That tomato sauce was a total revelation for me. I made it, ate it over four nights and went to get more ingredients. I'd have already made another batch but for our heat wave. I've never been a huge tomato sauce fan. This was amazing and honestly doesn't have much butter per serving. I plan to eat it forever. I actually crave it right now.

It's like my revelation when I was 18 and someone had me try a tomato fresh off of the vine and ripe. I didn't like tomatoes prior to that. I still order many things without them. But actual tomato flavor is amazing to me.

We should! I have things that have to go in the box!

OKAY!

"Superhip grandparents" doesn't really apply to either of my parents, nor to my now-gone grandparents. Although I think my maternal grandmother might have been cooler than I gave her credit for. I would really have loved to find out from her just how she met Grandpa and how their courtship happened. I've heard stories about their (shotgun) wedding from older cousins and mom's generation that sound like a rural soap opera!

I just wish I had known her as an adult--she died when I was 20, but was always an elderly woman to me (she was 66 when I was born). Finding out things about her youth and her pre-grandmother life from Mom and her siblings makes me realize just what I missed out by only knowing her as "Grandma."

My one grandma was just nutso, and my grandpa on the other side was maybe an alcoholic, I think? But died when I was young.

But the other grandpa was awesome (til he had a stroke, sadly), and the other grandma (not married to him) was also cool--I remember her deciding to get her ears pierced when she was about 70, because she was tired of clip-on earrings, and all her granddaughters had pierced ears! We and her daughters went to the mall with her. It was fun!

OKAY! YAY! I have stuff that could go in the box if it came around again too.

By the time the box gets to me again, I'll definitely have a few more things to throw in there. I have a few purples that are too close in shade, and a greeen I loathe. (On me, I mean. It looked good in the bottle.)

The first, and really only, chance I had to see my grandma outside of her role as "matriarch in charge of the family homestead and baker of all things good" was when she, my mom, my sister, and I all went to Florida for two weeks in 1980. It was a revelation for Sis and me, because we discovered we could be together for two whole weeks without arguing once if we had Mom and Grandma around as buffer and distraction--the few times we'd be getting revved up for our usual knock-down-drag-out screamfests, Mom and Grandma would start sniping at each other, and we'd stop to watch their fireworks. That's when we realized just how much alike the two of them were, and also how much Sis is like them. It was a great way to step outside of our comfort zone and reassess our family dynamics.

polishes! Fun!

Also, I have decided kombucha is assy and I don't want anymore. It's precisely what you would expect tea fermented from a "mushroom" might taste like.

I can handle kefir because it's like a lassi, but kombucha. BLECH. It's like a shot of straight vinegar.

Kat, was it plain kombucha? I really only like kombucha with a fruit flavor added. Plain kombucha seems like a dare. Although I have to admit that the kombucha my brother has on tap at his brewpub (they ferment it there) tasted almost like weak iced tea, not assy.

Still, I stick with the fruity shit.

Steph, it was the GT/Synergy one. Raspberry. Totally not for me, which is fine... God knows I already drink kefir which makes me weird. This one: [link]