Grandma
Viola
&
the Chocolate Cream Pie
as
remembered and written by:
Barbara
Allen Matthews
Sometimes a few
notes to a song or a glimpse of something out of the corner
of your eye will
bringing back memories long forgotten. Sometimes a strange
laugh heard in
a crowd will remind you of a friend or loved one you hadn't
though about or
talked to in years.
Food is always good
for bring back memories. The hotdog with chile and
cheese might remind
you of the ball game you went to, where your team won by
one run... or lost
their shirts.
A bag of MacDonald's
French fries might remind you of leaving school during
lunch without your
parents written permission... and driving down to the
local Micky D's
with your friends while the radio cranked out the latest in
a long line of
favorite songs.
Now Chocolate Cream pie...
Even the mention
of it brings back memories of their own.
Memories of a very
loving special woman;
My Grandmother. Viola (Patton) Matthews.
Grandma's pies were
famous in the family, and even outside the family. She
was known far and
wide for her pies and cakes. No one else who ever tried to
make them could
ever get them to taste the same as Grandma's did. No matter
how hard they tried,
they always ended up *close* but... Not even when using
her recipe. Grandma's
pie's just had a taste of their own.
I believe that's
because Grandma never measured her ingredients. Not like
you or I do out
of a book. Half a cup of this... and one tbs. of that
followed by a dash
of ...You get the idea... No, she'd made the pie so many
times that its
ingredients were ingrained on a recipe card inside her head.
All she did was
open packages and dump the ingredients into a bowl and then
stirred them together
with a big spoon and lots of love.
My sister Amy now...
well, she was the expert in the family when it came to
Grandma's Chocolate
Pies. Yes sir/ma'am Amy could always tell a fake from
the real thing
every time. There was no fooling her one bit; not when it
came to her favorite
treat.
Something our beloved
Aunt Donna, wife of Clarence (Matt) Matthews found out
one summer day
back in the early 80's when Amy, our mother Carolyn and I had
been invited over
to their home for the day to visit with our grandmother.
NOT that she needed
to *bribe* us to come... for we both loved our
grandmother dearly...
but Aunt Donna had promised Amy that Grandma would
bake her one of
her Chocolate Cream Pies for after dinner that night.
We arrived at their
home in Rio Linda California, from our home in Davis,
California in good
time, after agreeing that I would drive there and Amy
would drive home,
(she'd just gotten her drivers license, and wanted to hog
the car..... Mom
didn't care just so long as she didn't have to sit in the
back seat, which
was okay since it was her car after all.)
We arrived safely
and after a round of hugs, hellos, my how you've grown and
don't you look
pretty, we spent a very nice afternoon talking about the
family and the
things we had been doing with our lives. (I won't go into
that here, what
can I say? We were young back then...)
And then Donna told
us dinner was ready so we all join her in the dining
room, where wonderful
smells tempted us all. I can't remember for the life
of me what we ate
that night, but knowing what a good cook our Aunt Donna
is, I know it had
to be something really good. I just remembered we laughed
a lot at the stories
our Uncle Matt told us, and each time Grandma corrected
him over some small
little detail.
After dinner we
all decided, after eating way too much of Aunt Donna's
wonderful cooking,
we'd all go and sit in the living room for a while to let
dinner settle just
a bit so we'd all have room for a piece of Grandma's
Chocolate Cream
Pie.....
Finally the moment
had arrived. We all resettled ourselves around the table
where Aunt Donna
had put out clean plates and silverware... Then waited with
mouths beginning
to water as she cut into the pie and started dishing it out. Our mom
got the first piece,
as she was seated at the far end of the table. Uncle
Matt got the second
piece, and then the rest were past around
until the pie tin
was empty.
Amy, concentrating
on the piece of pie on her fork, didn't happen to see the
look that passed
between our Aunt and Uncle, but I did, though at the time I
didn't understand
what it meant... But understanding was only moments away.
I was in chocolate
heaven after taking my first bite of the creamy,
chocolatey confection,
still warm from the top of the oven;
I thought it was
good. But then what did I know.
We all heard the
sound of a throat clearing from somewhere around the middle
of the table and
all eyes went to look at Amy who was sitting there looking
back at our Aunt
Donna with a very amused half frown on her face, and the
fork in her hand
pointed loosely in Aunt Donna's direction.
"Grandma did *not*
make this pie," Amy accused, glaring down the table at
Aunt Donna (Aunt
Donna had tried to pull a fast one on our Amy.
But she hadn't
counted on Amy's taste buds),
and by the sound
of Uncle Matt's deep laughter,
we knew Amy had
been right.
Amy E. (Matthews) Sinclair -age 5 eatting as it happens,,
Grandmother's Chocolate Cream Pie
~*~
.