Monkey bread
Mom and I spent the day making monkey bread. I say, "the day making monkey bread," because it seemed to take for-ev-ver to make.
Mom's mother used to make monkey bread for the family when Mom was younger. She made it for years for the family. Mom loved the smell of monkey bread cooking as a child; today's smell brought back memories. Seeing her smile and remember her childhood was nice.
Making the monkey bread took a long while. It had to be mixed up, left to rise, punched down, left to rise again, torn into little pieces, coated in cinnamon and sugar, left to rise yet again, and drowned in a crap load of cinnamon sugar syrup. At one point, during the torn into little pieces part, the balls looked like little poop balls in a bucket:
Dinner time, we finally started eating the monkey bread. We, of course, started with the pieced on top. You know, the ones that had been soaking in the cinnamon sugar syrup.
According to Mom, her mom stopped making monkey bread after accidently switching salt for sugar in the recipe one year, making some of the worst monkey bread ever. My grandmother was apparently horribly embarrassed and, well, once she was embarrassed, did her best to never do that same action again, to avoid further embarrassment.
How limiting must her life have become in the end... to never take chances for fear of embarrassment.