To Grandma's House We Go

Today I want to tell you some of my favorite food memories from visiting my Grandma and Grandpa Vinkemulder's house as a child. My sister and I would visit several times a year as they were only an hour away from us.

My fondest memory comes from Christmas time. We would go over, along with my cousins Tommie and Michele to make sugar cookies. Grandma always had the cutest shaped molds. I remember the gingerbread man and the stars. After they were baked came the best part, frosting and candy. Several if not all of the cookies had more frosting then cookie to them. There were different colors of sprinkles and I liked eating those straight. Cait, my sister, loved covering her cookies with red hots. They were always too spicy for me. When we got older, gingerbread houses came into the mix. The candies that came with them always tasted stale, but I ate them anyway. Grandma did not care, even if my mother got on my case that I had too much sugar.

Another favorite experience was afternoon lunch. It is a tradition for us to make ground bologna and pickle. Yes, that means taking a ring of bologna and sending it through the meat grinder. Then you grind up the pickles the same way. My sister and I never really liked pickles so we got our share of bologna before the pickles were added. This was my grandpa's favorite, he had it growing up as a child. We would then make sandwiches. Mine would be bologna and cheese, but I remember my sister once tried cinnamon swirl bread, bologna, jello, mac and cheese, peanut butter, and sun chips etc. She said it tasted good. The most important part of the sandwiches was how they were cut. Grandma called them choo-choo train sandwiches. You cut the sandwich into lego sized pieces and then place them around the edge of the plate like a train. I always found my food more entertaining to eat this way. Her cheese also came from a block and you had to use a cheese slicer, that was so much fun.

Last but not least were my Grandma Vink's chocolate chip cookies. These are the best cookies you ever had. When we came over the cookie jar was always full and I would always try to snitch a few before lunch when my mom was not looking. I remember my first week of final exams in college when I received a special delivery. A box of 3 dozen chocolate chip cookies from my grandma. She said she took them to the post office when they were still warm to have them shipped in one day.

It is these traditions that I hope to pass along to my children and grandchildren. These wonderful memories spent around food and family.

In loving memory - Mary Vinkemulder