GAIL WHITE Taste of childhood spurs memories of grandma's kitchen

It took me back 30 years.
I was standing in the kitchen staring at the oven, wishing I had started cooking dinner earlier.
As the aroma of chicken and potatoes filled the room and my stomach growled incessantly, I spied a package of saltine crackers on the counter.
My mind immediately went back to the days of my youth when my brother, sister and I, along with several cousins, would run from the yard, up the front steps of grandma's porch, burst through the screen door and yell, "We're hungry!"
Grandma would get out a package of saltine crackers and a pat of butter -- not margarine, but real butter. With three or four saltine cracker and butter sandwiches in hand, she would shoo us back outside until dinner. We would race to the swing on the front porch and sit, happily eating our treat.
As I stood in my kitchen remembering that wonderful memory of my youth, the thought of butter and saltines sounded horrid to me.
Still, that package of saltines was calling to my grumbling stomach.
I made a saltine and butter sandwich.
So good!
As the salt from the cracker and the cool butter center reached my lips, I remembered why this was a favorite snack of mine as a child. It was so good!
I made another.
As I stood eating my third cracker-butter delight (It was actually my fourth set, but the third was thrown away. I attempted to use margarine instead of butter. It's not the same.) I wondered why I had forgotten to share this delight with my children.
Before I could answer that question, I remembered another snack I used to love to eat at grandma's house.
Every summer, when the rhubarb would ripen, my brother, sister and I, along with those same cousins, would run down to the patch and pick the biggest stalk of rhubarb we could find. While we washed our rhubarb in the kitchen sink, grandma would pour sugar into coffee cups.
With our stalk of rhubarb in one hand and our coffee cup in the other, we would sit outside on the porch steps dipping our rhubarb into the cup of sugar and biting into the sour stalk covered in sweetness. There wasn't a care in the world when you were holding a stalk of rhubarb and a coffee cup of sugar. Those were the days.
Rolls
On my fifth cracker and butter sandwich, I remembered grandma's homemade rolls.
She would knead her dough for what seemed like hours, flour sprinkled across the kitchen table, mounds of dough on either side.
Looking back, she probably didn't knead the dough as long as it seemed. I was just anxious to smell the aroma of that sweet bread baking. And, more anxious than that, I couldn't wait to eat grandma's wonderful delicacy.
You weren't allowed to cut grandma's rolls with a knife the first day. She insisted they be ripped apart with fingers. I never knew why. I suppose I didn't really care. I would have eaten those rolls standing on my head if she had told me to.
Plums
Along about my sixth (or seventh) saltine and butter sandwich, I remembered grandma's canned plums.
My grandparents canned everything. The walls would be streaked with orange every fall as bushels and bushels of tomatoes were canned for juice, soup and sauce.
My hands would ache from husking corn to be canned and frozen. We snapped beans, shucked peas and peeled apples, all for the purpose of canning. It was hard work, and I remember not being happy about it much of the time.
My favorite item that my grandparents canned was plums, though I don't remember ever helping can them.
Every winter, when grandma opened up a new can of sweet, juicy plums, it made all the hard work of the fall worthwhile.
When I started into double digits with saltine and butter sandwiches, I decided it was time to stop reminiscing. Besides, the chicken and potatoes were done.
Pulling the food out of the oven, I found I wasn't hungry anymore. Amazing how filling memories can be.
gwhite@vindy.com