The Grammy Game

Every family has inside jokes, stories and strategies for handling the things life throws at you. My family is all from Maine so it’s not surprising that the stories and strategies often involve thrift and ingenuity. The wisdom has been handed down as a sort of verbal inheritance and it pays dividends, often when you wouldn’t expect it.

My maternal grandmother was one of those women, so often found in northern New England, who could make a nickel, or a loaf of bread or a box of laundry soap stretch in ways that can only be described as Biblical. Every single time I think a jar of mayonaise isn’t worth tackling with a rubber scrapper I can hear her clearing her throat in my ear. I dutifully poke round the inside of it and come up with enough for my grandmother to have made a dozen deviled eggs.

My sister and I each live in rural communities where a trip to the grocer will involve half an hour travel each way. By the time you’ve scraped the car and run back into the house for your reuseable grocery bags the event turns into a morning-long affair. On a rainy day or a snowy one, the idea of heading out to the shops is more than either of us is up to facing. So years ago we came up with something we call The Grammy Game.

It started with one of us phoning the other and then the conversation went something like this:

“It’s raining and I have to go to the grocer. We have no food in the house and there are three guest children here for dinner.”

“Don’t do that to yourself! There has to be something you could make.”

“Nothing that I could pass off  as a meal.”

“I bet if you were Grammy you could think of a week’s worth of meals out of what you already have. What’s in the cupboard?.

“A bag of rice flour, two sweet potatoes and a can of black beans.”

“How about eggs? Do you have eggs?”

“One egg.”

“Any vegetables at all?”

“A daikon radish, three carrots and half an onion.”

“What’s in your freezer?”

“A quarter of a bag of kale and half a bag of corn. Oh, and package of whole wheat hamburger buns.”

“You’re all set. Sweet potato, black bean burgers. Cook them, puree them and bind it all together with the rice flour and the egg.  Add the kale and corn to the mix to liven things up. Serve them on the buns with a side of daikon and carrot slaw.”

“That would work except that I’m almost out of mayo.”

“Do you have a rubber scraper?”

Readers, do you have a quirky inheritance from your elders?