[weatherboi]

My Grandmother would make a smoked fish dip with either bream or mullet. She would put it out with captains wafers before the main meal, like an appetizer.

My grandparents grew green peanuts every year. It was a white skinned heirloom peanut and it was smaller and more tender than the kind sold on the side of the road. We would harvest and have a giant peanut boil to prepare them quickly for freezing. We would eat them day and night for 2 days and then no more till my Grandmother would decide to pull a couple of bags from the freezer for everybody to try and "share".

One year all my grandparents orange trees got killed by a freeze. They didn't get graphted(not sure if that is the proper term) properly so the fruit was never sweet again. They would use the juice from the fruit to make sour orange meringue pies. I can't explain the deliciousness that could never be replicated by my lips or hands because the trees no longer exist in this world for the land was swallowed up by the local establishments' need for a dollar store.

My dad was part owner in an apple orchard in North Carolina and so for a couple of years we would go up there and help bring in all the apples when they were ready, I remember my hands being sticky. We would bring back enough to make a bunch of applesauce for the year for everybody in the family. It was pink in color from the skins. My mom would only pull out the applesauce when we had cubed steak or pork chops and although they were the entree, everybody was looking forward to "the sauce".

I learned at an early age to enjoy the endeavor in acquiring these treats as opposed to focusing on replicating them later in life because somethings can NEVER be replicated and only celebrated.

I love my life!!!