So tonight is one of the rare nights in So Cal that its raining. It is the perfect night to stay home and bake...it makes the house all warm, cozy and smell oh so good. I am making apple oatmeal scones and they smell like heaven.

I really need to work on my food photography:

For some of you that homey baking smell may remind you of childhood memories of Grandma's house...nope not for me...my Grandma was the crappiest cook ever. She would still probably be the crappiest cook ever except she is blind and lives in an assisted living facility and so cooking is not one of her activities. Let me also just say that my Grandma is the most spunky, amazing woman on the face of the earth but just keep her out of the kitchen.

If we want to talk cooking at Grandma's house for me it would be Grandpa in the kitchen. I have often wondered how that arrangement came about. They were married in 1949 so in an age when June Cleaver was the ideal how did my Grandpa become the Emeril Lagasse of NJ. He was rough around the edges and I remember as a child being afraid of his grizzly white beard and his Santa Claus stature. He was a long haul truck driver who often was driving all night and sleeping during the day...but somewhere along the way he took over the daily cooking. Do you think he got to a point where he just couldn't handle Grandma's cooking any longer? Or do you think this was something he enjoyed at a time when cooking wasn't the thing to do especially for a man? I remember him making creative food not just macaroni and cheese out of a box or scrambled eggs. For some random reason I remember him making me New England clam chowder and at that point I had only had the soup in restaurants so I was completely amazed to not only see my Grandpa cooking but to realize that clam chowder could be made at home. Ahh life lessons.... At their house in NJ they had 2 kitchens there was one upstairs and one in the basement so when it was extremely hot they could go in the basement and stay cool...interesting concept...and I remember the cavernous stairs that led into the basement which no matter how homey they tried to make it always scared me just a little.

My Mom has even said that she did not acquire cooking skills at home. Her cooking mentor was the mother of a friend, Helen. She was this sweet little Italian woman who made everything with real butter, whole cheese and cream however she was always slender and petite from what I remember. She was always smiling and had hot pink lipstick that would stay on your face long after she kissed your cheeks...at that age I had huge eyes and huge cheeks...so the pink really stood out.  Thank god for Helen as she overcame the Palmer cooking legacy and allowed my Mom to actually learn how to make some of the most amazing Italian food. All of my favorite childhood food memories are Italian. My Mom would make homemade pizza with dough from scratch and marinara sauce that sat on the stove, always with 2 burners under it so it didn't burn, for hours. I remember my Mom making homemade lasagna and the windows in our old Victorian house steaming up from the boiling water with the noodles in it. I remember Italian cookies at Xmas-nut horns, tea cakes and thumbprints and they were the type of cookies that would just melt in your mouth from so much powdered sugar and butter. And even today the smell of homemade marinara sauce brings me back to my childhood as I remember sitting at the counter on a tall bar stool while my Mom cooked...usually coloring sometimes helping...but always feeling the contentment of being a child.