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Bake Bubba Happy
“Grandmas never run out of hugs or cookies” — Author Unknown
My husband was racing down the highway, trying to make it through the border before it closed down completely due to the COVID-19 crisis. He had just picked up his mother who lived alone in France, a short 25-mile journey from the German border. He was bringing her back to our house, near the NATO base in Ramstein, Germany.
He had taken much more time than he had budgeted to load her things into the van, because she had insisted on taking her whole pantry of food supplies along with her. I rolled my eyes when he told me about it over the phone. She is strong-willed and not always the easiest person to get along with, so there was no sense arguing with her about it. We would have to grin and bear it over the next few months that we planned to be living together. Sigh.
My mother-in-law is a pack rat who has always kept a vast supply of non-perishable food items in her house, along with vegetables that would last for a long time. A cellar full of potatoes had saved her family from starvation in France during the Second World War, a lesson she never forgot. The Coronavirus epidemic brought back flashbacks of the desperation of the war years. So, she doesn’t take food storage lightly. When my husband went to pick her up, she insisted on taking all the goods with her…
