Try It, You'll like it!

The most noteworthy person in our family for many, many years was my mother, “Grandma Bug.” Actually she had a perfectly good name, Elanore, that no one but her non-family friends used. She got the nickname “Bug” as a small child when someone said she looked as cute as a bug in a rug. For the rest of her life she was Bug, Aunt Bug, or Grandma Bug.

One of her more annoying traits was to ask you to do something for her without telling you in advance what she wanted. She’d say, “Karen, I want you to do something for me.” I’d naturally respond, “What?” and she’d say something like, “It’s just something I need done.” When she finally told me what it was she wanted, more often than not I knew why she was so secretive, because it was almost always something I did not want to do.

Along with this trait was her incessant trying of new recipes. She got started when Father (otherwise known as Grandpa Bob) had to go on a no-salt, no-sugar diet for his heart (before dieticians told us that you actually need some salt in your diet for your heart to work). She’d search through magazines and newspapers for ways to fix this or that without salt, or without fat, or with some new no-calorie sugar substitute. She bought cookbooks put out by the American Heart Association and any other group or individual that promised “tasty meals to better your health.”

Poor Father. He was the guinea pig. He ate the stuff without complaint, but not without a quiet comment or two. Nothing deterred Grandma Bug from her crusade to convince him to give up his German heritage foods, most of them sweet and lots of them “loaded with fat,” as she often said.

If things didn’t turn out just right, she’d say, “It’s o.k. I’ll just feed it to Bob.”

Eventually I had a family and household of my own, and I didn’t have to contend with her crusade much. But my kids often spent weekends with their grandparents, and they often got rooked into eating strange things. Susan remembers coming into the house and having Grandma Bug say, “Here, Susan. Try some of this!” Susan would naturally ask, “What is it?” And Grandma would respond, “Try it, you’ll like it!” As often as not it would be passable, something with artificial sugar but otherwise a cookie, for example. But sometimes it would be something a kid would consider gross, like smelt (disguised in some way, of course), or beef tongue, or squash.

This all came to mind this evening when Susan came over to borrow some Cream of Tartar to make some playdoh. I had made a new recipe called “Taffy Bars” that used molasses. They’re really pretty--intensely brown, soft like a good brownie, and shiny on top. At first when I offered her one, Susan thought I was giving her a brownie, and she said, “I made brownies tonight.” And I responded, “But this isn’t a brownie. Try it.” At which Susan said, “I get the awful feeling I’m in the presence of Grandma Bug.” She’s a good daughter, and she tried the bar. Her evaluation was, “I don’t think I’m going to eat any more of it. I don’t think I like it.” And being a kind mother, I told her to just pitch it in the garbage.

But after she left, I realized that I’d better mend my ways, or I would become that grandma who would be conning my younguns with, “Try it. You’ll like it!”

Elanore Hammond Ludwig (Grandma Bug) died in May of 2007.