History Lesson

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
--George Santayana

I love living in town with most of my family. True, there are times when it's not all sunshine and rainbows, but that is far outweighed by how much I love sharing my life with my family.

For almost 10 years now, my mom, sister and I (and our kids, as they've arrived) have met at my grandma's once a week for lunch. We call it "grandma day." I love grandma days. I love talking to everyone and hearing about their week, catching up on each others lives and hearing everyone's stories. Love the stories. I love having the women in my family to laugh and vent and help figure out life with.

My grandma has some of the best stories. She grew up in rural Minnesota in a time very different from my life and I just love hearing about her life. This is a story she told me not too long ago, and boy, am I glad she told me!

One of my grandma's sisters was in charge of making bread for their family. One morning, after mixing the bread and setting it aside to rise she had to leave and left my grandma in charge of finshing making the bread.

"All you have to do is wait until the bread rises to the top of the bowl. Then punch it down, shape it into loaves and put it in the oven."

Simple, right?

Well, my grandma was BUSY, you see. She was in the middle of something JUST as important as bread for the family. Her job couldn't be abandoned merely for bread!

She was elbow deep in making MUDPIES! And she forgot all about the bread.

When she remembered and ran inside to finish her sister's loaves, the bread had risen over the top of the bowl, down the side and onto the counter. Ahhh! That wasn't supposed to happen!

Since she wasn't she wasn't the usual breadmaker, my grandma wasn't exactly sure what to do. Her sister said the bread would only rise to the top of the bowl. Now what would she do??

What would YOU do?

My grandma's a smart and creative lady. Apparently, she leaned more toward the "creative" side as a child.

She cut off the extra dough and buried it outside.

The rest of the dough was shaped into loaves...only they were a bit smaller than usual. No one knows why...

75 years later, in my kitchen last week



THANK GOODNESS for my grandma's story or I might have buried all that perfectly good dough out in my backyard.