On Sunday mornings after church, sometimes we would go to my grandmother’s house on Woodmont Ave. It was a green shingled house, a semi-raised ranch, with beautiful soft green grass under a giant maple tree in the front yard. While I was young she had an in-ground pool dug for the back yard, and we would spend entire days at her house, my siblings, cousins and I, in and out of the pool. I remember when they dug the hole, the great piles of dirt, the gaping maw that would become our summer playground.
If it was raining or chilly on those Sunday mornings, Gramma would make us bowls of Oodles of Noodles. The comforting salty taste, the actual oodles of noodles waiting to be sucked up one by one. No worry about too much sodium, no flash forward to delight as a broke young adult that each package cost only 10 cents if you bought them in bulk. Just the simple comfort of a steaming bowl of noodles, made for you with the love of your adoring Gramma.
How I miss her.
[photo by Jason Cartwright]
Isn’t it amazing how a single scent or taste instantly transports us somewhere else completely? All hail the ramen. And awesome, doting grandmas.
in my day, we had to make do with Campbell’s. packet noodles hadn’t become available like this yet.
Got to love the high sodium instant noodles! And you’re not even of Asian descent! I’m so impressed. The funny thing is, I didn’t have these in my house growing up. I had a steady diet of white, midwestern fare in my house (white bread, tuna noodle casserole, sloppy joes, Hamburger Helper…) but a girl up the street, who was also a Korean adoptee, used to have Top Ramen noodles at her house and I would eat them with her over there and I remember thinking they were so exotic – like real Asian food! Especially because we would eat them with chopsticks. I think this was her white family’s way of giving her some Asian culture in her Minnesota life. Weird.