Yorkshire Pudding and Toast

Kate, 

Your Yorkshire puddings look wonderful.  So tall! Maybe it’s the newfangled Yorkshire pudding molds that you use.  I’ve always wanted to try them.  I still make my Yorkshires in large muffin tins.  That is the way my mom made them and Grandma Huntriss too.  Though every once in a while mom would make one great big Yorkshire in a pie plate and serve it in wedges.  Christmas dinner is coming, probably won’t make any until then, but my taste buds are getting ready!

Funny you should mention the smell of toast at Grandma H’s house.  Yesterday Udon made some toast. Udon is the nickname of my youngest daughter, she loves to eat anything pasta-like.  At the time we gave her this nickname she was studying Japanese, thus we call her Udon (Japanese for noodle).  Pooh is my middle daughter, more on her later.  Anyway, I didn’t know Udon was in the kitchen.  When I opened the door from my room the smell of toast wafted down the hall and I was taken back to Grandma’s house. 

It was the same every summer that I visited Grandma. I would get up sometime after all the adults.  I would slide down those very steep stairs with the green carpet my untied bathrobe trailing behind me, hoping I would stop before I reached the bottom stair and my feet hit the closed door.  Then I would slowly open the door into the white-floored hallway.  As I opened the door I would smell the toast; always burned – or maybe it was the crumbs in the toaster that were burned but it was that smell.  I would sneak over the closed kitchen door (there are lots of doors in that house) and see if I could open the door and enter the kitchen before any of the adults noticed me.  Of course I never succeeded.  My mom had ears like a hawk and she was waiting for me.  There they were sitting at the table in the kitchen nook, Grandma and Grandpa H, Mom, and Dad.  The morning paper would be spread around the table, different sections for each person.   Coffee cups and empty plates were scattered among the leaves of news.  I know that there was marmalade and creamed honey but I don’t remember much more.

This scene repeated itself year after year and even into my college days except at some point I stopped sliding down the stairs and trying to sneak into the kitchen.  It is fun to know that you smelled the same smells at Grandma H’s that I grew up with!

There was one other very specific time I remember that smell.  It was after I gave birth to Udon at Swedish-Ballard Hospital.  It was mid morning.  The smell of Grandma’s kitchen came wafting into my room.  Such a pleasant feeling rushed over me and suddenly I was hungry for toast.  At Ballard-Swedish toast is always available in the maternity ward and within a few minutes I had toast in front of me and my youngest daughter in my arms.  The world was right.

With all the emphasis we put on food these days I sometimes wonder...have we have lost the taste for the simple foods and all they can bring?
Love,
Mom