I Don't Know What Happened.

Really. I don't. I was checking email, updating my Nutrition page on SparkPeople, and WHAM! The next thing I know I'm crying.

In fact, this post is being typed through tears. 

This is what landed me smack-dab in the middle of the Ugly Cry: 
Southern Fried Pies The Best Recipe

No, it's not because I should NEVER EVER eat anything remotely resembling these as long as I live. It is because I HAVE EATEN dozens of these gastronomical wonders! I thought they were lost to me forever...until this morning.

See, my Grandmother made chocolate fried pies for me often. Once, I even made them with her. But, alas, I was only nine or ten years old at the time and had no idea how important the recipe would be to me twenty-eight fifteen years later.

After Grandmother ran off with Jesus, the whole family began a search for her recipes. Being a true Southern woman, she had precious few recipes. Fried Pies NOT being one of them!

I'm not surprised; this was the lady who made all her own church dresses, and skirt and jacket suits, herself...without patterns. She used to shop at Goodwill for dresses or blouses that had just the right collar or sleeve, and then take the thing apart to use as a pattern for that particular dress element.

She once laughed at me when I asked her to buy me a pattern for a skirt I wanted to make.

"Let me see that pattern. Well that's just a basic A-line with a little kick-pleat in the back. You just need a front and a back, a waist-band, and a zipper."

"Well, how do I know how much fabric to buy?"

"As small as you are [yes, she actually used the word small to refer to ME] you can get a front and a back out of the width, so all you need to buy is the length."

"Okay, but how much fabric do I need to buy?"

This went on for some minutes before she just decided to make me the skirt that very afternoon.

She baked, cooked, sewed, and quilted all the same way. Radar, I guess. I'm finding I have inherited that; I haven't fully developed it yet, however. Which is why I haven't been able to duplicate the Fried Pies.

My dad, his brother, my cousins have all been on the same quest to answer the question "How the heck did she make those?!"

This recipe is it. I just know it. I don't even have to try it out. I read it and was immediately standing in her 1957 kitchen, right in the corner up against the lazy susan. She was telling me to "just mix up a little pie crust", and then "just make a little paste out of the cocoa" , and finally "we'll just fry him up in the skillet".  Oh, I was there! She was there! I could smell it!

And the tears are back. I miss her so much. When I was a kid I never imagined I'd feel this way; I never thought about Grandmother and Grandaddy not being just a phone call away. But now they are, and I miss them terribly. I think of them most every day, but usually it's a happy memory or a habit I learned from one of them that makes me smile. I often think how very much they would have enjoyed my kids. Only my oldest two had the opportunity to know them (I'm not even sure they remember).

But today I am grieving. All because in my search for a low-fat muffin recipe I "happened" on a treasure!

Yes, I am sheding sad tears, but also happy tears for I KNOW I will see them both soon...and in the mean time, we're gonna "fry up a little chocolate pie"!