Remembering grandma (Part 3)

Welcome!  I'm doing a series of  posts about my grandma, who recently passed away.  I've been writing down memories of grandma in my journal, and as I have the time, I'll share them here on the blog.  I admired her so much, and her life was one well lived because she loved Jesus.

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I can most easily picture grandma up at the stove, making breakfast.  Breakfasts at grandma's house are one of my fondest memories.  There was always homemade white bread for toast, with butter and strawberry jam she'd made.  She made eggs just perfectly.  She would ask how you liked your egg and then make it just so, and deliver it to you at the table. (I never liked eggs anywhere else, but grandma made them so yummy- soft and with the yoke oozing out and delicious!)

Their kitchen table is a small one which comfortably sits four, and directly beneath it on the outside are the flower beds.  If you're looking out the window to the right, you can see their small front porch, with grandma's beloved hummingbird feeder hanging there.  If you look straight out the window, you'll see the front pasture with some trees and then the main road beyond that.  And if you crook your neck toward the left you can see their vegetable garden.  Grandpa, Stef and I would be sitting at the table, and grandma would be up at the stove across the room.  (That was one thing about grandma- she was always up, on her feet, serving (usually by way of feeding) everyone.  She wasn't happy until you were eating.  Truly.  And then she kept feeding you until you assured her about seventeen times that you were positively stuffed.)

Grandma's other popular breakfast offering was Swedish Pancakes.   She would carefully pour the pancake batter into the pan and then lift the pan and slowly tip it this way and that so as to spread the batter thin.  Then she'd set it down and watch it until it was just the perfect time to flip it.  Then she'd deliver the pancakes to the table one by one- as she completed them.

We still make Swedish Pancakes in our home, though I don't do them individually like grandma did.  I use my griddle because I can do more at a time that way.  But I still pick up the griddle and tip it back and forth to get those thin pancakes.  My kids love Swedish Pancakes and always prefer them to regular pancakes.

The morning after her funeral I was up early, making Swedish Pancakes in honor of grandma. And then I cried as I ate them.  I just love her and miss her.  And I can never eat Swedish Pancakes without thinking of her, up at the stove, making them for us.  But I'll keep making them, because it's a gift, that recipe-- but especially those memories- and I am certain that someday my kids will make them for their own kids, and they will know that it's grandma's recipe, and if they don't remember her, they will remember what I've told them of her.

Here is grandma's recipe:

Grandma's Swedish Pancakes

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
Mix dry ingredients

Beat:

2-3 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk

Mix wet & dry ingredients together

Stir in at the end:

1/4 cup oil

(I usually forgo the traditional butter & syrup combo and eat these with plain or vanilla yogurt and a bit of jam.  Mmmm!  Oh, and one more thing: you must ROLL UP the pancake and then slice it.  That's important.)

After breakfast Grandpa would open up his Bible and read from it- and from Our Daily Bread, and then they would pray.  I say "they" because when grandpa prayed, grandma would join in right along with him, tagging onto his prayers with her softer "Yes, Jesus" and "We praise you, Jesus" and the like.

I loved this, and I will miss this.

At the funeral one of my cousins stood and shared his breakfast memories-- so very like my own, and he described their praying as like a duet, and I thought that was such a good description of it. 

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Other posts in this series:

Remembering grandma, Part 1

Remembering grandma, Part 2