Throwback Thursday Funnies

Today is Throwback Thursday plus the suggested blog topic is what would you chat about if sitting on the front porch with blogger friends. So I’m combining these too! This is my maternal grandmother who taught me so much growing up. Nanny and Pa lived with us and since both my mom and dad worked, she was the one that made me breakfast before school and made sure I had a good lunch packed. Everyone loved Nanny and she was the best seamstress and she could cook and bake anything! Our pantry and freezer were all stocked with things she froze, canned, dried or pickled from our garden that would last throughout the winter and into the next garden season.

I remember when I was maybe 8 years old, my mom was getting ready to leave for work and she saw me eating a piece of chocolate cake with a tall glass of milk for breakfast. She had what back then was called a “conniption fit” and asked Nanny why she was letting me have cake for breakfast! Nanny looked at mom with a serious look on her face and told her the cake was a mayonnaise cake filled with eggs, oil, and real cocoa. She said her cake was healthier than eating a bowl of cereal topped with sugar plus I was drinking a full glass of milk. Mom rolled her eyes and headed off to work as I finished my delicious chocolate cake for breakfast. To this day when I make Nanny’s recipe, I think of the days of eating chocolate cake for breakfast. I even serve it on Nanny’s cake platter!

Another funny memory was when Rich first met my grandmother. It was shortly after Christmas of 1965 when he first met Nanny. Rich was visiting and Nanny was slicing up some of her homemade Christmas fruitcake. Now I was never a big fruitcake lover but I found out that Rich was even worse than I was, he didn’t even want to try it. But not wanting to upset Nanny, he took a small piece. When she wasn’t looking he slipped it in his suitcoat pocket. When Nanny saw it was gone she was so excited that he liked her fruitcake and gave him another piece. When Rich left to go home, he left with a pocket full of fruitcake! He just didn’t have the heart to tell her he didn’t like it. I wish I had a picture of her fruitcake, she would bake the small cakes in round cans about the size of today’s canned vegetables. I remember as she carefully took them out of the cans, I could see all the different fruits and nuts. She would wrap them up in saran wrap and tie a bow around them. The last day of school before Christmas vacation I would have a box full of little fruitcakes to give to my bus driver and all my teachers. As I got older I always wondered if they actually ate it or did they pass it on to someone else. LOL

I don’t have many pictures in today’s blog but I hope you can make your own pictures in your mind and see how wonderful my grandmother was. She taught me so much that I’ve been able to teach my children and grandchildren. I think she would be very proud to see Lia following in her footsteps and be so interested in both baking and sewing, just like Nanny was. Rich and I were lucky to have three sets of grandparents at our wedding.