When I was a kid, every year we would go to my grandmothers in Toronto for Christmas.(my dads mother) My grandmother had the kind of money that we did not so there was a certain level of special about going to grandma\u2019s house\u2026 I mean beyond the difference in lifestyles one had to be on their best behavior, use all their manners and not blow their nose on the linen napkins etc lol. I never learned easily and was just as stubborn as my father so I spent a huge amount of those holidays standing over the ironing board in the basement ironing Irish linen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In retrospect, I think going to my grandmothers house is what caused the beginnings of my addiction to food\u2026 and if it didn\u2019t cause it I\u2019m pretty sure it had a huge impact on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christmas time at grandmas had all of the special things that you would read about in books or see on TV; sliced brown bread, (and those days everyone was a Wonder Bread child)real butter, real orange juice etc. etc. Pop\/soda in every flavour under the sun. There were nuts in the shell by the pound, tangerines in our stockings and snack to be eaten by the fire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were crumpets for breakfast and tea with milk and even real raspberry jam.\u2026there were actual roasts of beef, sliced sandwich meat besides a balogna chub, real mayonnaise, and every kind of fruit and vegetable known to mankind\u2026most of which I\u2019d never tried. Actually I never had thought of let them let alone tasted. And if there was something missing my grandmother would just send someone up the street to Mr. Young\u2019s grocer to pick up what was needed on account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also contained a level of sweets that I don\u2019t miss at all\u2026 there was Christmas candy that was a whole different ball of wax when I was a kid\u2026There were two different kinds of pastilles, candy ribbons, real gumdrops dipped in sugar and mixed candies that had Santa\u2019s face in them\u2026(or what I assumed was Santa\u2019s his face)\u2026Roman nougat, real mince tarts, figgy pudding with the whole tradition of hard sauce and flame. There was Christmas cake with without nuts and there was a whole room in the basement that just held cases and cases of booze\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve tried for years to find either of the different kind of pastilles that we had available\u2026.one was from Laura Secord and the other was almost like a petit fours without cake inside\u2026 it was like the petit fours icing all the way through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Funny what you remember around the holidays\u2026I adored being at my grandmothers house for the holidays because her traditions were so different than ours\u2026Never did a Jell-O salad end up on my grandma\u2019s table and we never had vegetables like asparagus, or broccoli or mushrooms, nor lox and cream cheese<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t so much the food or even the amount of people that frequented my grandmothers house\u2026she never said no to a stranger\u2026 And my dad was from a large family so a regular Sunday style dinner could be for 10 or 45! Saturday\u2019s tradition was burgers\u2026 with a myriad of toppings that I\u2019d never seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quite often there would be one of my dad\u2019s sisters and spouse and children staying over as well as us and more often than not they were the more affluent relatives than we were. I was a long way into my life before I came to understand that my cousins opening gifts I had only seen on the tv didnt mean but they were better than I, that their family was somehow better than ours\u2026.only that they made up for a divorce or the loss of a child by buying only the best. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only time I ever knew as a child that we were poor was at grandmas house. She worked hard to make us all feel equal but we knew. ..it instilled within us a healthy respect for money and tradition that I live with till this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And memories of glass bowls of Christmas candies strewn about the house. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a kid, every year we would go to my grandmothers in Toronto for Christmas.(my dads mother) My grandmother had the kind of money that we did not so there was a certain level of special about going … Continue reading