Family
Impressions of a Poppy Seed Roll
Bubba's Poppy Seed Roll - Good any way you slice it!
I cannot remember a time when I did not like homemade poppy seed rolls. Yet I know others have stories about never liking them or never even trying them. Of course not all poppy seed rolls are the same and I am sure there are as many stories as there are recipes.
This story happened not long after WWII. A short time after my uncle Johnny married his new wife, my mother (who came to be called “Bubba” through her grandchildren) sent a gift home with her brother – one of his favorite things: a poppy seed roll. When Johnny’s wife and sister discovered the roll they had no idea what it was. Before long they decided it was a joke being played on them and disposed of the roll.
When Uncle Johnny got around to asking the sisters the whereabouts of the poppy seed roll they lied, telling him how much they had liked the gift and that they had eaten it all. Uncle Johnny was beside himself with disappointment and frustration. He demanded they bake him poppy seed rolls just like his sister’s. Rather than accommodate him they confessed that they thought someone used coffee grounds, or worse, and tried to poison them, so they had washed it down the sewer. After much ado about taste and poison, eventually there was a nervous confession to my mom about the incident. Everyone was quickly put at ease when she broke out in uproarious laughter!
In 1983, Mom passed away. For years after I started the “Bubba Roll” business, my aunt and her sister were my best customers… but I do not remember them ever buying poppy seed rolls – just nut, apricot, or prune rolls – mostly walnut.
How about you? Do you have any family episodes relating to new or first impressions of a poppy seed roll?
How does your family say grandma and/or grandpa?
Bubba & Jedo
If you’ve been following our company at all, you’ll already know that the paternal side of my family calls grandma “Bubba” – thus “Bubba’s HomeBaked.” We grandchildren unknowingly misspelled baba, which is Serbian for grandmother. We did a similar thing with our name for grandfather. Dzedo is Serbian for grandfather, but we grandkids spelled it “Jedo.” We were familiar only with the spoken words and never saw them written out, so we spelled them the only way that made sense to us – and none of the adults ever said otherwise. Honestly, I was an adult before I knew any different.
So, what do you call your grandmother and/or grandfather? If necessary, please explain it for us!