Better Homes & Gardens USA – March 2021
English | 119 pages | pdf | 234.35 MB
Welcome at Better Homes & Gardens USA magazine March 2021 issue
When we were planning this, our annual food issue, I asked our editors what was trending for our readers. Without missing a beat, food editor Jan Miller replied, “Grandmothers.” I got it immediately. During troubled times, the word evokes memories of warmth, comfort, and a longing for simplicity—especially when so many are missing spending quality time with elderly relatives during the pandemic.
Not having my grandparents around very long as a child, I understand that longing. By my early teens, all four of them had passed. I mainly remember my paternal grandmother, Clarice, who lived with us for a while when I was around 6 or 7. I’ve written about her here before, about her famous dinner rolls and her cast-iron pan I still treasure. I carry strong memories of getting up when it was pitch-dark and walking downstairs, dragging my blanket alongside me. I knew where to fi nd her: baking in the kitchen, standing under one lone light with a plait of thick silver hair running down below her waist.
She seemed to me like a visitor from a far-off time. Born in 1892, she was in her 80s by the time I knew her. She wasn’t what I’d call a fun grandma. She was always Grandmother— reserved, poised, but with a humble gentleness that belied the fact that she had held her family together (a husband and four football-playing sons) even when they lost their North Texas farm for a few years during the Great Depression. My dad always treated her with the utmost respect and deference, and he often reminisced about her cooking. Many of the favorite dishes my mom made for us—steak fingers with cream gravy, black-eyed peas, fried okra salad, strawberry cream pie—were hand-me-down recipes written in Clarice’s hand on the back of church attendance cards or piano recital programs.
For those of you who are lucky enough to still enjoy close, long-term relationships with grandparents, this past year has likely made you treasure them even more—even if it has been difficult to see them, eat with them, or hug them. Our elders, even years after they’ve passed, are the binders that hold us all together.
It doesn’t matter if she’s a Scots-derived grandmother like mine, an abuela, a bubbe, a bibi, an oma, a nonna, or a memaw (see p. 68), grandmotherly traditions of comfort, guidance, teaching, and love come through the generations loud and clear . We hope you’ll enjoy cooking from this Better Homes & Gardens USA magazine issue full of comfort food recipes and time honored techniques. You’ll be making your grandma proud.
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