Grandma Avis’s Noodle Recipe

It is written in my handwriting, on the April 18, 1989 page from her calendar. I can almost guarantee you, though, that the date I wrote this down was NOT April 18, since, if we did go to Michigan in the spring, it was at Easter, which was in March that year. More likely, I asked her about it when we were up there in July, since we almost always went up there in July.

Anyway, this is what I wrote down that she told me. I have never tried the recipe, so I make no claims for whether you can make it work.

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

Stir stiff w/flour. Stir so stiff you have to kneed. Let dry rolled out 4-6 hours then cut into strips. Boil until tender in broth of any kind.

Now, clearly, you slowly add the flour until it’s so stiff that you have to kneed it by hand.  Then you roll it out and let it dry 4-6 hours.  Her strips were usually about a quarter inch wide and about as thick. It should also be noted that clearly the “boil until tender in broth of any kind” has to be bullshit because you cannot make Grandma Avis’s famous beef and noodles without beef. Making her beef and noodles with chicken is not only illogical, it’s sacrilege.

So, she’d cook a pot roast, with tons of black pepper (because the noodles always had black pepper flakes), fish the meat and the big chunks of onion out and the cook the noodles in that broth.  Then she’d drain the noodles (or fish them out) and add chunks of pot roast in with the noodles in a big wonderful conglomeration.

It seems like it should be easy enough to make.

I don’t know why I never have.

You Should Feel Bad for God

So, last  night, I was switching out some medical equipment…

Can I just say that I about need to just kick my ass over this whole thing?  The self-pitying that I get up to when I start to feel bad for myself because the rest of my life is going to be a series of tubes and medicines and trips to the doctors? As if everyone’s lives aren’t a series of tubes and pills and trips to the doctors, if they’re lucky? I would like to tell you that I’m being all graceful about it, but I am only very clumsily stumbling towards getting over my damn self.

I mean, that’s the damn thing. I can get up to a self-pity party as well as the next person, but lately I’m just tired of it.

So, where was I?

Oh, right, so I’m switching out some medical equipment and I need a place to stick a filter, so I open up my night-stand and what should I find, but the aforementioned red confirmation Bible, which contains, as previously stated, my grandma’s noodle recipe, in my handwriting, written down on a calendar page from her house.

But also, it’s got a couple of letters in it, one to my oldest nephew, before he was born, when his mom had some major complication during her pregnancy and we were all afraid he would die before he could be born. In it, I mention that he’s going to turn a boy (my brother) into a man.

Clearly, either I was completely mistaken or it’s just taking him a decade or two.  Ha, I wonder if I should give that to him or not.  I tried to give him a picture of my Grandma, but he left it at my house. So, I don’t know if he appreciates sentimental shit like that or not.

But the other letter is from me to God.  The general gist of which is “Please take care of all of my friends, who seem to be fucking up tremendously, and send me a man, so that I can be normal.”

Ha, so you know, like blogging, but with God as the only reader.

Dang.

I bet He’s glad I’ve turned to you guys.

Plus, He’s been terrible at getting me dates.

So Many Things Almost Done

Baby blanket for my cousin? Just started the border.

Fake ghost stories? One more to go.

Best of Nashville entries? Just want to read them to the Butcher once to make sure they’re amusing to someone else but me.

All that and I planted the daisies and the new coneflowers. And took a trip to Oak Ridge and had a nice brunch yesterday.

So, score one for me.