If you've read any of these stories, you've probably started to wonder where my mother gets some of her... creative problem-solving skills.

Well, she didn't invent them.

They came honestly.

As it turns out, insanity runs in the family, and my grandparents were more than happy to pass it down.

By this time, my grandmother's health had taken a terrible toll on her. My grandfather, Tony, whom we all called Pap, had become her full-time caregiver. He did the cooking, the cleaning, and just about everything else.

One winter, my grandmother asked my pap to make a pot of vegetable soup.

When he asked her how to make it, she gave him some simple instructions.

"Just throw all the vegetables into the pot. Add this and that, and let it cook."

"Okay," he answered dutifully.

Time passed.

And passed.

Finally, my grandmother called into the kitchen.

"Hey Tony! What's taking so long?"

"It's coming!" he called back. "I'm cooking it!"

Finally, he carried the bowl into the room and set it in front of her.

She took a spoonful.

Chewed.

Stopped.

Then looked up at him.

"Tony... what the hell is in this soup?"

He looked down into the bowl and started rattling off everything he'd put in.

Then he paused.

"Walnuts."

She stared at him.

"Walnuts? Why would you put walnuts in vegetable soup?"

He shrugged.

"Well..."

"You know..."

"From soup to nuts."

To this day, I'll never know whether he was making a joke...

Or whether he honestly thought walnuts belonged in vegetable soup.

Of course, that wasn't the only time my grandparents' cooking led to a memorable story.

Growing up, we never threw away plastic food containers.

Now growing up, we never threw away plastic food containers.

If you finished a container of ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, or Cool Whip, you washed it out, dried it, and put it in the cupboard.

They weren't empty containers anymore.

They were Tupperware.

Whenever someone made a big pot of soup, spaghetti sauce, chili, or anything else, it got divided up into those one-quart containers, frozen, and passed around the family.

Growing up, we lived paycheck to paycheck. We weren't destitute, but there were times when money was tight enough that if someone in the family sent food over, it was always appreciated.

One day, my grandma sent over what everyone thought was soup. My Uncle Donnie was staying with us at the time, so there was one more mouth to feed.

After a while, Donnie said, "Hey, Mar... how about that soup Ma sent over?"

My mother pulled two frozen containers out of the freezer, dumped the solid blocks into a pot, put the lid on, and turned on the burner.

After a while, she checked them.

They looked exactly the same.

She put the lid back on and gave them more time.

Still nothing.

Eventually, someone took a closer look.

There was no soup.

Those recycled containers weren't just used for leftovers. We also filled them with water and froze them to use as ice blocks in coolers whenever we traveled or took food to someone else's house.

My pap hadn't sent us two containers of soup.

He'd sent us two containers of ice.

Talk about a letdown.

Looking back, those old recycled containers probably caused as much confusion as they saved money. But that's just another one of those little family stories that still makes us laugh all these years later.

So yes... insanity definitely runs in the family.