An anthropologist studying Eskimos concluded: “A flea couldn’t survive on what an Eskimo wastes.” That anthropologist would have come to the same conclusion if she’d visited my grandmother’s kitchen. Everything that entered her kitchen and garden were put to use, converted to a new use, or returned to its original state.
The butcher’s coarse brown string righted a flagging tomato; small coffee cans became bread pans; and large coffee cans ringed newly planted tomatoes, serving as a barrier to hungry cutworms.
Every scrap that wasn’t a meal, from cucumbers and potato and carrot peels to coffee grounds and eggshells, all ended up in a large covered bucket outside the kitchen door. On her next trip to the garden, the entire contents were soon buried and back at work fertilizing the place they had just vacated.
From garden to kitchen to garden – this was the rhythm of her day.
But not everything returned to the garden. Watermelon rinds became watermelon pickles. Cucumbers became bread and butter pickles, while others surrendered life on the vine to make a comeback as crunchy dill pickles. Apples, raspberries, blackberries, apricots, chokecherries and mulberries starred in butters, jams or pies.
What was ripe and needed to be picked and canned dictated her days. She harvested and packed peas, carrots, corn, tomatoes, zucchini, okra, green beans and beets into sterilized Ball jars. She’d lower them into a boiling water bath to vacuum-seal them for the long Minnesota winter. When she heard the seal of success, the PING of the Ball lid sealed in place, everything went down to the cool, dark root cellar. Once jars were all lined up, I would sit and eye the canned contents, the promise of thousands of happy meals to come. (See my Blessay “Appetite.”)
Water was a precious commodity in her kitchen.
One faucet at the kitchen sink brought water from the cistern. I had no idea what a cistern was until Grandma took me to the root cellar and held me up to see this dark room full of rainwater.
I never saw anyone get so much use out of so little water. In the morning she would fill two large stainless steel bowls that fit her double sink. She used the first bowl to wash the breakfast dishes; the other held the clean rinse water. After lunch she’d reheat the rinse water and wash the lunch dishes. That water lasted all day. Its final use? The garden.
During hot Minnesota summers and droughts, she wasn’t learning to conserve water like her neighbors, she was simply doing what she had always done.
Saturday night was bath night. Sequential bathing worked best: the cleanest went first, and the dirtiest went last. Grandma drew one tub of bath water; you saved the water for the next bather. Who got the first bath? A quick inspection behind the ears helped determine the order.