THANK YOU, SOUFFLE BOMBAY!! (I never win anything!)

The other night, I was reading through some blogs I enjoy, and, to my surprise, Souffle Bombay was having a contest that was about to end. The topic was a childhood cooking or kitchen memory, and the prize was a Kitchen Aid manual chopper. My memory was easy--albeit, perhaps, a bit verbose--because it is one of those wonderful memories that follows me so many places. I think about this one when I'm making salad or playing in the garden, when I'm in the market, buying tomatoes, or watching a child and grandparent interact.

Oh, and Souffle Bombay gave two of these adorable little red babies away, and I won one of them! Here is what I wrote:


One of my most vivid, and probably one of my earliest, memories of “helping” in the kitchen was making salad with my grandmother. She and my grandfather had been farmers in Oklahoma most of their lives but, by the time I was born, they had retired. They had kept a huge family garden on their farm, the garden my grandmother tended was an about an acre big. The garden produced enough food for the family of 10, with surplus to give to “those who didn’t have,” as my grandmother would say. Once they left the farm and moved into town, they could have only a small garden. That garden took up the entire back yard.

I remember my grandmother saying, “Let’s go make a salad, honey,” as she handed me a smaller version of the big ceramic bowl she took. Clutching my heavy bowl close to my body, I would follow her out to the back yard and the beautiful, clean garden that held our supper salad. We would pick lettuce and cucumbers and peppers and beans, but my favorite part came at the end when we picked the bright red cherry tomatoes she favored. We would pick one, pop one in our mouths. Pick one, pop one in our mouths. Pick one….

To this day, a hundred years later, I can still taste the sweet, cool burst of heaven in my mouth and see my grandmother’s face, her eyes closed, a smile gracing her beautiful face as she bit down on a wonderfully plump, tiny tomato.

I’m sure we went into the house and actually prepared the salad, but for me, “making a salad” still is picking the ingredients, carefully, lovingly and always with my grandmother standing close by, even if only in my memories.