Jeri's post about visiting her grandparents regularly when she was growing up reminded me of the meals we had at my grandmother's house.



They lived 30 miles from town on a dirt road so bad it took 2 hours to drive one way. They owned a trading post and raised a lot of their own food, so they didn't have to go to town very often.

They canned fruit from their orchards and vegetables they'd grown, stored them in a small root cellar dug out under the back porch. There was a big walk-in cooler where sides of beef and mutton were hung to age, and chickens out in the yard. Once Grandma had decided what kind of meat to cook for supper, she'd have my grandad use a meat saw to slice some chops or whatever off some primal cut. She always cooked an extra chop or fried fish or whatever 'for the pan' so there'd be sure to be enough, and in case someone unexpected dropped in at meal time.

Her homemade bread baked up into large, soft loaves that she sliced fairly thick, and the slices were piled 8 inches tall on the plate. When they had a milk cow, she churned her own butter. My two uncles lived with my grandparents, and later my great aunt moved there, and add our family, so we would have nine of us around the chrome dinette set table for meals.

They always had iced tea because it was very hot in southwestern Colorado desert - a big pitcher of it with a 2 cup block of ice floating in it. And whatever fresh garden produce was available, we had some every meal: corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, watermelon, twice a day.

I don't remember desserts so much, aside from their home-canned peaches in syrup. One time every visit someone would make raised doughnuts because that was a family tradition. The kitchen table would be covered with yeast dough cut into doughnuts arranged on dish towels and covered with dish towels while they rose.


They lived in the back of this trading post, built in 1924, both died in the 1980s.