It’s not so much the foods, though both were amazing cooks in their own ways, with some amazing standards meals they’d turn out. It’s them making it that really hits as a loss.
Both of them contributed to me learning how to cook, and in some ways I ended up improving on what I learned from them by virtue of having both.
But, if I had to nail down one specific meal/dish from each that I miss the hell out of, I think my paternal grandmother’s breakfasts are the most missed of hers. The woman could put on a spread! Eggs, grits, sausage, liver mush, biscuits, red-eye gravy, with her home made jams and jellies. Gods, you want to talk about feeding an army, when all of us grandkids would stay over at once, there would be her, my grandfather, one uncle, and eleven kids ranging from toddlers to teenagers at one point.
And she never missed a step, while doing it all with us young’ns under foot. She was damm fine baker, and a master of country cooking/soul food, but her breakfasts were next level.
My maternal grandmother could do that kind of cooking too, though not as well. Where she was a standout was with more of the suburban American cuisine. The roasts and casseroles and traditional holiday meals. I think those holiday meals are what I miss most, though her meatloaf and spaghetti were both amazeballs. My grandfather was a hunter, so some kind of bird would be featured often, be it goose, duck, or turkey. Sometimes as the only meat source, sometimes alongside a store bought turkey if a lot of the more distant family was showing up.
Even after she decided she was done babysitting a bird and my uncle took over that part with a deep fryer, her sides still wreck those I’ve had with other people. Sweet potatoes, three-bean salad, seven layer salad, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, asparagus, peas, all kinds of options, sometimes with all of those, plus others, plus desserts. Most of the veggies were from their garden, though they would be home canned fur Christmas, and some would be for Thanksgiving.
It wasn’t that any given item was so good (though they were), it’s that all of everything either made was so consistently amazing. Never a flop, never a dud.
One problem
Batteries.
I’ve used old devices as many things: security cameras, a form of intercom, digital picture frames, etc. The real problem is that the batteries eventually go bad, and become dangerous.
For the few devices that have realistically replaceable batteries, that’s no big deal, but how many of those are left now?
No thanks to the potential fire, I’ll pass. The few devices I have left that I can swap batteries out are becoming harder to find new batteries for as well, so that’s an issue beyond their anemic hardware (I’m talking really old tablets at this point)