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As much as it is a time for celebrating actual mothers, Mother’s Day is also a festival of maternal nostalgia—of basking in the idea of motherhood—and this societally enforced sentimentally often centers on the kitchen. Folks talk about their mother’s best home-cooked meals or reminisce about their grandmother’s signature baked good. Even outside of May, “like grandma used to make” is a familiar part of the culinary lexicon, often used by restaurants, cooking publications, and individuals to signal the ideal of homemade-ness—and, thus, legitimacy. “There’s nothing like the taste of grandma’s home cooking,” reads 36 Old-Fashioned Recipes Just Like Grandma Used to Make from MarthaStewart.com. “Her food felt like a warm hug—and these old-time recipes capture that cozy, nostalgic feeling.”
All of this puts me in mind of my grandmother, Annie—not her real name, but rather the result of my being unable to pronounce granny as a child. Annie didn’t have a signature dish or secret recipes. While she definitely knew her way around the kitchen—she was a woman of a certain age and product of a certain time—the version of Annie I got when I emerged into her life in 1986 was much more inclined to purchase her treats. When it came to food and love and how she intertwined the two, she was a different kind of grandmother—and this Mother’s Day, I want to appreciate her alongside those flour-dusted grannies who tend to occupy our cultural imagination.
The foods I associate with Annie can be described as purchased, processed, and microwavable: black jelly beans, value meals from the Burger King, and Mama Lucia frozen meatballs. She’s why I’ll defend the deliciousness of Hot Pockets in 2025 (specifically, mozzarella meatball). For me, summer hasn’t begun until I’ve had vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles, which is what Annie always had on our ice cream trips together.
On the surface, Annie resembled the kind of woman who’d spend afternoons canning or perfected her apple pie recipe. She dressed in sweatshirts with kitten appliques, loved being a grandmother, and could often be found saying the rosary when you stopped by the house. But she wasn’t going to, say, make you Golden Grahams from scratch when there was a perfectly good cereal aisle. My grandfather was the cook in their house, which made sense because when I was born, he was retired, and Annie was still working as an elementary school teacher. When I was in sixth grade, the class “collaborated” on a Mother’s Day cookbook where everyone brought in a recipe from their mother or grandmother. I distinctly remember thinking that the recipe Annie contributed—I can’t for the life of me remember what it was—seemed, if not like a scam per se, like we were trying to push her into shoes that just didn’t fit.
I remember her telling me once as a kid that she “never loved cooking,” which, years later, after my grandfather died, morphed into her openly hating it. Our Christmas Eve dinners at her home through my 20s and 30s were prepackaged ham affairs purchased from the local Weis Market.
Looking back, I can see now that my very traditional grandmother actually modeled a fairly progressive approach to life through her disdain for home cooking. Whether she realized it or not, she showed me that you don’t have to do something you don’t like, even if it’s what’s expected of you. She demonstrated that with food—and this could be applied to many aspects of life—effort and ideas about quality didn’t matter as long as you were enjoying yourself. The Swedish Fish and large plates of French toast from McDonell’s (“the one without the arches,” as their jingle goes) certainly weren’t foodie-approved, but I have stronger memories of those than any fine dining experiences.
The gift of hindsight has also made me thankful for how much time I spent with my grandmother, mainly because she wasn’t holed up in the kitchen when I’d stop by to visit. “Let me make you a Hot Pocket,” she’d say. “It’ll be quick.” She’d pop one in the microwave, and two minutes later we’d sit and enjoy them in her living room while watching Jeopardy! or talking business. I’d initially followed Annie into the classroom, teaching high school English for the first five years of my working life, and I gleaned a ton of professional insights from those Hot Pocket chats.
Annie and I could get deep during those talks, discussing the state of education, the world, and of course, gossiping about other relatives—all indications of how she was more complex than she sometimes presented. That’s why one of my biggest regrets, after her passing, is not having granted her the grace to be honest about myself, to tell her I was gay, convincing myself that this traditional, uber-Catholic woman wouldn’t have accepted me, despite her never making me feel anything but loved and supported. This withholding was a misstep on my part having everything to do with my insecurities around my sexuality, and nothing to do with Annie, a woman who knew a thing or two about people forcing you into societal molds that just aren’t going to work.
So sometimes, still, when I’m reminded of Annie—when I eat Turkey Hill butter pecan ice cream or spot a Little Debbie Nutty Buddy in the aisle of the local Harris Teeter—I dream up an alternative universe where I came out to her over, what else, Hot Pockets in her living room. She’d maybe not fully understand, and maybe inquire whether I’ll still go to church—“Annie,” I’d say, “now why would this, out of all things, make me start going again?”—but she inevitably ends the conversation telling me how much she loves me. We then drive to the Tastee-Freez for two vanilla soft serves with sprinkles. I get mine in a cone. She gets hers in a cup because, in the end, her fingers weren’t made for grasping. When I leave, I tell her I’ll see her in a few days to take her grocery shopping … for more frozen dinners.
I’ve relocated from Annie and my native Pennsylvania to western North Carolina, a haven for tourism that often leans into its folksiness, where you frequently see Southern-fried versions of “what grandma used to make”—meemaw’s biscuits, grandmom’s pecan pie, granny’s home cookin’—on restaurant signs and menus. I remember the first time my brother visited, and on a drive to a hike, we passed three or four of these references in a row. I’m not sure which of us said it, but one turned to the other and just deadpanned, “Annie’s Old-Fashioned Ham and Cheese Hot Pockets.”
Now that I think about it, I guess I was a bit misleading when I said Annie didn’t have a signature dish. Hers was “cinnamon toast,” which was not really cooking but more assembling: simply toast white bread, slather it with margarine, and sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar. It’s best enjoyed with a group of cousins playing Boggle or Upwords. Let Martha Stewart have her peach-blueberry cobbler and tuna noodle casserole. As much as I’d love to say I’ll celebrate Annie this Mother’s Day by making some cinnamon toast, the truth is, I learned from the best: I’ll probably cart myself to my favorite café, treat myself to a premade breakfast sandwich, and call it a day.
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