My Grandma saved everything. A foot long piece of yarn, rubber bands, twist ties, plastic sandwich bags, buttons, five inch leftover pieces of contact paper. You name it, she saved it. After all, one never knows when 10,000 rubber bands may come in handy.
She also canned. She canned peaches, applesauce, jelly, green beans, apple butter, tomatoes. You name it, and it was canned and stored in my grandma's pantry.
She froze everything. Split pea soup, raspberries, bread, blackberries, gooseberries, meat, pies, vegetable soup, broth and cranberries. If it could be frozen it's contents and date were marked with a black grease pen and placed with the other hundred Tupperware containers within my Grandma's 25 foot freezer.
She never wasted anything. While growing up, I was an unusually patient kid, but baking with my Grams would test anyone's patience. She sifted pre-sifted flour in an old fashioned metal crank sifter: Measure, tap, level, sift; measure, tap, level, sift. Two cups of flour seemed like an eternity. If any flour or sugar fell onto the counter she would hold the cup under the edge, and sweep it off carefully into the measuring cup, never leaving behind a granule.
My favorite thing to make with my Grandma was sugar cookies. We would make the dough, then putter around the house organizing and reorganizing her collections, while the dough chilled. Then she would painstakingly roll the dough out, making sure to have the exact same number of rolls in each direction so that it would be precisely 1/8 inch thick, as stated in the recipe. Together we picked the shapes of cookie cutters we would use. My favorite shape was always the heart.
When the pre-heat light went off, and the cookies were placed in the oven, I would sit on the floor of the kitchen, staring into the avacado green oven while blinking the light on and off, watching for the faintest hint of the edges to turn a golden brown. "Are they done yet?" I would yell. "Not quite yet," she responded. After six minutes, and me asking if they were done at least ten times, the built in oven buzzer finally went off.
I held the hot cookie sheet while wearing one of her dozens of oven mitts, while she carefully placed each cookie onto a cooling rack.
After all the cookies had baked, and were cooling, she would fill the teapot with water, and place it on the burner, while I sat and waited at the table. When the teapot whistled, she would get two teabags and place the teabags and the hot water in two small white plastic teacups (the cups were from my collection). Then she would get a small plate and put about six cookies on it, and place it on the table between us.
We would then sit dunking our still warm, plain sugar cookies into our peppermint tea. She always knew the exact time to remove her cookie, right before it got too soggy and was lost to the bottom of the cup. It's funny, but I don't remember any discusions we had during our teas, or even if we talked at all. I do remember both of us laughing because, when she first bent over her teacup to blow on her tea before drinking, her glasses would steam up.
Whenever I smell peppermint, I am reminded of my Grandma and I sitting across from each other, content in our silence, slowly eating our sugar cookies and enjoying our tea.
