Every December I make a batch of ginger cookies (with fresh ginger and candied ginger) in honor of my grandfather, who adored ginger snaps (the crunchy ones in a box, circa 1965).
He came home for lunch every workday from the family sawmill. Standing in the mud room, he dusted the sawdust off his fedora and hung it on a peg, pulled off his overalls and made his way to the carpeted living room to turn on the noontime TV news for the livestock report with Vern Sheppard at KOTA TV.
My grandmother, an artist and potter, would leave her kilns and jars of glaze to cook and eventually called him for lunch in the kitchen. She on one side of the small table, he on the other and me at the end. The smell of sawdust and diesel and a hot oven would be overpowered at the end of the meal by cups of boiling hot coffee and stacks of gingersnaps.
He always prepared my cup -- half whole milk and half coffee and a spoon of sugar. And if I agreed to kiss his rough cheek (which I always did), I got my own gingersnaps, stacked carefully on a paper napkin. And with his nod, we'd cheerfully crunch and dunk and sip and smile.
Coffee and ginger cookies still taste like love to me.
I love ginger.
ReplyDeleteGina Fiedel So do I!!!
ReplyDeleteWay fab!
ReplyDeleteEvery December I make a batch of ginger cookies (with fresh ginger and candied ginger) in honor of my grandfather, who adored ginger snaps (the crunchy ones in a box, circa 1965).
He came home for lunch every workday from the family sawmill. Standing in the mud room, he dusted the sawdust off his fedora and hung it on a peg, pulled off his overalls and made his way to the carpeted living room to turn on the noontime TV news for the livestock report with Vern Sheppard at KOTA TV.
My grandmother, an artist and potter, would leave her kilns and jars of glaze to cook and eventually called him for lunch in the kitchen. She on one side of the small table, he on the other and me at the end. The smell of sawdust and diesel and a hot oven would be overpowered at the end of the meal by cups of boiling hot coffee and stacks of gingersnaps.
He always prepared my cup -- half whole milk and half coffee and a spoon of sugar. And if I agreed to kiss his rough cheek (which I always did), I got my own gingersnaps, stacked carefully on a paper napkin. And with his nod, we'd cheerfully crunch and dunk and sip and smile.
Coffee and ginger cookies still taste like love to me.
What a marvelous story, Adel Brown. It sounds idyllic and gingerly magical.
ReplyDeleteAdel Brown A lovely story. Gingersnaps remind me of my mother in the kitchen but nothing as precise and delightful as your story.
ReplyDelete