This week was a scorcher. Three 90 degree plus days in a row. One humid afternoon my grandmother popped into my head. She made the best lemonade. In a second I was time traveling in my memories to when I was 4. My Mom worked and Nana watched me and my sister.

It was the summer that she finally let me help her in the kitchen. I suppose it was a way of keeping me busy, but at the time my goal was to be the best assistant I could be. My assignment. Roll the lemons. That’s it. She’d place the lemons on her brown porcelain enamel kitchen table. With her arthritic hands, she’d demonstrate. Take a lemon and place your hands on it and move it up and down the table as far as my arms could reach repeatedly until they were soft. It was hard work for little arms. I’d kneel on the chair and press down on the fruit as I rolled.

There was no air conditioning in her third-floor walk-up. A small metal-bladed fan in the corner of the kitchen created the breeze. The lemons weren’t refrigerated in the icebox, her name for a refrigerator that recalled days before there were such things. They were usually kept in a bowl on the counter.

I’d pick up a warm lemon and smell the citrusy scent. It took both of my small hands to hold that yellow fruit on the table. I’d roll and roll until my arms ached. Then I’d ask, “Are they ready?” She’d pick it up and poke it with her fingers testing for the right amount of softness so the fruit would release its juice. Usually, the reply was not yet so back to work I’d go. Eventually, she’d take over to finish the task with her strong arms making the motion.

Next, it was time for making the juice. She had a small glass squeezer with a fluted cone in the middle and a pourer on the side. It was a kitchen essential. Freshly squeezed juice happened only one way in those days. You’d take the lemon, slice it in half, putting one half cut side down on the flute and move your hand in a semi-circular motion. Juice and pulp would collect in the glass making it easy to pick out the seeds. I seem to remember that at least six lemons were needed.

Then she’d get her glass pitcher. It’s the one I own today. It has a molded pattern on the outside. It’s a shrine to the life of a woman who raised five children and lived upstairs from us until we followed the pattern of so many families and moved from the city to the suburbs by the sea.

Into the pitcher would go the juice, pulp, water, lots of sugar, and of course ice. Her long-necked spoon would mix it all together. Nana was an expert. She never measured anything when she made things, be it a drink, chowder, or a pie. She knew by sight the right proportions. She’d made this so many times she could gauge its readiness by the color of the beverage.

Finally, it was time for a taste. Oh, that was my other job. She’d pour a little bit into glasses for each of us. Too tart and it needed more sugar. I can’t remember a pitcher of lemonade that was too watery. All that work and we’d all drink down that cool beverage in less time than it took to make it. It was a treat, one that didn’t happen often enough.

Nana died in 1968 and the pitcher retired. It sat in a box in my parent’s basement until given to me. At my house, it’s in the china cupboard too precious to use.

Instead of a pourable lemon drink, I make lemon sorbet and put it in frozen lemon cups. I use an old-fashioned style juicer I bought from Food52, (made by Kilner) and a hand crank ice cream maker that sits in the freezer. There isn’t a time when I follow these steps that I don’t think of my grandmother. She’s guiding my hands as I roll the fruit and juice it.

My family’s long attachment to lemons dates back at least to my grandmother. We clamor for lemon cake, lemon meringue pie, lemonade, and now my lemon cups. It’s a consistent love for a citron taste that connects the generations.

Unlike my maternal grandmother, my paternal grandmother didn’t consider herself a cook. She’d make meals that were edible but not fancy like pot roast on Sundays. I’ve already written about her family famous lemon meringue pie and how I discovered the filling was made from a box.

Sometimes our memories give us a false impression of a moment. Digging deeper into the lemonade origins I found that Sunkist® lemons were widely available in local grocery stores during my childhood and before. You could buy six for 29 cents. If that number sounds familiar it should. That’s the exact number of lemons Nana used for her beverage.

While I’d romantically like to believe that her lemonade was an old family recipe. The facts look a little different. On the Sunkist® website is a recipe for their lemonade. It looks suspiciously like the one that Nana made minus the rolling.

Whatever the origins of her recipes, she made them her own by including family into the details. Including me in the cooking, gave me a life-long love of being in the kitchen.

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Alice McDuff Bessette. She died when I was one. She appears in a few family photos and in a home movie taken on my first birthday.

I have little in common with her. I’m tall, close to six feet. She was 5 foot 4. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a dark complexion. I have blue eyes, light brown hair, and freckles. According to my mother, her mother could sing and play the piano. I croak with a tune and can’t play an instrument.

There is only one thing we share: A love of cooking. My mother tells me I’m a good cook like her mother. So she gave me her mother’s cookbook and her rooster decorated mixing bowls.

The book is an ironic piece of family history. I can’t tolerate wheat.

The cookbook is the King Arthur Cookbook of its day. Five Roses Cook Book: Being a Manual of Good Recipes produced by the makers of Five Roses flour, a Canadian company.

This 6 x 9 inch 143-page family artifact is a remnant of the years she lived in Canada.

Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, Mémère married a man from Quebec. She lost her U.S. citizenship for it. The Expatriation Act of 1907 stripped native-born women of their citizenship when they wed an alien. It wasn’t until 1922, that the Cable Act reversed that law for most women, but not all. Women who married aliens not eligible for citizen still lost their citizenship.

After the wedding, they moved to Quebec where my mother’s eldest sister was born. Alice and her husband Eugene made many trips between Trois–Rivières Quebec and Pawtucket, RI to visit family.

Tucked in the pages are other recipes she clipped from newspapers.

One for piccalilli, a type of relish made from green tomatoes. Another for donuts. They had a huge backyard garden, and I imagine her canning a lot of food to feed her five children plus the boarders they took in.

According to my mother, Saturday nights were for “get togethers.” Family and friends would come to their house for food and music. Grandmother played the piano while everyone sang and someone called out dance steps.

When I asked my mother who cooked, she said that both of her parents made the food. It was a partnership.

As I look through the pages of her — or should I say their — cookbook, there are no notations to mark favorite recipes. No stains to suggest which pages they frequented. The lack of evidence within could indicate that this cookbook wasn’t their favorite, just a historical stowaway in their final belongings. By 1915, Five Roses Cook Book was available in at least 650,000 households. According to my copy, “Five Roses is the favorite in one million Canadian homes, not because it makes the most bread per sack or the best bread, but because it is steady, regular, dependable.”

My Mother claims her parents used this cookbook all the time. It’s a survivor. My grandmother first used these recipes more than a century ago. Perhaps she kept it as a reminder of her early married years.

For me, a glance through the pages brings back a sense of their history together and the world around them. Recipes like Maple Icing (likely a popular choice in Canada) and cakes such as the Lancashire Parkin, made from oatmeal reflect the heritage of those Scottish individuals who settled in Canada. My grandparents and their ancestors were some of them.

These recipes let me experience the past through food. It makes me feel closer to two people I’ve only heard about.  I’ll make some of their favorites for my siblings and my cousins. As a gluten-free person, I won’t replicate these recipes exactly, but with trial and error, I’ll still get a sense of what the original smelled like. I’ll be able to breathe deep the smell of history.

Click here and fill out the information to try Mémère’s Raisin Cake or Poor Man’s Cake:

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