How do we prepare for severe weather in Minnesota?
We go to the store.
I brought the necessities home and carried them from the attached garage, through the entryway, and into the kitchen because it’s conveniently located. I grew up taking a similar path, except the garage was a shed located a respectful distance from the house.
My wife was going through old church cookbooks and trying new recipes.
I was cautious but hopeful – as wary as anyone who has ever had a large spoon holding an unknown substance pushed toward his mouth and accompanied by the question: “Does this taste funny to you?”
I don’t have an adventurous palate. I grew up in a home where the hottest spice available was ketchup.
The kitchen that kept me company during my boyhood was one of those thin places where heaven and earth met.
In cold weather, a woodstove and a cookstove combined to create enough heat in the kitchen to cause drowsiness in the most wide-awake person.
We had a refrigerator that was nearly my Grandma’s age. I kid. It was older than Grandma. That ancient refrigerator used a walker and needed regular defrosting. Defrosting a refrigerator was a project. It was all hands on deck for that job, which wasn’t as much fun as frosting a cake. The fridge was unplugged, and all the food was removed and stored in coolers or stomachs. Mysterious fodder of unidentified colors were tossed together in a hotdish or discarded. Towels were placed strategically to catch the water, and the ice melted naturally with the refrigerator door wide open. A noisy floor fan was aimed the fridge’s way to speed the process. Once the most recent Ice Age had ended, the fridge was cleaned and dried thoroughly before being plugged back in. Then the surviving foods of appropriate colors were shelved in an orderly fashion inside the refrigerator.
The kitchen always smelled like baked goods because my mother was always baking. I could almost taste the smell, which by itself warmed me on a frigid winter day.
Cake doughnuts (sometimes fancified with sugar or cinnamon), pies, rosettes and sugar cookies. There were days when flour covered everything that didn’t move.
Hotdishes were served in a casserole dish. Potatoes of all kinds, including potato pancakes found a prime spot at the table. Mom knew her way around gravy.
She kept bacon grease in a jar. Everyone needs a hobby.
Like most good cooks, she downplayed her talents.
When I got home from school, I was given a sugar cookie and a glass of milk as a reward for surviving another bus ride home. I realized I was overpaid, but it didn’t bother me, as I’d agreed to retain all the rights and privileges associated with being precious.
Fueled by milk and cookie, I was able to bound upstairs to my room where I changed into my farm clothes.
Later, after the cows had been milked and while all the outbuildings were still standing, my mother fed me at the kitchen table as if she were readying me for market. The curtain on that meal sometimes came down as a bowl of vanilla ice cream with saltine crackers on the side.
That kitchen table wasn’t just for gluttons-in-training. Serious talks took place at the kitchen table. Those discussions never involved a “cost-benefit analysis,” but they decided the future of the free world. At least the future of my free world.
The kitchen was where the toaster lived, and that was where I did my cooking. I was a wizard with that appliance, playing the toaster as if I were Vladimir Horowitz on his best day and the toaster was a piano. A goofball armed with a toaster can be a dangerous thing, so I concentrated on making toast. I made outstanding toast. Everyone said so. Everyone I kept asking until they agreed.
There was no kitchen without my mother.
But I am a lucky man. My wife is an excellent cook and bakes delectables. The kitchen smells wonderful.
There is no kitchen without my wife. Entering my home-field kitchen is like flying over the rainbow.
Oh, and it has a toaster.
That allows me to reach yet another smilestone.
Life is good.
Photo by Al Batt
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