Home for the Weekend (and watch The Weight of the Nation!)

I'm going home this weekend. My mom and my grandma live a couple hours north of here so I'll leave right after school with my laundry in the trunk and drive on up to my hometown. It is really a very flat drive. Everytime Dave drives on the highway in this neck of the woods, he is stunned by the landscape. Last weekend when he came down to visit I asked him how the drive was. He said, "Flat." Add to that flatness an immeasurable amount of corn, and you've got Indiana tried and true. Another Dave one liner about the scenery…on one of his first visits to my hometown he drove up from Indianapolis (don't really remember why because Chicago is a much closer airport). I gave him directions that amounted to maybe 3 turns total on a drive of 2 and a half hours. And I added in there that he would see cornfields for a long time. When he arrived from that drive and I asked him how it was, he said, "You weren't kidding about the corn." 

Whenever I go home my grandma makes brownies for me or another desert. They'll be waiting. It's the best. She also makes a pasta salad that is really terrible for your health, but I LOVE it. If my brothers will be there, she whips up deviled eggs and potato salad. She knows the way to our hearts for sure. My 92 year old grandma lives in the kitchen. Really. Then my mom will walk me around the yard to update me on the status of her perennials and show me her latest decision on stain for the new hardwood flooring going down in the house (kitchen remodel!) and hand me 118 catalogs I can flip through. Usually, after driving home or flying to DC on a work day, all I want is to get in bed and read something "dumb." Brain candy at its finest. A catalog. A catalog to fall asleep with. I love a good catalog. And I'll look at all of them. Like all of them. Even Talbots. What? 

Do you believe in brain candy? Brain candy print material can be anything from a catalog to a cook book. And brain candy movies would be, oh, I don't know, My Big Fat Greek Wedding or Rocky or any move that requires no thinking (you can walk in and out of the room frequently and still know what is happening) or one which you've seen 100 times.

So I'm going home this weekend for a sugar rush…Grandma's brownies and brain candy catalogs. Happy Friday!

P.S. I know I just went on about my grandma's cooking skills, and I will enjoy that brownie immensely. BUT I watched a trailer and some bits and pieces of the HBO documentary The Weight of the Nation today (the whole thing is available to watch online). Whoa. It was fascinating look at the problem of obesity and poor diets here in the US and just the reminder I needed to reign in the eating, a challenge we all face every day. I find food policy and food writing really interesting. I should do a post on some great food books I've read. Always more to read!