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Showing posts with label 3 legged kettle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3 legged kettle. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

The heart of the home is this table right here!



As a young girl back in Nickerson, I recall doing my homework at the dining room table with a coal oil lamp to light my books.  Now you should know that the "dining room table" was the only table that we had and the room we had it in was between the kitchen and the "front room."  The front room was the first room in the house.  Next was the dining room and then the kitchen/wash room/library/what ever else we needed it to be.  On Saturday nights that is where we all took turns taking a bath in a tin tub.  
There were 2 other rooms in the house and they were both bedrooms.  Now back then bedrooms were exactly that!  Mother had the smallest room which held one bed and she slept there with the 2 youngest girls.  The front bedroom had 2 beds, one of which was my fathers.  The rest of us girls slept in the other bed.  Jake was relegated to the floor.  But this is not about where we slept, this is about the dining room table.

We had electricity, but we rarely ever used it, because we were afraid we would wear it out.  The table was a round oak table much like the one I have in my dining room today.  I am sure the chairs were wooden because we could not afford one of those fancy chrome sets that everyone coveted.  There was a green wooden table in the kitchen, but that was for holding pots and pans and such. 

We ate at the dining room table.  We did our homework at the dining room table.  If someone dropped by they were seated at the dining room table.  Usually we sipped on a glass of water from the well.  The icebox was in the dining room by the door to mother's bedroom.  Once a week the iceman came.  We had a sign that was in our front window.  It was similar to the one in the lower right corner.  The iceman would pick up the size block we wanted with his ice tongs and carry it inside and place it in the icebox.  The money was always left on top of the icebox.  A new block of ice was always a treat because it was so clear and square.  We used to follow the ice wagon on hot days as cool our feet in the water that came off his melting load.  I digress!
  
I tend to get off subject.  The point is that the dining room table was the heart of the home and life has not changed that much.  Kenny and I had not been married very long when we decided we needed a new table.  We went down on Union and found an antique round oak table that suited us perfectly.  Since he was working in Denver we went to the oak furniture store and purchased 6 straight backed chairs and we were in business.

Shortly after that, my mother came for her first visit.  She lived in Hutchinson, Kansas and as I recall she rode the train to LaJunta where I picked her up and brought her home.  She was very happy to see the round oak table and the 6 oak chairs.  She set down and started to reminisce.

"This is the heart of the home.  It is here that everyone gets together to eat and it is where all important decisions are made.  It is here that the family comes together.  It is here that company visits.  This table is where happiness and sadness are always discussed."  And she was right.

When someone comes to my house, even today, we set at the table.  The couch and recliners are only used to watch television.  The heart of the home I grew up in was always the table and it still is today.  Whether it is dinner for 20 people or a cup of tea with a friend, it all happens at the table.  I have a breakfast bar with stools that are never used.  I have an office, but I pay my bills and do my correspondence at the table.  Mail is put on the table.  It is the center of my existence.

My mother has been gone many, many years, but the table will always be where I see her most.  She used to set at that table and work her crossword puzzles.  I can not work a crossword any where but there.  I miss my mother every day of my life.  It never gets better.  Someone asked me once, "How long do you mourn when someone dies?'

My answer to that is "forever."  How could you ever forget the woman who gave you life?  Things come and go, but mothers and dining room tables are forever.  I have pictures of my mother and Kenneth's mother beside my front door.  They are the last thing I see when I leave and the first thing I see when I close the door when I return.

I realize that someday, I will no longer be here.  No doubt there will be an auction and the dining room table will go to a new home, but that is alright, because I will be at the big table across the great divide with my Mother and all my grandma's and there will be a giant table that has room for all of us.

Kinda looking forward to that!


Thursday, July 16, 2020

What good is a hog head without a hog?

I woke up with Kathy Matea and this song on my mind this morning, fixed Bret his "to go sandwich" and then turned on the computer.  Now how my little mind made the leap to an old dish called "scrapple" I do not know.  What I do know is I used to do quilting for an older lady and she had put together a cookbook of old recipes.  Now if there is one thing I like, it is food.  And I dearly love to try to replicate the old dishes the older folks used to make.  My mother could make as a four course meal out of a spider web, an apple and 3 pounds of imagination.  Times were sure rough back then, but like my husband told my mother one time, "You can never tell by looking at her today that she EVER missed a meal." 

I can recall back in my Nickerson days, that dad always had a pig or two in the pen.  When the time was right the old iron 3 legged pot would be filled with water and a fire built under it.  The pig would be caught, trussed and tied to the tripod which stood over the 3 legged pot and it's throat would be slit.  When it had "bled out" it would be lowered into to the boiling water and then taken back out and gutted.  It was then moved to a very big table and everyone had a job.  Sometimes us kids were "allowed" to scrape the outer skin to remove the hair. 

I think the meat was taken into town to the locker plant when it was wrapped.  We had only a small icebox back then so there was no storage at the house.  The skin, feet, and head remained behind.  The black kettle was cleaned and the fat cut into small pieces and thrown into the pot.  The fire was stoked back up and the fat was rendered giving us lard.  When the fat was rendered there were crisp skin pieces left that were called "cracklings".  To my way of thinking that was the very best part.  The best ones were the ones that bubbled from the heat.  Those were especially crispy.  Cracklings were used to flavor beans, cornbread, and of course for eating.  The ears and the tail were pickled as were the feet.  The jowls were salted and put in the cellar to age into bacon.

But the head!  The head was put back into the 3 legged kettle, which was now scoured clean.  It was covered with water and a fire built under it.  The lid was in place and it was left to simmer all night.
The next day it was allowed to cool until it could be removed from the kettle.  The skin was discarded (that means the dogs got it) and the eyeballs, brain, and everything else except the meat was fed to the dogs.  This left mother with the water it was cooked in and the few bits of meat that had escaped . 

With all the stock now clean she  now stoked up the fire and threw in sage, salt, onion, a bay leaf or 2 and corn meal equal to the stock.  This required a lot of stirring so it did not stick.   In due time it was pronounced "done" and the "scrapple" was now dipped into loaf pans and moved to the lower part of the root cellar and allowed to cool.  When it was cool it was wrapped and taken to the "ice box".  That stuff would keep forever.  Mother would slice it in one inch slices and brown it in very hot lard.  It was served with maple syrup and it was the best food in the whole world.

Mother went to the Salt City Business College in Hutchinson and got an office job in Hutchinson.  Of course, we moved to Hutchinson down on A Avenue.  When we left Nickerson, mother took one look at the 3-legged iron cook kettle and never looked back.  She now had running water, gas heat, indoor plumbing and electricity that was in every room of the house.  The old coal oil lamp was left on the table.  The door was closed, but not locked because we had years ago lost the skeleton key.  We were city folk now.


Today I miss my mother, but there is not a day goes by that I do not.

Another year down the tubes!

Counting today, there are only 5 days left in this year.    Momma nailed it when she said "When you are over the hill you pick up speed...