Tell Me A Story: BALANCED

Mary Marcia Norwood
America's STORYTELLER
Telling Untold Stories in Photographs, Prose and Public Speaking

Click on each photograph to enlarge.

BALANCED

     My mother didn't have the patience to teach me to cook.  I stewed and she came to a boil every time we were in the kitchen together.

     I learned to cook from my mother's mother, Granny Lucille.

     She's the kind of woman who could "bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan."

Song: Peggy Lee

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Song In Retro Ad

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Everybody called her Granny.

Granny didn't use measuring spoons or cups or cookbooks. She cooked with her senses: touching, tasting, sniffing and examining each dish she created.

A pinch of this....and a fist of that.

She let me create, too. I never failed because she never measured me.

"A balanced meal? It's easy. Just be sure each plate has food with at least three colors on it," Granny said.

Halls China/Jewel Tea

She filled Hall's China/Jewel Tea, nine-inch dinner plate with burgundy beets, ivory mashed potatoes topped with soft yellow butter; and green beans glazed with white onions and brown sugar. In the center of it all was a black pepper-steak topped with tomato-red sauce, sprinkled with green chopped chives. Inside the three-inch Autumn Leaf patterned fruit dish - a golden pear (sliced in half) rested on a leaf of iceberg lettuce.

    "Cooking is more than preparation. It's presentation, too."

   Granny used cloth napkins and cloth tablecloths that she carefully starched and ironed.

   Of course she wore an apron, and had aprons for each woman who served with her.

     Her beautiful handmade aprons were embellished with embroidery and crochet, or tatted. "Tatted" doesn't mean what Generation C or E might think. Tatt isn't a tattoo.

TATTING

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The Greatest Generation, to GEN X, Gen C or E

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Granny owned and operated the Highway Barbeque in Liberty, Missouri. Although her restaurant was fully staffed, Granny Lucille hired me and five of my girlfriends the summer of 1965. I was sixteen. Granny Lucille was 60.

My girlfriends and I took turns cooking, doing dishes, serving food, busing tables, making change and cleaning the floor to earn money for cheerleading camp.

Granny was surprised – but never complained when we painted our Liberty BlueJay mascot on her neatly pressed and starched, white, linen tablecloths.

Prom night the following spring, the cheerleaders and I instructed our dates to pick us up at Granny's three-story house at 222 West Franklin in Liberty.

Granny made hors d'oeuvres (appetizers) for our boyfriends to munch on. We descended her grand staircase - one at a time - in our prom gowns.

Granny was just as comfortable hosting our group of teenagers -- as she was hosting members of the Liberty Chamber of Commerce, or the Methodist Women's Group.

Granny Lucille lived a balanced Christian life.

It was much more than preparation inside the church. It was the presentation of her life to Christ, and her loving service to others...no matter what their age, color or social status.