My Grandma on my Dad’s side was a little Polish lady named Felicia.  To my kids she was known as Grandma Saskatchewan.  She was in her 90’s when she died and she had picked peas in her garden that morning.  I spent most summers with her (before I discovered the beach) and learned so much about the celebration of food and how the kitchen is indeed the heart of the home.

She baked her own bread every week, and simmered potato soup, fashioned prune dumplings with butter and cinnamon sugar and  poppy seed roll and took all day to make fried chicken (fried in lard folks!).  Nobody worried about carbs in those days because you needed the energy to haul water from the town pump, pick stones in the field, chase the turkeys back into their pen and pick your veggies out of your garden.  She ate well and wanted everyone else to as well.  I can still hear her say to my brothers “Dougie, Tommy, eat, eat, you’re too skinny!”

I want to live and cook and feed people like my Grandma.  Those who knew her, say I look most like her and so I suppose I am well suited to the job.  I want all my meals to be “from scratch” and use everything thats in my kitchen or give it back to my garden.

She had geraniums on every single window ledge and a chair in her kitchen….not just a place to sit but a deep, luxurious chair.  It was in the corner near the big Aga stove (that she lit every morning even before she went outside to the biffy).  I would nestle there and chat away as she worked and watch her lovingly produce the most amazing food.  I have a chair in my kitchen.  It is for me when my husband gets home and tells me about his day and for puppy dogs and friends.

Caleb like to sit in my kitchen chair

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