I’ve Been Blogging So Much About My Grandma That I May Just Have To Change My Blog Title To “The Life of My Grandma”

I may or may not have consumed some of this cake before snapping a photo.

Last night I was at home with my mother. None of my friends were around, so naturally I spent a solid 15 minutes staring at my ceiling fan until I came up with an idea solid enough to entertain my undiagnosed A.D.D. Then, it hit me. Earlier that evening my mom had her boyfriend and his son over for a porterhouse BBQ extravaganza and whipped out the cookbook my grandma put together as a fundraiser for her temple back in the 1800s. That was a lie. It was sometime between 1970 and 1980. Or earlier. Okay I have no idea. Regardless, she took out the cook book to look up my late grandfather’s sangria recipe (see, I wasn’t lying about the wine obsession in my last post). She left the book out so in my boredom phase I naturally  started flipping through the pages. I made my way to the cakes section and found an interestingly titled recipe submitted by my grandmother. The name was “Dom Ecom Cake.” Yes. Dom Ecom. When all was said and done it’s a pretty simple chocolate cake, but because of the name I knew I HAD to bake it. So I ran out to the grocery store, at roughly 9:45PM, and bought all of the ingredients…along with Special K cereal because it was on sale.

I drove home and got to work. When I arrived home I was greeted by an army of toothpicks on the floor. As it turns out my mom decided to take some of the ingredients out of the cabinets for me and knocked over a box of toothpicks. She popped her hip out a few weeks ago so she “couldn’t bend down to pick them all up so [she] figured [I] would do it for her.” So I did. THEN I started baking.

Now, I have never baked ANYTHING from scratch on my own, or at my own will, or from start to finish without stopping midway and making my mom finish it up on her own while I went to watch some television or play Guitar Hero. So this was certainly a first for me. And while I had my mom standing by to supervise, and to answer all of my measurement questions (seriously, who knew there’s 16oz in a pound?) this was very much my own doing.

So I mixed all of the ingredients together and put the cake in the oven. 45 minutes later it came out and I watched it cool like a 13 year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert.

In the meantime I called my grandmother.

“Hi grandma. I was looking through “Beyond Tuna Fish” (yes, that’s the name of the charity cook book she put together) and I came across this Dom Ecom Cake and decided to make it.”

“Oh you did? (laughs)”

“Yes. I just took it out of the oven. It’s my first time making any of your recipes so I’m going to bring you a piece to try.”

“Only if it turns out good.”

Seriously? Not, good job! or, I can’t wait! Nope. Not even close.

“Well, I won’t know if it turns out good because I’ve never had it, so I’ll ask mom.”

“Okay.”

After the conversation I served a slice to my mom and she said it was “good.” This made me nervous because I WANTED MY GRANDMOTHER’S APPROVAL. So I tried a slice and it was more like damn good.

So today I brought the cake to my grandma’s apartment in the city. She had just eaten dinner so she was too full to try the cake just yet, so I sat in anticipation. Finally, my grandma came into the room while I was watching the Met game or The Glee Project or something like that and uttered the best words I could hope for, “the cake was perfect. That’s just how it should taste. Good job.”

I swung hoping for a single, but I wound up with a home run. (seeing as I just used  baseball reference I was probably watching the Met game)

So then I asked the question I had been dying to ask: what the hell is a Dom Ecom? The answer, “I don’t know it was my mother’s recipe.”

Finally, civillians can sleep soundly.

 

Some Grandmas Bake Cookies…

…my grandma drinks alcohol.

It was a night like any other. My grandma and I were relaxing while watching the Mets when she said

“if you hear a banging on the wall, please come into my room. I’m not feeling well tonight.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My chest hurts…”

This worried me considering my grandmother has has bypass surgery in the past and our family has a history with bad heart health.

“…but I just think it’s indigestion.”

“Would it make you feel better if I slept in your room with you?”

Now, before you make fun, my grandmother has a ginormous king bed. Like, seriously. King Sleepy broke the mold when he made this puppy.

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure.”

I proceeded into my room to grab my pillows and cell phone charger and got comfortable in my grandma’s room. About a half hour or so went by.

“So how are you feeling now?”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll feel better after a drink.”

One thing about my grandma is that she has at least one glass of red wine a day. If not two…or three. Often her one glass will be by her bedside as she goes to bed. Sometimes it will be at dinner, or while watching television. Regardless of where she sips it, it’s a daily tradition for her. My mom loves wine too. And so do her sisters. At any given time my mother has 20 bottles of wine on hand in our household. Mom, if you’re reading this, don’t text me and tell me I’m lying because I’ve counted.

Back to the story: I heard some putzing around in the kitchen so naturally I went to sneak a peak. The ice cream was out. And so was the liquor. I knew this could only mean one thing: chocolate martinis.

Mind you the time was now 12:30AM.

