Not All Grandma's Can Cook. Some Are Evil.

I like to go to estate sales.  I get an opportunity to root through other peoples' closets and drawers and it doesn't matter if I get caught.  The women in my family are very nosy.  Some of my earliest memories of my Grandma involve her telling me, as we were walking up the street to some ancient relative's home,  "Say you have to go to the bathroom and then go upstairs and look around.  Peek in her bedrooms.  I bet they're filthy.  And tell me how many bottles of perfume she has in the bathroom.  Who needs so much perfume?"  I would wait till we all had some pastry and tea and then announce I had to go potty, but that I could go "like a big girl by myself."  I would run upstairs and tiptoe around, trying to find something scandalous to tell my Grandma on the walk home.

Me:  She has 11 watches on her dresser!  And 17 bottles of perfume, but most of them are still in the wrapper.

My Grandma:  Disgusting.  She has no daughters! Who is she going leave it all to, anyway?  Were the beds made?

Me:  Yes, but there was laundry on the floor.

My Grandma:  I knew it.  Well, you know, she's from southern Ohio and that's practically West Virginia.

Me: So?

My Grandma:  They do things differently down there.  All I want to do is wax her chin.

Me: Why was the pastry wet?

My Grandma: She's not Polish or Slovak.  She married into the family.  And she puts the Saran wrap on the pastry before it's cool.  Don't you ever do that, do you hear me?

Me: I won't, Grandma.  I promise.  Will I get chin hairs?

My Grandma:  No, dear, your mother will teach you to pluck them.  Let's go home and Grandma will give you some real pastry.


My mom is no better.  We could be anywhere and if the hostess leaves the room, she will lean over and say:

"Hurry.  Run into the kitchen and look at the vent under the fridge.  It's caked with cat hair.  And don't eat the pastry.  Just push it around."

or at a recent wedding...

My Mom: "See that old man that looks like a vampire?  With that hotsy-totsy?  Rumor is she is a lady of the evening.

Me: No way.  Like a stripper?

My Mom: Don't be ridiculous.  She's an escort.  Very expensive.  Quick, she's cutting up his food and feeding him.  Get a picture.

Suddenly the fact that I made Winston take a picture of the Summer's Eve Man in Marc's makes sense, doesn't it?  It's in my blood. 

So I went to this estate sale recently and found what, for me, is the Holy Grail of estate sale finds.  Both a horrific piece of 70's family portraiture...

Holy Shit

and 2 handwritten recipe books. I get all flushed and sweaty when I see handwritten, abandoned recipe books.  It is very hard for me to negotiate with the person running the sale, because I want to throw money at them.  I managed to hold it together this time, however, and got them both for 25 cents.  I should have known something was up.  The daughter of the woman who died was running the register and a bell should have gone off when she let her mother's recipes go that cheap.

When my Grandma died there was a full scale war, over not only the boxes of handwritten recipes, but also over her bowls and Tupperware.  We are all convinced to this day that there was a Holy Polish Blessing placed upon her Corningware that caused yeast to bubble joyously and create the lightest, sweetest pastry dough.  I inherited one bowl, one enameled baking sheet and several boxes of recipes. And those were actually her mothers' things, my Babo Suzie.  We take pastry and family bake wear very seriously  in my family.  One of the in-laws, an aunt of mine, actually suggested that my mom and her sister donate the Tupperware to Catholic charities or have a garage sale.  I fully expected my mom to roundhouse kick her and then rip her throat out, like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse.  It got very quiet.  So quiet in fact, that I do not think they have spoken since.

Winston refuses to handle the Babo Suzie Bowl, as it is known.  He says he doesn't want that karma if he accidentally broke it.  I told him not to worry about the karma, because I would stab the shit out of him if he broke it.

I just didn't look closely enough.  All I saw was yellowed paper and old-fashioned handwriting in old steno books, then I broke out into a sweaty flush and was out the door before the quarter hit the old lady's daughters hand.  She was probably laughing her ass off.

I saved them for a quiet moment, so I could really savor what I hoped were quaint recipes.  So it was a few weeks until I noticed that these were the most fucked up recipes that have ever been compiled.  I read, with horror, one after another of the most disgusting recipes I have ever seen.

Mushroom Applesauce

Sweet Mushroom Strudel, with honey

Pineapple Marshmallow Pie

Peach Pizza, with Red Sauce

Japanese Morning Delight (I could not bring myself to read it.  I hoped it was like my Grandma's Polish Chop Suey recipe, which was basically chicken baked in mushrooms with La Choy chow mein noodles on top.  Something innocent. No. This recipe called for cinnamon and sugar, bean sprouts, garlic powder, carrot and zucchini.  WTF?)

and

Chicken Chocolate Chip Bake

I felt rising panic, as I became convinced that the stains on the pages that I would normally find
charming were, in fact, rubbing off on to me and saturating me with evil.  I found myself wishing my dear grandmother was still alive so I could show her and tell her, "Grandma dear, there are far, far worse things than putting the Saran Wrap on too soon."

As I threw away 25 cents worth of handwritten evil, I found myself thinking of the kids in the creepy painting.  Did they kill their mother after a childhood of being fed bizarre poison?  Or did the old lady finally succumb to her own recipes?  Did she finally go too far and try to create a Shrimp Strawberry Rhubarb Pie which killed her?

I wish I had bought the painting.  Now, when I look at it, I see heroes.  I see survivors.

I should have bought it.

~dana