I fully intended to do a post called “Ode to candy” on Halloween, but my grandmother died unexpectedly, so I obviously wasn’t thinking about candy.

Nanny (the 2-year-old me refused to call her Nana) is really my cooking and baking role model — everything she made was fantastic, and she loved to make things for other people.

Nanny is the one who noticed my OCD cookie-decorating tendencies when I was very young, as the two of us made Christmas cookies together. And I know she was really proud when I won a bake-off at work a few years ago (with a cake that wasn’t too far removed from her delicious coconut cake). She did catering and owned a small restaurant/sandwich shop for a while in a small town in West Virginia, and it was always important to her to get the correct ingredients and make the highest quality food, whether the people eating it appreciated it or not.

Nanny also had a bed and breakfast for a couple of years, and even after she stopped renting out the rooms she would get up early when we visited to have scones and eggs and muffins and quiche and all manner of amazing things ready for us when we got up in the morning.

I am going to West Virginia tomorrow, so I won’t be posting anything until early next week. But I do plan on making a hummingbird cake from Nanny’s recipe when I get back, so I can share it with you in her honor. I think she would like that.