Before the costs of eggs rose up to unearthly prices, (and maybe even after), grandmas' hands performed the same steps, same movements, of cracking a half dozen eggs and six cups of flour, mixing together a splash of milk and a little salt, rolled and smoothed gently.
The flour on the pastry cloth to keep it dry, sliced close to an inch wide and as long as your pointer finger reaches, to round the recipe off, rolled up and cut into fine pieces of art, unlike some machines do each one , then laid to dry.
Grandpa had set the beef to boil, small chunks of round, for four hours, before she made the noodles, and he had cut fresh picked potatoes, or ones with roots growing from them from being stored so long, and kept adding water to the boil, and cutting up the taters in small pieces.
The beef did boil, the potatoes did as well, corn wrested from the cob, and boiled with butter and water, and with that, the meal was done and ready to be had.
Grandma had made the noodles, and her grandmother had made them too, and her grandmothers grandma had made them on the wood burning stove, and six generations, or maybe seven, kept working the world, to let it come round again.
Ralph Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Claremore Oklahoma
Like Grandma Did
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