Why do we bake and cook? What draws us to the kitchen? Do you do it because you have to or because you want to? Who taught you to cook, your mom, grandma, a YouTube video? For me it was my mom who taught me all I know, and I love being in the kitchen thanks to the things that she taught me. She also instilled in me a love for history and knowing my heritage. Therefore, I am on a mission to preserve that history through this blog. To start this mission, I interviewed my mother to learn about what being in the kitchen looked like for her as a child.
I asked her a few questions about her favorite memories and
recipes. She told me it was hard for her to choose a favorite and I don’t blame
her for that. It’d be like asking me to choose a favorite book. Almost
impossible! After thinking about it for a while though she came up with some
pretty amazing stories to tell me.
Mom’s favorite heirloom recipe is her Great Grandma Carrie’s
Apple Butter. This recipe is what came to her mind, because it’s a once-a-year
thing to do. She loves it because it isn’t fussy and is possibly the oldest
recipe she has in her heirloom cookbook. Mom loves the smell it creates in her
home, and so do I. This recipe is especially awesome because it takes hard work
and dedication over time to make. To follow the recipe best you need orchard
apples and not the ones from the store. After working so hard on the apples you
get to preserve it to use at a future date. To this day whenever she makes this
recipe it reminds her of memories of home that make her laugh and smile. Growing
up, canning was a yearly thing, both for her and me. She values preserving hard
work and getting to savor it all year round. The apple butter is extra special because
you cannot just buy this at a store or even the ingredients, as it will not
taste the same.
Next, I asked her what her favorite thing her Marie teachers
taught her growing up. This was a hard question to answer but only one thing kept
coming to her mind. When mom and dad got engaged, mom’s grandma Sally told her
two things. “The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” The other
was, “he’s a big boy your gonna have to feed him,” with a lean in and all-knowing
look. Both my mom and my great grandma married a tall dark and handsome man.
She enjoyed this commonality. While growing up, cooking was just what they did.
It was a part of life and not a special thing. When a new neighbor moved in you
brought them a plate of cookies. If someone had a baby you made them a casserole.
Grandma’s comments were an example of the way they thought. They perfectly captured
the way she grew up. You cooked because you had to. A work equals love kind of
thing.
How old were you when you started helping in the kitchen?
For mom her earliest memory of being in the kitchen was preparing dinner for
the family while others in the family did animal chores. She grew up on a busy
farm, with cattle, pigs, and crops. Seasonally they had bucket bottle calves. They
had very busy days filled with bus rides, animal chores, and homework. When she
had supper duty everything was laid out and ready for her to put together.
Although she probably helped her mom in the kitchen before this, she has no
memory of being that young. She was most likely around fourth or fifth grade
when she started working in the kitchen without supervision. For me it was about
the same age. However, in high school I had friends who were not even allowed
to touch the stove unless their parents were in the kitchen with them.
Some of her other early kitchen memories were when she would
get sent to her paternal grandparent’s house to help with canning. One year she
got sent to help pick cherries and it wasn’t very fun, she told me. Her
grandparents had multiple trees that they completely stripped, then they pitted
the cherries to freeze them. Another memory was as far back as she can
remember, at Christmas time at her maternal grandparents’ farm. All the women in
the family would come together, aunts, cousins, daughters and the like. They would
make molded chocolate candies together by melting chocolate in jars using crockpots
and hot water. At the time, crockpots were still a new concept. Another item used
was an electric skillet, which is most famous for frying chicken in.
Listening to mom tell these stories I could see the look of remembrance
on her face. She looked happy as she remembered doing these things with her Marie
teachers. This legacy of love is something she passed on to me and I hope to pass
on to my future children. Although the way we cook and the attitude towards it
has changed, the need has not. People still need to eat. We need to get back to
healthy home cooking. Teaching our children to cook at a young age while they are
easiest to teach. These skills are important to the future of our young
children. Until next time…
Grace Marie
