World’s Best Cook
My Gram
written by: Dianne Moritz
My gramma, Lillian Thornburg, was the best cook in the whole wide world. I suppose most grandchildren make that claim, but it’s true. When Gram retired from Cobbs Manufacturers, in Des Moines, Iowa, after thirty plus years, she didn’t like retirement. She felt idle, bored, and restless. Soon she found a part-time job as head cook for a small, private nursing home in Des Moines, where she prepared three meals a day for ‘the old ladies.’ The eight women living in the residence adored Gram’s cooking and didn’t much care for the substitute’s food on Gram’s days off. “We missed your scrumptious goodies,” they’d say on her return.
The women particularly liked Gram’s chicken, fried steaks, and homemade noodles. Her beef stew, savored for its tender, mouth-watering meat, had no trace of fat or gristle. Gram’s baked goods ranked at the top of their list: biscuits light as air, creamy peanut butter cookies, delectable, spongy cakes, and fresh fruit pies, all made from scratch, of course.
I remember baking with Gram when I was a girl: donning an apron sewn from used feed sacks, measuring and mixing ingredients, rolling pie dough on the floured kitchen table, using the worn, wooden rolling pin, flour dusting our hands, then scattering sugar on snips of leftover dough for a special treat.
I giggled as I watched Gram make egg noodles. She’d cut the dough in long strips with a pie cutter, then drape them over the kitchen chair rails to dry before boiling them in a pot. They looked so funny hanging all over the kitchen.
Before Gram worked at the home, she had moved from Des Moines to Pleasantville, Iowa, living on a five acre plot of land owned by her husband, Floyd. She commuted to town by bus, quite a trek for a woman in her late sixties. In addition to cooking, she worked on the farm with Floyd, raising chickens, planting vegetable and flower gardens every year, canning tomatoes, freezing fresh corn on the cob, and selling eggs, onions, and pumpkins from their farm stand alongside Highway 5 South that edged the property.
When Gram got a hankering for fried chicken, she’d go outside, grab a hen from the yard, ring its neck, throw the head in the dirt for the chickens and rooster to peck, then prepare the bird for frying.
One stifling August afternoon it was too hot to eat, but Gram insisted on fixing me something. “OK,” I said, “how ‘bout a nice, big salad?” Gram jumped up and rushed outside.
She came back a few minutes later, arms brimming with carrots, a head of lettuce, and big, plump, heirloom tomatoes, bits of rich Iowa soil littering the kitchen floor.
After washing, shredding, chopping, and dicing, Gram presented me with a plate piled sky high. A garden fresh salad….literally! Well, I have to say, it was the most delicious salad I’ve ever eaten. The lettuce and carrots were crisp, and crunchy, the tomatoes perfectly ripe and juicy.
Despite the heat, I gobbled it up.
I am certain that Gram had sprinkled on pinches of her secret ingredient…. love for me.
- World’s Best Cook: My Gram - December 12, 2024
- In an Instant - June 11, 2024
- It’s Never Too Late - February 27, 2024
