the progression of pots…

I’m smiling at how things change in life… and how, in a mind-boggling way, they really don’t change all that much at all.  As I reached for a pot for making farina this morning, I smiled as I recalled how I delighted in putting the whole set of my new pots and pans in the draw beneath the stove.  That was a long time ago.  I delighted in that matching set, all neatly nestled in that drawer.  But I didn’t get a pot from that drawer this morning.  None of our pots fit in that drawer anymore.   I got out the pot that I used to use to make large ~wink~ pots of soup for our little family.  Those were the days I would buy Cream of Wheat in boxes at the grocery store and the boxes would last a week or two ― then later in “bulk” from Manna Mills when it was still called Natural Foods Warehouse in Mountlake Terrace.  (I think the original name drew too many negative conclusions).  The “granola types” shopped there and a myriad of other hippie, Birkenstock-wearing shoppers.   I was teetering on the line of being one of them.  My own Birkenstocks were the first dead giveaway.  Well, then, the site sort of ran the gamut of being too “new-age” for me and I found another source (Azure Standard) for bulk foods.  We rarely, but occasionally, stop in at Manna Mills for specific things.  Especially when I miss “Azure day.”

Yesterday Wes came home with stuff from Manna Mills… as, regrettably, I’d missed the Azure ordering deadline this month.  I could tell by the squeals of delight that there were not a few children delighted by the consequence of my lapse in memory.  They don’t like the farina from Azure…it’s coarse. Really coarse.  They like the soft white farina from Manna Mills… the kind we *always* used to eat.  (Until we didn’t like hot cereal every day???)

So this morning I got out a pot (not from the drawer) and made a large amount of farina.  Hooray! Hooray! was the sound of the breakfast crowd.  Had I known it would be this easy, I would have asked Wes to stop there earlier—years earlier— for it has been *years* since we bought the soft, creamy farina.  Everyone loved it… had seconds even.  The grandchildren loved it too.  (They had spent the night)  It was unanimous!  Never buy farina from Azure again.  Unless, of course, they start carrying the soft white…