Grandma Gailey Made-Do

Grandma Edna Puckett Gailey
with two of her six grandchildren
Linda Kay Stone and Judy Richards

As kids we used to always go to "Seven Mile Park" for picnics. I remember when I was just a little girl the entire family would pack up in the car and drive the few miles south of town for a picnic and an Easter egg hunt. It was a beautiful place-full of rocks to climb and places to hide. There was a view to die for. I remember when I came back home after being married and living away in other states I was disappointed that the view that we had enjoyed was marred by taller trees and bushes, obscuring the wonderful Texas rolling hills that are so beautiful. I thought the least the Texas Department of Highways could do was to preserve that view! Guess I was wrong. You still can't see for miles like you could when I was a child.

Grandma used to pack up boxes with fried chicken, deviled eggs, potato salad, cakes and cupcakes. I don't remember what the picnic basket looked like, but I imagine it was a cardboard box, not a fancy whicker basket.

She made wonderful potato salad and I make it the same way-with pickle relish, celery, onions, pimento, boiled eggs, mayonnaise and mustard mixed into potatoes that have been creamed with milk and butter. Yum!

I hope I expressed to Grandma my gratitude for the food she always prepared for us as kids. She always had something good to eat when we came home from school and on the weekends. She didn't have a lot of money - but neither did a lot of people back in the early 50s. I remember many times when she would send me up to the corner store to buy 1 onion, or a can of tomatoes so she could make her wonderful vegetable soup. She didn't use meat. The soup was a make-do meal that she served with fantastic cornbread. (I still can't make that cornbread like she did.)

Anyway, I was remembering Grandma this morning and how she "made-do" and how we as Americans are learning a little more about that in this particular time in history.

Show your gratitude. Tell your parents and grandparents thank you! I wish I had done that more often.

Julie Elizabeth Martin - Oct 7, 1956 - Aug 23, 2008

She was so generous. I want to tell you about a gift she gave me last Christmas. One day during the holiday season the UPS truck pulled up to my house and left a fairly heavy box on my doorstep. It had a return address from Amazon.com and since Bob has occasionally ordered books from them I thought he had ordered something for Christmas. Then when I opened the box it further confused me because it was a Paula Deen appointment calendar and a dozen cans of Bing Cherries! I couldn’t imagine Bob ordering something like that. Later that day Julie contacted me asking if I had gotten her package! We had been having an on-going conversation about Coca-Cola and Cranberry Salad which is Bob’s favorite Christmas dish and I had casually mentioned that I didn’t make it very often any more because I had such a hard time finding the cherries.

She was a wonderful, sweet, interesting cousin and I'll miss our emails and conversations about food, family and our search for family links that will continue to bind us even in her absence.

Eat with Sincerity and Gratitude

I found the most uplifting and interesting blog tonight. "This Ignatian Life | www.ignatianlife.org" came to my mailbox from a Google Alert on Food Gratitude and I'm so glad I decided to check it out. So often I glance at the list and delete without taking a few minutes to read further.

The last post entitled "Eating Like Ignatius?" was posted July 1 and the picture of the beautiful, plump blueberries drew me in so I just had to read it. Please go to their blog and read this well written piece on how food is such an important component of our spiritual well-being. The writer encourages us to increase our mindfulness about food. A couple of ways he suggests we do that is to "participate in your food production," "prepare your own food," and "learn about the best farming and gardening practices."

The writer ends the post by saying, "But probably the most important way to begin to cultivate mindfulness is to eat with sincerity and gratitude, 'conscious of the lives and the world from which food comes.' "