanted you to have that recipe. No doubt about that.
Heh – it reminds me of that episode of Friends where Phoebe finally finds her dead grandmother’s “famous” chocolate chip cookie recipe and she gives it to Monica as a wedding presents. Turned out that it was the Nestle Tollhouse recipe, haha.
And yeah…what is spry?
From Wikipedia…
Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening produced by Lever Brothers starting in 1936. It was a competitor for Proctor & Gamble’s Crisco, and through aggressive marketing through its mascot Aunt Jenny had reached 75 percent of Crisco’s market share. The marketing efforts were phased out in the 1950s, but Aunt Jenny and her quotes like With Spry, we can afford to have cake oftener! have been reprinted in books such as James Lilek’s Gallery of Regrettable Food. Though the product is discontinued there are anecdotal reports of it being used through the 1970s.
Thanks, Eileen! I would have gotten to the explanation eventually (my mom clued me in when I asked her the same question), but I didn’t get to my computer yesterday.
I don’t think I’ll be making banana bread *exactly* like Grandma…