All great stories start with, “Once upon a time...”, and that is where I believe I will start us off.
Once upon a time there was an amazing woman who I called Grandma Suzie. Later, my boys came to know her as Great Baer. This grandmother was everything a grandmother was supposed to be: patient, kind, beautiful inside and out, and an amazing cook. When I was little I would have to say my most treasured times were sitting in her bright kitchen, with its olive green stove (this was the 80s)on a huge green step stool. I would sit there for hours watching and helping her cook.This went on until I was an adult. As an adult I would call her, freaking out because my frosting or gravy clumped, a casserole came out watery, or cookies came out too flat. She would calmly walk me through how to fix or “band aid” the things that went wrong. As she got older, I think one of her favorite times was our weekly, or more often daily, chats about adventures with my boys; but she also wanted to know what was cooking for dinner.
Years later, when grandma Suzie passed away, I was asked if there was anything of hers that I would like to have. Two things came immediately to mind; a magnet collection that had hung on her refrigerator, and her recipes and cookbooks. There were boxes of them.
Going through these boxes for the first time was amazing. It was like finding a treasure
My mom and I packed them up in boxes and shipped them to my home, where they sit in my closet