“Grandma’s Kitchen”

🧑‍🍳 🥘

Grandma’s kitchen had a low three metre long breakfast counter

that I hated to sit beneath.

That’s the problem - I think family must have sat ON it

far too much, that over time,

on an angle it leaned making it

difficult to eat cereal as a kid,

and it was surely uncomfortable too.

so mostly we just ate breakfast on the couch

in the lounge room,

with the giant cow skin mat on the floor

(which always creeped me out a tad).

🍲🥣

One day all the family were over for dinner

and grandma was making a beef goulash,

in a giant pot in her kitchen, that we were to

shortly have for dinner.

She must have asked Oppa (my grandad) to take if off the stove,

he didn’t cook and must have grabbed the hot handles of the giant pot

with his bare hands! (not a good move).

He didn’t get to the bench in time and dropped the pot

while its entire contents of goulash smothered the kitchen floor.

For around half an hour this action was the talk of the night

amongst the other family members!

Whilst grandma, exhausted from cooking, sat down at the kitchen bench

with this sly grin on her face.. due to an absurd situation?

Or, maybe, she somehow sabotaged the incident and

wanted to see him in pain?..

Regardless, Oppa sat down too in shock and almost teary-eyed.

Maybe that’s the evil glee grandma had out of it..

seeing him so down & remorseful -

the background to their dynamics is a story for another day.

🍰 🍬🫙

When mum and I would go to stay,

we would often help grandma in the kitchen,

I would always enjoy helping making cakes,

using the mixer & measuring everything out

with one of those old school weighs,

I even remember her teaching me how to ‘fold’ a mixture with a spatula.

Mum would also help her make krapfen

(little German donuts filled with jam)

strudels & an Austrian recipe called topfenknodel which

are small pastry parcels that can be filled with apricot or cream cheese,

then boiled and fried with breadcrumbs -

A favourite of both my mum and uncle.

Her many cupboards were also filled with cooking appliances

and Bundt style cake tins; I use to love it when she’d pour

melted chocolate over a cooled Bundt cake,

as it oozed down the sides & later set.

Numerous jars and containers were also filled

with dried fruit - currants being my favourite,

I use to sit on the floor, open the cupboard

and stuff my face with currants,

usually I did this in secret; not that grandma

would have cared in retrospect,

in fact, about a year before she passed (a few years ago now)

I, for some reason, told her I stole the currants from the jar

(maybe I had to purge my soul 😆) & she said I was welcome to them! ☺️😄

Underneath the drawer with the baking paper in it,

she also kept a secret tin..

you know where you pull the drawer out and

at the back underneath there is sometimes

a little secret place to fit a small item.

I don’t know exactly what was in the tin,

but as a child this really captured my imagination,

..maybe a passport, documents..,

mum thought it was just some necklaces and jewellery,

Or who knows, maybe it was cash if she ever had to make a run for it!

And of course there was THE top drawer in the corner,

which was OUR drawer, for me and my two cousins,

for when we’d come to to visit,

it might have pocket money in it,

chocolate bars or bags of lollies.

I really liked that drawer. 😅

And we would furiously check it when we’d arrive.

I remember when I was a young teenager, I’d still check that damn drawer,

but by then there was not usually much in it.

I loved the excitement of that drawer and that it was for us! ☺️

You know those places you dream about and

frequently return to in your dreams..

some of these are unnameable places..

ones that might not even exist in the real world ..

but there was one reoccurring dream of being in grandma’s kitchen,

even into young adulthood!

Time & time again,

I’d be opening cupboards,

wondering what was in that secret tin of grandma’s,

checking our sweets’ drawer &

sitting on the kitchen floor -

eating currants out of the jar.

*

- Thanks for reading. If you liked it, consider hitting the heart, commenting or subscribing for more to encourage my future poems, short stories and reviews. Many thanks

- Oops, I am always breaking the rules - forgot it was supposed to be one memory. Here’s Mother Combs’ prompt below from “Vocal * Voices in Minor”.

Writing Prompt:

Grandma’s Kitchen: Focus on a single memory, or describe what you might imagine the typical grandmother’s kitchen to be like. You can choose the type of story you want to write: fiction, nonfiction, poetry.

Here’s Mother Combs’ and Cathy’s pieces of work you can check out: