Grandma’s Kitchen

February 19, 2008

I was the only girl I knew whose grandma had two kitchens. There was the kitchen on the main floor of my grandparents farm house and then there was the downstairs kitchen, Grandma’s cookie kitchen, warmed by double ovens and bathed in the sweet baked smells of banana cupcakes and yeasty sourdough breads, but mostly of cookies, the cookies grandma baked nearly every day.

My favorite place in all the world was in Grandma’s kitchen standing by her side, both of us engulfed in the white haze that billowed up as she tossed another handful of flour into the standing mixer bowl. How I loved to watch her, awed by the way she’d glance at the recipe card as though it was only a suggestion and then tossing it aside, begin to add the ingredients without a measuring cup or spoon in sight. Two heaping scoops plus a handful of sugar, chunks of chilled butter grabbed from the fridge, three eggs broken into a water glass before being dropped in the bowl, handfuls of flour, a small shake of soda, a pinch or two of salt, and a drizzle of vanilla poured straight from the bottle. And all the while, as she tossed in the ingredients, and scooped the sweet dough onto parchment-covered baking sheets, she’d be patiently walking me through every step, explaining how cold butter made the dough fluffier and how parchment paper made the cookie bottoms golden brown. “The bottoms of the cookies should be just as pretty as the top,” she’d say, this woman whose cookies were so exquisitely shaped and flawlessly baked she could have served them upside down and no one would have been the wiser.

One day I brought a box of Double Fudge Brownie mix from home to make in the cookie kitchen, a loving concession for a just-from-scratch Grandma. Standing beside her, and wanting to be so much like her, I added the water and oil into the chocolaty brown powder already waiting in the bowl, and then Grandma handed me two eggs, a water glass and all the assurance I needed. “You know how to do it. I’ve showed you how.”

As the just-from-the-oven box brownies cooled in their pan, the cocoa smell filling the air, I remembered something, an idea I’d seen one afternoon on a local TV station cooking show. With Grandma’s attention distracted by the next batch of cookie dough to be mixed, I went to the drawer filled with army/navy tablecloths and cross-stitched tea towels, and digging down deep found a stack of lace cotton doilies. Having chosen one that looked about right I walked over to the brownie pan and laid the crisp white doily over the top of the cracked brownie terrain. “Honey. What are you doing?” Grandma asked from the center of another floury haze and as she watched I lifted a hand sifter over the pan and cranking the wooden handle round and round a light snowfall of powdered sugar began to dust the top of the pan. Satisfied that the downfall was sufficient I lifted the doily, revealing a lacy white sugar shadow on the brownies beneath.

I looked up delighted from the brownie pan to my Grandma, who without a moment’s pause set down her rubber spatula, took one of my hands in hers and said excitedly, “Come with me” as she led me through the kitchen and down the hall to the long narrow room that held a wall covered in cookbooks. Not store bought cookbooks, but her cookbooks, ones she’d made from three-ring binders, filled to overflowing with lined notebook paper, each page covered in recipes scrawled in Grandma’s hurried small script and adorned with old stains of butter and smears of dried sweet dough. Taking one binder off from the shelf, she sat down at the scratched mahogany table and opening to a blank page she printed with care:

In a 9×12 inch greased pan bake brownies according to box directions. Cool.
Place a cotton lace doily on top of the cooled brownies. Sprinkle with powered sugar.
Remove doily carefully. Slice brownies.

With the recipe written, Grandma looked up at me standing as always by her side, and then turning back to the opened binder she wrote in familiar script across the top of the page “Anita Jean’s Brownies.” My eight year old ego had me convinced that this badge of honor Grandma had lavished on me was because my sugar-dusted brownies had been worthy enough to gain her recognition and honor. I didn’t understand at the time that what happened that day had nothing to do with the thing I’d done and everything to do with her love for me.

I spent so many years of my life looking for ways to be worthy of God’s favor. I strived to do the most holy, grace-filled things I could and hoped, beyond hope, that God would catch a glimpse of me doing some act of compassion or overhear me speaking words of kindness and take boast in me. The more I lived, the more hope gave way to despair. How could I, with a life messy with failed endeavors and misspoken words do anything to impress the One I adored? How could I catch Gods’ attention and move His heart? When my hope was lost, grace found me, freeing me to finally see how God delights in the most flawed words and humble deeds of His creation. God’s favor and acceptance is already ours, for this one reason, because of God’s love and God’s love alone.

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Posted in Storytelling