Best I Ever Ate

My sisters and I lived with our grandparents off and on throughout our childhood. During World War 2 we lived with them several consecutive years. We ate a lot of meals around that old round table with a center pedestal. At the foot of the pedestal, under the table, big lions’ paws reached for the feet of the diners. We at a lot of biscuits and corn bread, turnip greens and collard greens, navy beans and pinto beans, and occasionally pork chops, ham, steak or chicken. My grandfather always had pepper sauce on the table, which he enjoyed with many different foods, mainly greens. For breakfast there was oatmeal and for supper there were leftovers, because my grandmother always draped a tablecloth over the food when lunch was over. At suppertime the tablecloth was removed and presto, there was supper.
During and after the meal, my grandfather bragged on the food and complimented the cook. Every meal, without fail, he made my grandmother feel like everyone appreciated her hard work in putting a meal on the table.
Every once in a while, she would bake “tea cakes.” They were giant, thick cookies that tasted like pie crust, slightly sweet. We loved them with coffee, and they always let me drink coffee (mostly milk). Hey, I’m 80 years old–it can’t have done much harm. I’m still here, and still drinking my coffee. These days, however, I put Hazelnut creamer in it. Call me a sissy, if you will, but I like it. It’s worth getting up each day just to have that first cup of coffee.
When I went away to college, my grandmother would bake tea cakes for me, and my grandfather would box them up and mail them to me. He wrote me a card every day that I was in college.
He offered little suggestions along the way, like “Don’t slam the door,” and “Always say, “Yes Sir” and “Yes Ma’am.” He told me several times as I got older and nearer marriage, “Son , it’s always the best meal you ever ate.” I didn’t have any trouble remembering that, because Wanda always put a tasty meal on the table. But I never forgot what he advised me to say. I didn’t need this verse, shared with me this week, from an old cookbook:
“And no doubt, Eve was glad because
Her hubby could not say,
Her cakes were not like Mother made
Back in his youthful days”