A fruitcake from my Grandmother. My grandpa LOVED fruitcake. All sweets actually. He is the reason dessert was a required component of every meal.
Never seen anyone so excited about getting a holiday fruitcake.
The End
Grandma’s Brazil Nut Bread
The book of family recipes
I gave my Grandmother a book, Grandmother Remembers Family Recipes, about ten years before she passed. She tucked a few handwritten recipe cards into the book as well as a few cut outs of recipes found in newspapers, magazines such as Good Housekeeping and cut from the packages of food containers.
Only one recipe was actually written in the book. The rest of the book was filled with blank pages. She was in the beginning stages of dementia, although only she had any idea of it at that time. She hid it well. Our Grandfather was very protective of her wish for privacy and even though she had frequent visits from family, we had no idea how bad it was until an accident befell my Grandfather.
She did her best. I’m sure she wanted to fill those pages, but simply couldn’t But I have one recipe from her that she wrote in the book. Her handwriting, while only just beginning to show the telltale degradations of dementia, is still clearly and uniquely hers. She was meticulous about the virtues of good handwriting. This single page awaits the perfect frame. In the meantime, I will share it with you.
I will tell you a secret. I do not like apricots. My Grandmother would pull out every trick in the parenting handbook to get this little picky eater to try new things. She would race me in water drinking contests. She would send me out to pick a fresh veggie from the garden and extol the virtues of a freshly picked radish or kohlrabi in a salad. “Just one bite”. These tricks rarely worked.
I am confident my grandmother is my guardian angel. I imagine she is pretty chuffed that I love a garden fresh salad with radish and kohlrabi. Few beverages beat a cool glass of filtered water when you are parched. She’ll be even prouder when I made her apricot balls, another trick that will get me to try apricots again. I am betting on it.
EC
Sources:
If any fellow science curious want to read more about handwriting degradation in some causes of dementia, here is an information study. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381903/