What Granny never realized is regardless of whatever I would eat before a meal, I still loved everything she put on the table and I don't think it was ever possible to ruin my appetite. She could cook the best fried chicken, homemade cornbread or biscuits, potatoes every way imaginable, and always corn from the garden. Even in the winter, we had vegetables from the garden that had either been frozen or canned by using mason jars and a pressure cooker. Most young children do not like sweet potatoes, but Granny could cook the best fried sweet potatoes and I think they were probably one of my favorite foods. She fried them tender with butter, sugar, and brown sugar.
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Granny's cooking was delicious to say the least, but there are many more memories in that house by the lake than just food. The house was fairly large and the floors were all hardwood. There were no halls inside so you had to walk through all of the rooms to get from one room to the other. There was a living room, kitchen, one bathroom, and three bedrooms. The living room was the biggest room and it had a fake fireplace on one wall. I never really knew why it was fake, but the heat for the house came from a pot belly stove that burned wood. It was on one end of the living room and the heat traveled throughout the other rooms in the house. Granny often cooked dried beans on top of the wood stove and we could smell the aroma in the house all day. Whenever she cooked dried beans, we always knew she would make hot cornbread. .
One of my favorite times is when Pam and I would run and slide on the hardwood floor in the living room and pretend we were skating. We also got on Granny's throw rugs and took turns pulling each other around the room like we were on a sled. Granny would tell us that we were shinning her floor and we would laugh and go faster. I remember Pam saying, "Look Ganny, me qween the floo" and she would run and slide or tell me to pull her faster on the rug.
