Cause Crazy and Cake Are Normal To Me

 This is the recipe that caused me to stumble last night.  LOL then several people asked for it so I posted it on facebook and now here.  Disregard that last line that says that it could actually feed 2-4 easily.  That person was a big fat liar....or a mouse with a tiny mouth.  ~rolling my eyes~     I make an icing for this with powdered sugar, vanilla (or any extract) and milk or flavored creamer.  I pour the icing on while the cake is still hot so that it soaks in.

 But the recipe brought up one of my *odd* things.  I keep recipes that I use a lot taped on the inside of my kitchen cabinets.  I learned that trick from my maternal grandmother who was bat s%#t crazy.

Yes she was. 

Her name was Mama.  Big mama in later years but you could not tell her that to her face!  She was crazy but I did not know that when I was young.  I loved her very very much and she loved me too.   I know I was the favorite granddaughter on that side of the family.  In hindsight, I now know that she was probably bi-polar or schizophrenic.  She *self medicated*.  Not in the normal drink alcohol kinda way but in a pill popping kind of way.  She and my grandfather lived out in the country and she would go to little town doctors for several counties away to get her pills.  More than likely she was under several doctor's care at the same time.  Once when she went in for surgery, my Mom and Aunts searched her home and found over 52 current prescriptions.

Yes Siree Bob....addictions run in my family.

Now I know that she must have been very miserable inside of herself.  I know that she certainly made life miserable for her children and her husband.  But I was young and she loved me and I did not know any better.

She was who let me watch The Twilight Zone.  I also remember watching the original Price Is Right on her orange faux nagahide couch. I remember her packing us a picnic dinner and putting it in a red wagon that we wheeled to the stock tank to eat and watch the catfish come up when we fed them the white bread.  I remember being able to drink little bottles of coke with her and having Schwan's vanilla ice cream.  I remember the back porch closet where she horded groceries because of living through the depression.

She was also a closet smoker.  Everyone in the family knew that she smoked because she would smoke around us.  But she was CONVINCED that my grandfather did not know.  She kept a glass jar under the couch in the living room where she kept all of her cigarette butts.  She would slip out onto the front porch, smoke then come in and stow her cig butt in the jar.  When she went on Wednesdays to get her groceries at Piggly Wiggly (Double green stamp day!) and get her hair done, she would dumb the butts in some trash can in town.   She would also smoke in the car.  Then, she would stop at the cattle guard outside of the house and douse herself and everyone in the car with her with Aqua Net to mask the smell of smoke.

It is a wonder that I lived though my childhood and did not go up in Aqua Net induced fire.

But most of all....I remember that she was an amazing cook.  She passed that love and skill on to my mom.  Who passed it on to me. 

 That is my Aunt Shelia's (from the none crazy side of the family) Chocolate Pie recipe.  It is SO GOOD!
So here in am.  A wee bit  crazy throwed off odd quirky myself.  I keep my favorite recipes taped in my cabinets too.   I keep my positive self statements in there too.