Bread and Milk

Neverboard's post about eating breakfast at her grandmother's house spurred many memories of my own grandparents.

My grandfather had cows to milk early in the morning, and would often go a couple of hours before eating breakfast. So, they preferred to eat a big breakfast, and then eat "dinner"; or the biggest meal of the day, at lunchtime. For supper at night we ate very light. This was very different from my own home where we ate our biggest meal at night. In my home now because my children are at school during the day, and because I want to make sure they eat a really healthy dinner, our biggest meal is at night too. But my grandparents were getting older and didn't like to go to bed after eating too big of a meal.

My grandparents typically ate bread and milk for supper. They had accompanying side dishes such as radishes and green onions from the garden, cheddar cheese slices, raisins etc. The kids were allowed to eat cold cereal. However, I liked bread and milk and would often eat it with them. Even today I like bread and milk, although I don't eat it very often. I like some bell pepper, radishes and cheese slices on the side, and I definitely like raisins in it. My grandfather also grew fresh peas, and I thought they were the best food on earth.

When I think about eating bread and milk at my grandparents' house, I think what stands out in my mind the most was the look on their faces, and the comments they would make about how good it tasted. Years later, when my father was a stake president for the church, we had a visiting general authority come stay in our home. He requested that my family not go to any huge effort to make dinner for him. He said, "I would be happy with a big bowl of bread and milk." My parents didn't feel that was good enough for a visiting general authority, but as I think about it now, I think bread and milk would have made him happier than the big meal they served.