Grandma's Hands

As anyone who might still be reading my blog since I haven't posted in months may have noticed, I've been writing a lot about food. Tweeting about it as well.

Being that I never intended this as a food blog, it seems a might strange.

In actuality, I'm just getting back to the roots of who I am. This journey of parenting made me lose myself in a lot of ways for a long, long time. It has changed me. And now I discover that it has carried me back to who I am and who I was.

I joined a CSA back in June. At the time I had just read The Omnivore's Dilemma and watched King Corn and I was thinking even more than usual about the foods we eat and the damage done to our environment by conventional agriculture. I thought I was joining the CSA for political reasons as much as to provide my family with healthy, locally-grown real food. And, to be honest, at $25 a week for a huge box of vegetables, it was a cost-saving initiative as well.

What I've discovered of late, as the bounty of beautiful autumn vegetables has rolled in each week, is that I really did this for myself. Okay. Maybe at the time I didn't know that. But now, this endeavor is solely for my own awakening as a cook.

Before having children, cooking was a passion for me. I loved trying new recipes, trying new foods I'd never cooked or even tasted before, and playing in the kitchen. Having children turned my once relaxing and leisurely cooking sessions into frantic, chaotic, rushed hours of crazy-making where I would burn things, cook things my children would refuse to eat, and left me in despair that I would never be able to cook a decent meal again.

Then, my children got a little older. Right around the time I joined the CSA, my kids began to be able to entertain themselves long enough for me to get a meal on the table or plan a week's worth of meals without being interrupted 27 times. My oldest also began to ask questions about what he was eating and both boys love going with me to pick up our box of veg each week. They can't wait to see what's in there. And of course, they're more excited about the grits and apples, but I know I'm making progress when my baby says of a lovely red and green striped bell pepper, "That's a beauty."

This week as I washed and chopped collard greens to freeze and sliced fresh beets to roast for dinner, I thought of my grandmother. I thought of her again as I poured freshly ground cornmeal from our farm into a bowl to make corn muffins using her recipe. These were the foods she cooked and served when I was child. Her techniques may have been different than my own, but cooking and eating these foods makes me feel close to her. I carry her in my DNA, in my heart, and in the love of cooking she instilled in me as a little girl. I learned to cook at her hand. And while she grew most of her vegetables in her own garden or bought them from farmer friends she knew personally, I still feel happy that I can teach my kids how to enjoy foods that are in season, grown nearby if not by my hand, and in the slightest way pass some of my love for my Mammy on to them.

I don't let myself think of her often. She died when I was 16 and to this day I still miss her.

Who knew a box of vegetables would help me find a way to reconnect with some of my favorite memories of her and let me find a way to celebrate her life without feeling my heart break all over again?

Whoever did, whatever power led me here, thank you for giving me back one of my favorite outlets for creating and showing love and for letting me feel so close to someone I loved so much.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: 5 Fun Holiday Activities for Kids

To celebrate and promote the premiere of Dora's Christmas Carol, Nickelodeon has invited Twitter Moms to share some of their favorite holiday activities and traditions they share with their kids.

When it comes to the holidays, I'm just a big old sentimental softie. I bet y'all wouldn't have guessed the obvious, huh?

I love traditions and I love making new traditions with my husband and sons. I want to create happy holiday memories that the boys will carry into their adult lives. And I hope, someday, they'll share some of these same activities with the kids.

The first and most obvious tradition I share with my boys is decorating the house for Christmas. Growing up, my family always put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving and this is a tradition I strive to continue, although there have been a couple of years (like when I was pregnant with my second son), that it hasn't happened until later. I put on Christmas music and pull all the decorations down from the attic. I start outdoors with wreaths on the door and windows and garland around the door, a few lights here and there. Then we move inside where we have two trees. The one in our living room is a more formal tree with white lights and fancy decorations, but the second one is all about family! It stands in the corner of our kitchen near our kitchen table and has brightly colored lights and all the decorations the kids have made plus all of our special decorations that we have been given over the years by the grandparents. Part of this tradition is that each year I take the kids to pick out a new decorations for themselves and one for me and my husband. So far we have lots of Sesame Street and Star Wars ornaments for the boys and lots of guitars and musical notes for my husband while I get Santas because I love Santa.

Another way we celebrate the season is a tradition that started when my oldest was in preschool that we participate in through the school. The year he was three, as I was about to give birth to his baby brother around Christmas, this tradition took on new meaning for me. The preschool, which is part of an Episcopal church collects and organizes bundles of new baby items like diapers, blankets, bottles, layette, socks, pacifiers, etc., and puts them into what they call Baby Jesus Baskets. The baskets are then blessed by the priest at the church and taken to Atlanta's public hospital and given to new mothers and their babies who are in need of the items. I love doing this each year, but as I said, having my own December baby and imagining what it would be like not to have the resources to give him the basic necessities has made this tradition even more special to me.

Baby Jesus Baskets may not be as much fun for the kids as it is for me, but I hope they learn to give from their hearts, expecting nothing in return through that act.

Something that is more fun for them, and maybe the thing they love most other than Santa, is watching all the holiday movies and tv shows together. From It's a Wonderful Life to How the Grinch Stole Christmas we are a family that devours Christmas media. Our schedules are busy and since we also have a lot of basketball to watch at this time of year, we often Tivo the shows so we can watch them later, but we love sitting down and laughing or crying together as we bond over the perils, pratfalls, and precious moments holiday TV.

While my fantasies of spending a day in the kitchen baking 10 different kinds of Christmas cookies with my daughter may never come to fruition since I don't have a daughter and the boys seem to have no inclination toward the culinary arts so far, I am planning to introduce a new tradition this year that is tangentially related to baking: the gingerbread house. I figure the building aspect of the project will appeal to my little Lego lovers and give me a chance to play around with icing. Since I hate gingerbread I won't be baking it myself. We'll just buy a kit, but I think it will be a fun way to spend a day off from school in the week or so before Christmas and hopefully be a fun thing we can do year after year.

Our biggest and most meaningful tradition, the one that I think they will carry over with them in the most significant way, is spending Christmas Eve with Grandma, or MeMe, as she is known in our family. We spend the day at her house with all the cousins running around playing. There are usually Mimosas for the ladies and bourbon for the gentlemen. The kids create chaos but seem to love being with one another. At least until someone has a meltdown.

We eat a traditional Christmas dinner then we all go to Mass together at the church my husband and his brothers grew up in. There are so many of us now, we can take up almost two pews. We always sit in the same place if we get there in time and enjoy the beauty and solemnity of the Christmas Eve mass. I always cry when I feel the weight and beauty of the moment and am reminded why we celebrate Christmas. I look at our family, big and imperfect, and I am able to forgive slights and see only what I love about these people and feel thankful that we are all together for that moment.

After Mass, we head back to my mother-in-law's where we have dessert and the kids open their presents from MeMe. Then we bundle everyone into the car and head back home to snuggle in bed and wait for Santa's arrival.