I have a few treasures from my grandmother’s kitchen: her metal measuring cups, a buttery yellow mixing bowl, and her famous pound-cake recipe. A few years ago, when I dropped one of the mixing bowls and it shattered splintered sunshine on my apartment floor, I cried. Sweeping it up felt like sweeping shards of her into the trash. But there’s something I treasure even more than her well-worn tools or secret recipes: her legacy of hospitality—passed down like a precious heirloom wrapped in crocheted lace.
 
My grandmother was no Martha Stewart and for this I’m grateful. I tried following Martha’s directions once to make pretty little chocolate bowls for Valentine’s Day. Let’s just say that the directions included dipping balloons in warm chocolate, and that the result looked a lot more like an abstract painting (read: flung chocolate on the walls) than the beautiful edible bowls graced with dainty raspberries on the magazine page I’d torn out.

My grandmother’s hospitality was not Martha’s kind. No ornamental paper lanterns hung from trees, no flouted phyllo-dough hors d’oeuvres, and certainly no edible chocolate bowls. Lois’ hospitality wasn’t the kind meant to impress well-to-do neighbors, or to barb another woman with a twinge of jealousy.Read more