LOL it's like we were in the same house.
My grandfather I knew had his mechanics licence sometime into his 70s or 80s. Just popped the hood on a car and jumped right in. That was until they "ruined cars when they got all this Electonic Fuel Injection crap and away from a good old fashioned but always working carburetor."
And yes, my grandmother made FOOD. Potatoes and vegetables with every meal unless it was something weird like pizza. He lived until he was 92 but she got Alzheimer's in her late 60s. Frig, lived until her mid-80s on the most horrible and wretched slow slip of a human body you could ever imagine. Slow forgets of a few things to names to confusing people to sitting in a special chair that sat back with her head held up at a home. Body just held on despite her mind-melting. Completely unable to speak and her eyes were just...empty. An incredibly strong-minded and bodied woman reduced to like 90 pounds by the end. I would rather somebody put a bullet into my brain before going through that.
My mother started kicking me off to them for summers and holidays when I was a kid because she wanted to keep partying with her friends. At fourteen she kicked me there until I was seventeen. All things considered, it was one of the best things ever because I ate a hell of a lot better with them than I ever did with her. It was hell learning to eat bean sprouts and eggplant and what was naassstyyy vegetables at first but once I got past the lack of sugar and fake taste of the shit food I was getting with my mother, I got to eating food that was GOOD for me. And just like you, she made her own pickles from her garden. Tomatoes, green beans. Without all the fake sugar and preservatives, her food was incredible. The deserts she baked from scratch with recipes that came from England on a boat with her mother.
Ohh man you just HAD to bring up properly made food. It's been too long. I'm not sure you can get vegetables that aren't depleted of their vitamins from two hundred growing seasons.
