Grandma Kept Her Ice Cream in the Window

Adversity = Opportunity.  Pffft!  Really?  I don't know if my grandmother would have used those words.  She was though a very clever woman whose resourcefulness as a single mother provided for a big family during the great depression.  She once told me the story of chasing down a rooster in the farm yard to catch and cook because two strangers walked in from the road who hadn't eaten for a few days.  In her later years she lived in a small cottage in our home town.  It was a very old building, poorly insulated and drafty in the winter.  She was very proud of her quaint little place and took care in making it warm and inviting.  Her unique style of decorating included painting over the old linoleum floor with a solid color and then painting a repeating pattern over it using a potato that she had cut into a star shape.



Grandma loved having her grand kids stay over night.  She delighted in serving us treats and one of her specials was a dish of ice cream with a fig newton cookie on the side.  (As an aside the "store-bought" cookie was pretty special to a kid who only had homemade stuff at home - how things have changed!)  The only unusual part of this for me was that Grandma kept her ice cream in the window.  This was only in the winter of course!  There was a space between the inside and outside window above the wash stand.  The inside window conveniently had a latch and swung open on hinges much like a cupboard door.  The cold Alberta winters made this a great place to keep the ice cream frozen.  If I recall correctly the refrigerator didn't have a freezer compartment, so the only time she could have ice cream available was in the winter.

“There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”  Washington Irving

Adversity and miserable circumstances are often the excuses for being miserable, frustrated and feeling helpless.  Not so with Grandma.  She always seemed to find ways to be ingenious in spite of the circumstances.  What examples do you have of turning a hard circumstance into a treat?