Dr. Grandma 

Penny For Your Thoughts By: Nancy Whitaker

I was thinking back to things my Grandma used to cook and do. One thing I was thinking about tonight was her canned tomatoes. She took a can of tomatoes, added a bit of sugar and some torn up bread, and it tasted so good. Has anyone ever tried it? I think she called it ‘cream tomatoes’.

Grandma also always put macaroni in her chili. I guess that is what made it go further. When I was first married my husband told me that he never heard of macaroni in chili. I had to adjust to cooking a whole new way. 

Another thing she made was homemade mush. We would sometimes have it for breakfast with butter and syrup. Today you can buy it in a log and slice it, fry it and eat it. I still like it.

Of course grandma and grandpa lived through the Depression. And so gardening, preserving and thriftiness was just who they were.

My grandpa and grandma and Mama were all hot tea drinkers. They all drank milk or cream in their tea and also liked a little sugar in there too.  I like to set  a certain time of day for tea. Sometimes I include a cookie or a little cake. 

Times come and go, the years go on by. Before we know it a lot of our life is just  memories. One memory is something grandma had us eat when we were sick, it was hot milk toast. Easy to make and it always made you feel better.  

She made one piece of buttered toast sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar. She would warm up a pan of milk and tear up the toast and put into a bowl. Hot milk was poured over the toast. This was one of her remedies that tasted good. I made me some a few months ago.

Coming from deep in the hills of Kentucky, grandma had a remedy for everything.  

I remember she used to take me, my brother and all my cousins and line us up. Then she would put some sugar in a spoon along with some nasty tasting coal oil. Why? She thought it would ward off the flu and whooping cough. It tasted real bad and we all cried when we had to swallow it. We would say, “You go first,” cause none of us wanted to swallow it. Did it work? I don’t know, but I sure have not tried it again. 

One time we were visiting some friends’ house and they had a little dog. I was playing with the little snappy dog and it bit my nose. It really hurt and I was crying, but, granny said she would take care of it when we got home!

Did she ever!! She always used that red stuff in a bottle called merthiolate. That night she painted my nose where the dog bit me. I did not think about it until I got to school the next day and all the kids started laughing at me! 

Then they started singing “Rudolph the Red  Nosed  Reindeer”. I was so embarrassed that I cried and tried covering up my poor nose with a tissue. When I got home from school I ran in the house and told Grandma and mom that the kids at school had made fun of my nose colored red. In fact they had called me ‘Rudolph.’ 

Well, no matter how hard they rubbed or what they washed it with that stuff would not come off my nose. I wound up putting a bandaid on it to at least cover it up.

Eventually the merthiolate rubbed off and my red nose returned to normal. I am so glad I never painted my kids’ nose red. 

Today, looking back at different things, I laugh and I actually wish I could: eat creamed tomatoes, eat some chili with macaroni, eat some of granny’s hot milk toast, take a dose of oil, get my nose painted red and oh yes, get me a spot of tea!

If any readers have heard of or have done any of these things, let me know and I’ll give you a Penny For Your Thoughts.