Apples and Thyme ~ a celebration of mothers and grandmothers and time spent with with them in the kitchen

This is my entry for Inge's and my first "Apples & Thyme" event. I would like to add...first of many!I have procrastinated writing this entry as it is extra difficult. As most of you know, my mother passed away five weeks ago. My mother had one of the most intense loves with cooking that I have ever seen. I am not quite ready to write about her influence as it feels too raw still.

Since it is November 8, my mother's mother's birthday, it seems fitting that I write about her. My Nana, as we called her, was born and raised in rural (and I mean RURAL) West Virginia in, I think, 1902. Her birth name was Jennie Belle Knotts. She was one of many in long line of Jennie Belles (I have seen the many generations of them in the graveyard). When I was born, my Nana was suffering from some depression, so my parents decided to name me Jeni to cheer her up (they chose the different spelling.) She was from a real hillbilly family. Her mother died when my Nana was about two years old, but as she was the youngest of about 7 children, her elder siblings raised her. She grew up barefoot (except in winter), wild and riding horseback through the country bareback. Her grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian and the rest of her family was a mix of Northern Europeans who first arrived in America in the 1590s in what is now the Maryland area. (A fascinating family history!) Sadly, all of her brothers and sisters took after her parents and died by the time they reached 50 years. My Nana, the strongblood, lived into her 80s, and thankfully so, as we have so many wonderful memories with her.

I went with her once to see where she was raised and it was still remote and wild in the early 70s. The mountains were steep, full of cougars and deer, with lots of rivers and streams, or "runs" as they call them there. As we approached the house she was raised in, crossing the run, the two men sitting on the front porch grabbed their shotguns and pointed them at our car as clearly we were strangers and not to be trusted. My mom calmed them down and told them that her mom just wanted to see the house she was born in. The lowered their shotguns but didn't dare take their eyes off our every move. As a 13 year old from New England, this was like being in an old Western movie or something from the Twilight Zone.

Knowing where my Nana was from and what she made of a very rough life (her life got more difficult after she left West Virgina) my respect grew for her as I aged. Despite a very challenging life, she was always so sweet, nice, generous, and gentle. She only wanted to take care of others. My mother would tell me stories about her mother taking food to hungry people during the depression, or taking in homeless or poor people and giving them a bath. As times got easier her focus was on feeding her family and her grandchildren.

My memories of her in the kitchen are all so wonderful, like:

• Making pies - any kind of pie, with whatever was coming out of their orchard, bushes or vines.


• Peeling apples, spooning out the fruit to us as small children while we "tweeted" and pretended we were birds.


• "Unfastening Beans" as I called it when I was little - or shelling beans.


• Canning - she and my grandfather would can and/or freeze everything from their garden.


• Using the old, hand-crank meat grinder.


• Frying, frying and more frying.


• Always filling up a little jar on the stove with leftover grease after the frying. (Everything was cooked in some kind of pork fat usually.) Yummy!
  

I smile when I remember that she was always wearing an apron and often had a cigarette going while cooking. Even when she was very old and suffering from some dementia, she would have a cigarette either hanging from her lip or her hands or sitting in an ashtray next to the stove. We were always reminding her that her ashes were falling. (I wonder how many ended up in the food!)

One cooking tradition I have always maintained from her is fried yellow squash. Whenever I see the first ones hit the market, I slice them in thin rounds, toss them in cornmeal and flour, salt and pepper and fry them. I remember eating them as soon as they came out of the pan when she would make them.

She influenced me, like my other grandmother, to be patient, that cooking was a labor of love, not to be rushed, but to be enjoyed. Whenever I "unfasten" beans or peel apples, I sit, as she did, with a big bowl on my lap, in the quiet of the kitchen or the fresh air outside and work calmly at my task. It is very zen for me, and for her, it was her peaceful time, before the grouchy husband got home, before the crowd showed up for dinner, when she could truly be alone with her thoughts and peaceful surroundings.

Thank you Nana for passing on the feeling of peace that cooking gives me. Happy Birthday!