It aint home

Utah rain. It is not like the rain at home. Only a few drops at a time and never for longer than 10 minutes. If you stand in it you don't even get wet. Just takes all the fun out of rain.

It's like Utah food. Technically, it's food. But it's fundamentally so different from what food is at home. Here it's what you eat to keep you alive, to fill a nutritional need. Food at home is a way of life, something that fills your belly and nourishes your soul. Our meals are meant to be shared. Every recipe that is handed down carries with it a history.

My treasury of reciepes is an ever growing collection. I felt like an adult when my Gran started giving me some of hers. My Mawmaw's were harder to come by. You had to stand next to her and just watch. She cooked by feel and smell. Flour was not measured in cups or teaspoons, but by handfulls and pinches.

I can still smell her kitchen and see her warm smile. Cooking for a southern woman is an intimate experience to share with those you love. Eating together and sharing stories is what binds families. I love sitting around so full that I have to unbutton my pants and listening to my family's unwritten history.

Now I have put my in-laws recipes into my cherrished book. This makes them my family too. My mother in law has stood in my kitchen and taught me how to make spagehti sauce that could never come from a jar. I sit with my new family and learn their history, because it's now mine and my son's.

I wish we were closer to home. I would love to have all of my family, both old and new, sit together. But since we are too far for a weekly meal we enjoy every meals together when we are at home. Is it any surprise that I gain 10 lbs every time we visit? It would be impossible not to. I have to have dinner at everyone's house. I have to sit and play cards, while eating endless amounts of dip and laughing at stories I have heard over and over at almost every card game my family has ever had.

My grandmother hated going out to eat. We thought we would let her take it easy by taking her out to eat. We could never find a place that she liked. She always said why go out to eat when the foods better here at home? I thought she was crazy. Now I realize how perfectly sane she was. Why go out and eat something that's so-so when wonderful is right in front of you? It could be a bowl of hot vegetable soup on a chilly afternoon. But it wasn't just the soup, it was the company that gave it that extra something that will never be found in even the finest restaraunt.

When Mawmaw died we had to go through her things. What was the most treasured item? Not jewelry, not antiques. It was her worn out big pot. It was so saught after, that my Aunt and I had to agree to split custody. She has it now and if we ever move back I get it then. What is so great about this pot? It made hundreds of meals that we all enjoyed together as a family. Every Christmas it held her perfect cornbread dressing. At church when we had dinner on the grounds everyone knew that pot and made a bee line for it. It didn't matter what was in it, it was always the best. Mawmaw was simple in her genius. She knew that her cooking would draw us all in and weave us together in one of the toughest family tapestries. We are woven together. Now my thread is headed in a different direction but I can always follow it back to it's begining.