My Hotdish Hotline

Last night I made dinner and it sucked. It looked good, smelled delicious and tasted awful. I dished it up and we dug in. My husband, bless his heart, (okay a Southern term that I totally adore - it can be so sweet or so, so backhanded) chewed his first bite very slowly as he peeked at me out of the corner of his eye. Letting him off the hook was easy considering I nearly spit mine out like a picky 9-year-old. Plus, he still did the dishes.

Today, I called my Grandma to dissect the mistake and pick up something to turn it all around tonight. She wasn't there, probably walking the Boca Raton beaches or scouring the farmers market for some rare heirloom lettuce. Grams is a snowbird, summers in Minneapolis and at their Northern Minnesota cabin and winters in Florida. I don't live in any of those three places so we spend a lot of our quality time on the telephone. And most of that time we're dishin' on dinner. I scribble down recipes she rattles off, or recount an amazing meal I have had at a favorite restaurant, and every once and a while, I give her something to try. I know grandmas and food go together like grandmas and food, but my Grams is different; she's not just calling me too skinny and feeding me meatloaf, she's like my own personal Food Network.

Grams is an amazing cook, and despite our Minnesota roots, to call our conversations the hotline hotdish is a misnomer. You Betcha. We're more likely talking about how she encrusted something in wasabi or wrested the world famous coconut shrimp recipe from some haunt in Palm Beach. I have learned from watching her (last night's mishap notwithstanding) and I remember her always with food. But she's not confined to her kitchen in an apron - unless it's just too darling - she's out living food, a renaissance foodie. To Grams, food is at the very core of how people love people. I saw her over Christmas up in Minneapolis and we got together to cook a Christmas Eve meal, I offered up linguine with clams and chorizo. She was my sous chef, finely chopping garlic (my husband noted that she could perform open heart surgery on a housefly) slicing bread and dicing  onion. When I served that dish to the table I thought Grams was going to explode with joy.

I miss her, being near her, all the time. Being far from my family, my heart, is hard. But when I call her (talk to my Grandpa for 45 seconds before she tears the phone from him) and we launch into what we've cooked and eaten since we last talked, it's almost as good as standing over the kitchen counter. And although we start and finish with hootenany pancakes and pork carnitas, the chow always moves us into conversations about everything else. If she needs to talk about her meanspirited cousin from New Jersey, we arrive at her latest offense by going course by course through what my Grams made when she came for dinner. And when I ask her about what she made for lunch? I find out that she's been cooking at the local soup kitchen for the past few months, or gone to the Olive Garden with her church friends. Grams is an 80-year-old rockstar with a refined palate that only takes a back seat to her generous spirit.

I'm hungry just thinking of talking to her. I'll catch her tomorrow, after she's whipped up lunch and while she's planning dinner.