I had a really, really wonderful childhood. Like, really wonderful. The stuff dreams are made of and it has taken me a very long time to realize that not everyone was granted that luxury. Which is a shame, right? It shouldn’t be a luxury for a little boy or girl to have a good childhood. It should be a rule, a law, a given. No kid should have to pray for a happy life, you know? It should be a wish that automatically comes true except no child ever has to wish for it because they already have it.

I was a lucky kid. I’m still a lucky gal (woman just doesn’t sound right, I’m sorry) and the people who helped make my childhood the Disney film it turned out to be? With happy endings and all? They’re the same ones now curating memories for me as I get ready to marry my Prince Charming. Specifically? My Granny Jo.

That’s her. I totally ganked this picture from my cousin Sarah’s Facebook page (It was taken at her wedding in 2006), but I love that picture so. It is Granny in a … picture. Shush up! That made no sense. Basically, this picture is the exact representation of my granny’s personality (to ME anyway and you’ll just have to trust my judgment). She is sassy. She is funny. She is kind and good and loves her family like she was born to do it. And she is beautiful.

At my bridal shower this past Saturday, she gave me a gift and after I opened it and spent a few minutes flipping through its pages, Amanda leaned over to me and said “That’s the best gift you’re going to get.”

She is, as usual, 100% right.

This is the fifth family cookbook Granny has made in the past six years. She has made one for each grandchild’s wedding day, starting with the eldest grandkid, my cousin Brian and ending with me, the fourth, but last to get married. I can remember her showing me Brian’s finished cookbook over six years ago, how proud she was of all the pages and how she could master a computer now. I was so excited, so ready for my own cookbook. I couldn’t wait to have something that meant so much to me sit in my future kitchen, to flip through its pages with a baby in my lap, to wipe butter off of the plastic cover as my family and I finish decorating a gingerbread house (apparently the gingerbread recipe in the cookbook is one of my great granny’s famous recipes).

Its pages are magic. Well, magic to me. I guess a bystander who saw the book in a yard sale or something might sneer their nose at it, laugh that anyone would give a quarter for it, but to me? This is it, you guys. Flipping through this book is like stepping back into my Pocahontas velcro sandals and socks (I was a fashion ICON, you guys. Of course I wore socks with my sandals). Each page peels a layer off of me until I am eight years old again, with that gold teddy bear necklace I always wore and a huge orange scrunchie on one wrist. I have my favorite baby doll, a Lee Middleton orginial under one arm and I’m going outside to climb into the treehouse Granny and Grandpa had built for us in their backyard.

There are recipes I remember eating, recipes I remember helping with and they’re all in this book. Some with pictures, like that one, of my Granny Jo or my mom or my Granny Ena. Some have little notes like the chocolate chip pound cake recipe that says (better the next day) under the title. Some recipes are ones that Granny has saved from when she helped my little brother make it for his German class and some are ones I’ve never heard of, recipes Granny found and thought we might enjoy.

They are not fancy recipes. Most of them call for some canned goods or box mixes, but they are ours. They are southern and they are British and they are good. They probably won’t win any Master Chef challenges, but they will be passed around on Easter Sunday and divided into tupperware containers after Thanksgiving.

Throughout the cookbook, Granny has divided the recipes with her own drawings. The grandsons had chefs in their cookbooks and us girls get angels. This one is by far my favorite.

…y’all. That is an ANGEL getting ride to slice that chicken open. I apologize if I have offended any vegetarians, but this right here? This is the kind of stuff my granny thinks up and draws and that is why she is awesome. I mean, there are feathers flying everywhere. AMAZING.

That is the front of the book and it includes a whole “recipe” for a good life. Here, I’ll share it with you because I only have my crappy cellphone to take pictures with and you so need to read this and maybe have it framed in your own kitchen:

1 cup good thoughts
1 cup kind deeds
1 cup consideration for others
3 cups forgiveness
2 cups well beaten faults

Mix thoroughly and add tears of joy, sorrow and sympathy for others.
Fold in 4 cups prayer and faith to lighten other ingredients and raise the texture to great heights.
After pouring all this into your family life, bake well with the heat of human kindness.
Serve with a smile.

That’s the bottom of the cover, featuring pictures of all the women that have recipes in the book (except for my Aunt Sheila, she’s in the book, too!). Just seeing those pictures gives me chills. Especially since I never met two of the women. I wonder if my Great Granny Cameron ever thought, while making her famous chocolate cake, that one day a great-granddaughter of hers would make it for her baby’s first birthday. I wonder if Great Granny Lula ever gave my grandpa, her little boy, one of her fried fruit pies and thought about a third generation eating one. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

And on the inside of the book, on the very first page, there is a sweet dedication about what cooking means, about suffering and working hard and rejoicing and playing by the rules. One of my favorite lines is “It means a crown and a harp, a clear title to an estate in Heaven (what a home I’ll have).” But the last line is good, too. “Then Sam must rise above it all and be a lady, wife and someday a mom.”

She ends the dedication with “We will love you always” and includes a picture of her and my grandpa. It is how they have signed every single birthday, Easter and Christmas card to me and for her to sign a cookbook to me, a cookbook that includes every loved recipe I could ever dream of (even her famous meatloaf which I LOATHED growing up) means so much to me. This is so much more than book of recipes. This is a book of tradition and family and love and she gave it to me for my wedding day, a day that encompasses all of those things, too.

Sigh. She’s a pretty amazing woman and the impact she has had on my life deserves an entire post on its own. But right now? Right now I’m going to flip through this book, smile at my favorite recipes and then nestle it back into the pile of shower gifts I received on Sunday. Because I’m not using anything until we are officially Mr. and Mrs. Sollenberger and that includes the mexican cornbread recipe.

And the fifty million cake recipes. Seriously. There’s even a “lemon icebox cake” recipe, y’all. Talk about southern cooking. Probably need to watch Andy Griffith while I make that one.

Yeah, she’s the reason I know about him, too.