23 December 2012

Do have you a favorite Christmas memory?

My favorite Christmas memory- when I was 12, my grandfather told me he was too ill to cook and that I had to make dinner that Christmas. So he sat on the stool I always sat on as a child, and he observed as I made the Turkey and dressing, boiled the potatoes for the potato salad, made the spaghetti, cleaned and cooked the chittlin's, made the candied yams, fried the chicken, made the sweet potato pies, baked macaroni & cheese, baked a coconut pineapple cake (my first), made cornbread, made collard greens ( along the way he told me what to do and what not to do), fried some okra etc,. and when company arrived and my mom and sister set the table, he suddenly wasn't ill anymore, and everyone enjoyed everything. I doubted my ability but he was my biggest cheerleader. He told me I had sat on that same stool watching him cook since I was 3. He passed away about 15 yrs ago, but I still feel a closeness to him whenever I'm cooking or baking. He was always cooking for big groups of people. After he retired he even cooked for a homeless shelter as if it was a fulltime job, but he did it for free.

Do have you a favorite Christmas memory?

Merry Christmas, by the way!
Posted by Daij at 10:08 PM
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2 comments:

Reggie said...

Man your grandfather shouldn't have made you cook those shittlin's.

Nah man, that's an awesome story!!!

Whenever I think of Christmas's past, I guess we all think of when we're ten or twelve years old. That's when we were our happiest I suppose. Not a care in the world. I can't think of any particular Christmas though. At this stage, they were all a blur.

Tomorrow I will go out to a homeless shelter and feed the homeless on Christmas Day. I look forward to that. I know when it's over, I will feel absolutely fantastic.....like I always do when I feed the homeless.

I do that once a month on the last Tuesday of the month. It just so happens that this month, that's Christmas Day....and you can bet that I will be there with bells on.

Merry Christmas my brother!!!

December 24, 2012 at 3:24 PM
C.George said...

LOL Reggie, I still don't like cleaning them but I love eating them. A pot a chittlins was the first thing my mom went for when we would go over to my grand dad's house.

I need to do volunteer at the homeless shelter more often. I did that more often the first few years I was here in Portland. I did that alot as a kid when I'd visit my grandfather on non-holiday weekends.

December 24, 2012 at 7:31 PM

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