Did you have a special childhood place? Perhaps a place where your family went to every summer. My family had one such place. Each summer, my mother, sister, and I traveled to Tennessee and spent six weeks with our grandmother, aunts and uncles, and cousins.
Summer in eastern Tennessee was a magical place. There were June bugs to catch, a slow-moving creek to explore (complete with crawdads), and good southern cooking. My mother and aunts were not fancy cooks. They were down home cooks with a flair for infusing everything with an extra bit of flavor and a large dose of love.
My Aunt Maxie had a specialty, and I begged for it whenever I saw her: wacky cake. Wacky cake contained no eggs but was made with the unlikely combination of oil and vinegar as well as cocoa, sugar, and flour.
More than fifty years later, I can still recall the moist, humid air of late evenings, the chirping of crickets, and the delectable texture of wacky cake. Small memories. Precious memories.
So, for today, I am grateful for memories.
I remember wacky cake from my childhood. Now I know where it got its roots.
ReplyDeleteJane
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your wonderful family memories. Our family would gather in the summer at my Aunt's house in the mountains of southern Colorado and I always remember it as the only time my mom and dad would stay up until midnight talking. I loved falling asleep to the sound of the creek just beyond the house.
Becky M