A mentor and dear friend responded in an interesting way to an email exchange we had about food. (We often exchange emails about food.) I had written him about my love for rice and raisins as a breakfast dish. It has stuck with him, with mentions of that dish several times over the past couple of months.
Cooking has been my primary hobby for decades. I’m interested in the history, science, production and techniques of cooking good food for people. I’ve had the good fortune to also grow up in a family with amazing cooks, including my paternal grandmother, Marie (Shrum) Montgomery Gwartney. I have a young-adult child who has incorporated the love of feeding people good food into her college life.
I’ve not been attentive to a regular writing habit, outside of work, for a while, including this blog. Here is the latest effort to get back at it. My friend, Robert K. Yeager, Jr., has inspired me to write a book tentatively titled Granny’s Kitchen. I’m going to use posts here as a kind of scratchpad/outline for this book.
Its structure is undetermined at this posting, but my sense is it will learn toward memoir with recipes and cooking thoughts. The memories and food won’t be only mine or my granny’s. I hope (with the help of cousins) to also include the other wonderful cooks in the family and their memories and recipes.
I don’t think anyone would describe the food I grew up with as “fancy.” It was, however, always tasty and created from often humble ingredients. Only as an adult did I realize one of the reasons Granny (most often known as Grannyrie) made rice and raisins is that she received this food as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “commodity” program.
Her home was the only place I would get rice and raisins. It’s a wonderful breakfast dish. Granny always added sugar to hers. I liked it just the way it came to the table. It remains a morning meal treat for me.
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