Retrieving Nanny & Gramps

We are very excited to have Nanny and Gramps visiting for Christmas. They rarely leave their Brooklyn home. Since they agreed to come a few weeks back, we have been (almost) expecting them to have a change of heart. But after a long journey, we enjoy their company for dinner and preparations for Christmas Eve dinner.
Chris was happy to drive to Brooklyn to drive them down. He left Baltimore at 5am. The drive was not particularly pleasant with the weather getting progressively worse during the day. Towards the end of the trip, it was raining so hard that visibility was no more than a few cars. Fortunately, everyone made it just fine—Chris even got several compliments from both Nanny and Gramps for being such a good driver. Go figure.

Gramps was very excited about dinner (“Hey! Escarole!”). He was slightly disappointed, however, that the “sauce was dry” and that the pasta was so long. Nanny and Gramps will typically have similar dishes almost as a soup. Still, it had “a good taste”.

After dinner, we take advantage of Nanny’s presence by double checking some of her recipes. As we have added her recipes to our cookbook, we have always done our best to capture the spirit of her recipes. As memories fade, that is not always an easy task.

A good example of that is Nanny’s traditional strufoli. Several years ago, she gave us two recipe cards along with verbal instructions. The only significant difference between the two recipes was that one called for orange and lemon zest, which we used in our recipe last year. Nanny was dismayed to see us adding zest—even after we showed her the source of the recipe. Ultimately, both Nanny and Gramps gave their approval of the strufoli, though Nanny did so grudgingly.

Despite the problems with the zest, Nanny had a good time cooking with us. Chris really impressed with his strufoli rolling technique. Robin and Nanny also did prep work for stuffed mushrooms.

While this cooking was taking place, Gramps was sleeping in front of the laptop. We had recorded Gunga Din on MythTV a while back. When we started the movie for him, he exclaimed happily, “I’m going to enjoy this!” He promptly fell asleep—just like at home.

It is so very nice to have them both here.

Send us feedback on this meal