Not as pretty as ads say, but still Grandma's kitchen
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
Don't you love the look of "Grandma's house" in those toll house cookie ads? That cozy, rosy kitchen with its gingham and calico, everything warm and matching, all the pots and pans that are old fashioned but shiny at the same time.
Grandma's kitchen looks the same in the holiday television specials, the oatmeal commercials, even the ads for churches that are obviously produced on the Mainland. Obvious, because Grandma's kitchen doesn't look like that here.
Grandma's kitchen in Hawai'i is centered around the 'opala container. It's called different things in different households, but it's the container Grandma keeps next to the sink (sometimes IN the sink) for the papaya seeds, celery strings, egg shells and coffee grounds. Compost for the anthuriums. It used to be the 'opala container was a milk carton, but since people started buying milk by the gallon, it might be the plastic milk container with the top cut off. The hard-core Grandma uses the big white senbei bucket, because that comes with a lid so no mo' smell.
It's the center of Grandma's kitchen because it's the essence of Grandma's belief system: reuse everything possible, including twist-ties, mayonnaise jars, zip locks and rubber bands.
A tofu container has a permanent home in the sink. It's always filled with soapy water and a dish cloth, which Grandma probably crocheted herself.
If Grandma still lives in a plantation-era house, there's that little gauze or cheesecloth bag tied onto the end of the faucet to catch rust from the pipes, a Grandma-style Brita filtering system. If it's been there a long time, there will actually be a collection of rusty shards in the bag.
The other Grandma standard is the freezer, stuffed to bursting with mysterious foil-wrapped bundles all labeled in Grandma-style code with magic marker on masking tape. You always gotta have Grandma decipher before you defrost, because some of that stuff in there is garbage destined for the trash, but stashed in the freezer because it was too long before rubbish day and Grandma didn't want it to come stink.
Then there are the Grandma extras: The mail organizer on the wall stuffed with bills and Christmas cards and Longs coupons clipped together with a wooden clothes pin. It's made of half a paper plate stapled to a whole paper plate and painted by a grandchild's preschool-aged hand. It hangs by a piece of yarn looped over a nail.
Near the stove, there may be coffee cans used like Tupperware for things like flour or bacon grease.
Atop the fridge, packages of Saloon Pilot crackers and a dusty case of papaya-liliko'i juice that the kids didn't like.
And next to the fridge, a covered rubbish can filled with rice and a measuring cup (that is, a coffee cup) floating on top.
Ginger on the window sill. Paper bags folded up and kept in a paper bag. Plastic bags crumpled and gathered together in a plastic bag that hangs off a doorknob. A Vienna sausage can that holds inkless pens and broken pencils next to the phone. Doctors' phone numbers written on the bag of used envelopes and stuck to the fridge with a magnet from a disgraced politician's old campaign.
Grandma's kitchen isn't match-y like the one in the commercials. It doesn't even smell that good most of the time (especially if Grandma is frying fish or boiling bones for soup) but the feeling those commercials try so hard to convey is there in all the places between the senbei 'opala bucket and the broken fly swatter hanging by the door.
Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