She scooped vanilla ice cream into a blender. Added portions of cream de cacao, Godiva chocolate liquor, vodka and ice. Blended that baby into oblivion and reached for the cabinet where she keeps her glasses. She pulled out a martini glass. Now, my grandma is a DRINKER, so she doesn’t have you typical restaurant sized martini glasses…she has double martini glasses. Meaning, you could take two, possibly 3, martinis you order in a restaurant and pour them into this sucker. It. Was. HUGE. Naturally, she filled it to the brim. She got back into bed and within 30 minutes it was gone.

“I’m feeling better now. You can sleep in your own room.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes…I think I’m going to become an alcoholic.”

And with that, I went to bed.

Personally when I make chocolate martinis I make them with vanilla vodka, but my grandma’s recipe is delicious. Just incase you’d like to serve up a summer treat, these martinis truly are sweet, tasty and refreshing:

Chocolate DitkTini:

Makes 2 (non-grandma sized) servings:

1oz Godiva Liquor

1oz Cream de cocoa

1oz Vanilla Vodka

1-2 scoops of chocolate or vanilla ice cream–your choice!

Pour the ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake, strain and pour into two glasses.

To make the drink frothier and frozen: pour ingredients into a blender with ice, blend and pour straight, no strain.

MahJongg Wednesday: Part Deux

Tonight was just your average Wednesday game of MahJongg with grandma and her friends. This time, my grandma put out hard salami, crackers, cheese, fruit AND cookies–clearly she was feeling generous. Yet again I was the only one who ate any of it while grandma’s friends just wanted iced tea with milk. There wasn’t much discussion at the table this evening aside from the game itself–I won one round–but there was on particular conversation that stuck out. The “WeingerGate” scandal came up somehow–oh yes, I was tweeting and one of the ladies said “isn’t that how you get into trouble?” Naturally, the conversation evolved from there.

“Shumer thinks so highly of him.”

“He was set to do big things…until he took his pants off!”

Elder women are absolutely lovely to hang out with. Their point of view on current events and pop-culture is somehow…refreshing!

 

Next week I plan to ask them about Hugh Hefner’s cancelled wedding.

MahJongg Wednesdays

So it’s official–I have retired, but only temporarily, of course. Also, only on Wednesdays. You see, this summer I will be partaking in a MahJongg game night every Wednesday night with my grandmother and 3-4 of her friends. Last night was our first game and let’s just say it was quite interesting. The way these women kvetch leaves me schvitzing and kvelling. Oy vey. Last night served as a refresher for some of the ladies as they haven’t played in a while, but my grandma is a pro. She’s been playing forever, has gone on MahJongg cruises for years AND she was once asked to help create the official MahJongg hand card one year. She won the first three games last night, but, I won the last two! Too bad we weren’t playing for money because my hands would have won me a whopping $00.50. Yes, 50 cents.

 

More to come on this weekly gathering…unless the ladies decide it won’t work, in which case I will blame myself because they’re intimidated by my youth.

My Grandma

This summer I am interning in NYC, so instead of commuting every morning I am living with my grandmother in Manhattan. I did this last summer as well and though it is sometimes a pain having a 80 year old roommate, I love my grandmother and she is quite the fun and quirky individual to chat, dine and live with 5 days a week. Just last night we were sharing a dinner while watching Access Hollywood when a story about Fran Drescher came up. My grandmother then informed me that two years ago she went on a blind date with Mr. Drescher, Fran’s father. I suppose having a famous daughter wasn’t good enough for her. The two of us then took a trip down to the gym in the bowels of her apartment building and I must say it is a lovely gym. There’s brand new machines/equipment, individual televisions, free-weights, machine-weights, exercise balls, steps–the works! I took a seat on the bike and watched a repeat of Glee for a half hour while she tried to figure out how the treadmill works. I heard a lot of beeping. After a few minutes she began to inspect every machine and piece of equipment in the room. I went on to do some weights and gave her my headphones so that she could watch Glee.

My grandmother asked me if I would be interested in playing Mah Jong with her and some of her friends one night a week. Of course I said yes. Gosh, I’m maturing so fast!

Grandmas Say the Darndest Things!

I spent my entire morning attempting to help my grandmother check her email on the laptop she bought herself not so long ago. She wants to be able to check emails, send emails, prints things, I don’t know–look up recipes? Isn’t that what grandmas like to do? Anyways, I sat with her trying to show her how to go about checking her email, and all I said was “ok, you click the mailbox, then you click on the message you want to read, and then you read it. To delete it, you press delete.” Then when the time came to shut the computer down, I told her “you have to first close out of AOL, and then go to the bottom of your home screen and click the windows button, then the arrow and then shut down”. She responded with “that’s too much shit for me to remember”. Grandma will have a computer tutor this Winter in Florida–God bless that man’s heart, soul and sanity.