Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Cooking my own food

I received an email today from a friend from school who recently had looked me up on FaceBook.  I had mentioned buying a bread machine and she said I must like to cook.   Got me to thinking about it and there are times I did/do enjoy being in the kitchen  and then there are times I'm only there long enough to fix something simple.  But, there is a stereotype of the "bachelor kitchen" with only a month old slice of pizza and beer in the refrigerator.   It seems to be a popular misconception men do not know how to feed themselves or  think that is what a woman is for. 

Made me think about how I grew up in regards to cooking.  The first thing I can recall learning to cook was popcorn.  From the time I was four until almost eight we lived in a small, log cabin at a forestry tower on top of a hill in eastern Kentucky.  A place called Spring Knob.  It was four and one quarter miles from the black top road.  I know this because that is what my Dad always said.  This was from 1958 (Maybe 1957 even) to sometime (September I think) 1961.  

This was a place where electricity had still not found its way.  We had an outhouse sitting out past the tower and a well beside the house.  It was not a 'dug' well but a 'drilled' well so we had to draw out the water with a bailor.  Dad always said the well was drilled into an old coal mine as parts of the year the bailor was filled with about seventy percent water and thirty percent crickets.  Have to put the water in the bucket then clean all the crickets off the top.

But we did have an LP gas stove.  Since there was no electricity we had no refrigerator.  Everything we had was from non perishable stock.  And a lot of it came from the government surplus give away program and was referred to as "commodities".  Powdered milk, powdered eggs and the best American cheese EVER.  Came in a huge, brown box.   I don't know how many pounds it was but to me it seemed huge.

Of course we had a garden every year as well as the garden at my grandparent's where everybody would go while my "granny" and mother would can veggies galore.  I don't recall exactly where Poppy and my dad were at this time but I know neither of them were ever very much involved in gardens from planting to harvesting to canning.  Just the women.  And me.  But, be that as it may, that is a story for another day.

I am not sure just what age I was when my mother started me cooking.  The very first thing I can remember, though, was "popping" pop corn.  Pop corn was the ultimate treat for me as a very small child.  We rarely had store bought pop corn.  We grew it in the garden.  Then we'd pick the ears and let them dry out.   So, when it was popcorn time the first thing someone had to do was 'shuck' the ears then 'scrub' them together to knock the kernels from the cobs.  Once we had enough mother would take me to the kitchen and put some kind of stool, box, chair... something... up in front of the stove. 

She'd bring out a huge (to me)  heavy (to me) cast iron skillet and put it on the front burner.  (Right front as I recall.)  At first she'd light the gas flame and put the bacon fat in the skillet but later she started letting (making?) me do it all.  Once the fat was melted we'd put a few grains of corn in the skillet to judge the proper time to pour the rest of the corn in.  When those few kernels popped it was time.

We'd pour in the rest of the pop corn and quickly cover the skillet with an old, white, enamel lid.  It did not take long for the corn to be popping merrily along and I would stand on that whatever and shake the skillet back and forth holding the lid on with a folded up dish rag.  That is dish towel to those of you not blessed with an Appalachian upbringing.  Once the corn had finished popping mother would pour it into some other container.  I have  no memories at all of what that might be but I'm quite sure she would not have allowed me to eat it straight from the  skillet.

I don't remember whether we put the salt on before popping or after but that, in my memory, was the best pop corn ever.  Nothing today comes close to comparing.  Over the years I've tried all the other pop corn methods.  Jiffy Pop, Air poppers, microwave popcorn.  Still, nothing compares to that old cast iron skillet with bacon fat and home grown corn. 

There have been many cooking innovations in the half century since that time but there is still nothing better for cooking than an old, well seasoned, cast iron skillet.

That was my first cooking memory but sure not my last.  In '61 we moved from there to a little place called West Van Lear so I could go to school rather than living with my grandparents and attending the one room school as I  had done the previous year.  I'm not sure the exact reason but I suspect it may have  been my attendance (or lack thereof) that first year.  Since it was a pretty good walk to school my grandparents would not send me if it rained, snowed, looked like it MIGHT rain or snow or was too cold.  I spent many a happy hour "skinning the cat" on the old quince tree when I should have been in school.

I don't think it hurt me though.  I had said I'd make straight "A's" that year and I did.  Well, almost.  I did get one "B" in effort.  Can't figure why. 

I don't really have any memories of cooking at all while we lived there.  Other than when we'd go to my grandparent's house for canning and I'd get stuck chopping cabbage for sauer kraut for hours.  But I did, at least, get to eat the cabbage cores. 

Then in spring of 1967 we moved back to Nat's Creek where my grand parents lived and where I had been born.  Nothing as far as the eye could see except relatives.  Had to go a good piece to find someone I was not related to.  But, there, I got back into helping mother cook again.  I generally made the gravy of a morning.  Lots of time I fried the bacon and eggs.  When it came pie making time I was the one who did all the stirring of the filling.  And, I was always full of questions about what we were doing and why.  That is where I learned my method of adding ingredients.

I'd ask my mother, "How much should I put in?".  She'd tell me, "Just add it 'til your conscience is clear".  Take that Emeril.  Even now I really do not measure ingredients.  And sometimes I've had an overly clear conscience.  Still, right now, not having really cooked in years I bet I could make fried chicken, chicken grave, home made biscuits and whatever veggies were handy that  you'd lick your chops over. 

So, the foundation for cooking was laid early with me.  When I was married I cooked on Sunday mornings a lot to let my wife sleep in.  I baked the turkey and made the dressing at Thanksgiving.  During the years I was divorced and living alone the Kids and I would make cookies at times.  My cooking was fairly limited then as I had other  problems and food did not seem to be very important.

But, still, I never went hungry.

Now, I'm considered "too messy" by my wife and almost forbidden to cook anything at all.  The way my stomach has gotten that is no big hardship.  Nobody cooks much in this house any more.  I 'nuke'
a potato and slather it with butter most nights.  We get old and times change. 

Well, this short commentary seems to have run long.  I'm sure there will be other (many other) episodes from my younger life detailed (with some names omitted to protect the guilty) here over time.

1 comment:

  1. I still dream of the mexican lasagna you used to make for me. I remember, the first time you made it, it was so hot we downed whole glasses of water between bites.

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