On Thanksgiving, I present to you a page which somehow I’ve always read when I’m hungry! ‘n it has never failed to then make me hungrier….
“We always had hams in the kitchen to start with, all the year round, and not just one ham, but a dozen at a time. Two whole pigs hanging up in one kitchen, ready to be sliced for anybody who walked through the door, known or stranger. We had a hen house for years in the back yard, here. Fine white and brown hens, and you should have seen the eggs they laid. Brown, and dark speckly brown, and some almost pink, and all as big as your fist. I can just remember going out and crawling in the straw to the nests while the hen was shouting and flapping her old wings at me, and laying hold of one, very warm, and so big for my little hands that I had to hold it to my chest to carry it back to Mama in the kitchen. Hens have got a funny smell with them, one that comes, I think, from their feathers, just as a man will have his own smell about him. That smell of hens is one of the homeliest smell it is possible to put your nose to. It makes you think of so much that was good that has gone.
But when we used to sit down to dinner on Saturday, it was lovely to look at the table. Mind, in those days, nobody thought of looking at the table to keep the memory of it living in their minds.
There was always a baron of beef and a shoulder or leg of lamb on the dishes by my father. In front of him were the chickens, either boiled or roast, or ducks, or turkey or goose. whatever was the time of the year. Then potatoes, mashed, boiled and roast, and cabbage and cauliflower, or peas or beans and sometimes when the weather was good, all of them together.
We used to start with Grace, all standing up and Mama holding me in the crook of her arm. My father used to close his eyes tight and look up at the stain on the ceiling, holding his hands out across the table. Sometimes when he opened his eyes he would catch me looking at him and shake his fists at me and say I would come to a bad end, in play, of course. Then Mama would tell him to go on with him and leave me alone.
But indeed, so far my poor old father has been so right I have long thought he must have been a prophet.
When we sat down, with me in Mama’s lap, my father would laddle out of the cauldron thin leek soup with a big lump of ham in it, that showed its rind as it turned over through the steam when the laddle came out brimming over. There was a smell with that soup. It is in my nostrils now. There was everything in it that was good, and because of that the smell alone was enough to make you feel so warm and comfortable it was pleasure to be sitting there, for you knew of the pleasure to come.
It comes to me now, round and gracious and vital with herbs fresh from the untroubled ground, a peaceful smell of home and happy people. Indeed, if happiness has a smell, I know it well, for our kitchen has always had it faintly, but in those days it was all over the house.
After my mother had taken out the plates with my eldest sister, my father carved the chickens or whatever was there. My mother was always on the run from the table to the stove to cover the plates with gravy and she was always the last to start her dinner.
“Eat plenty, now,” my father used to say, “eat plenty, my sons. Your mother is an awful cook, indeed, but no matter. Eat.”
There was never any talk while we were eating. Even I was told to hush if I made a noise. And that way, I think, you will get more from your food, for I never met anybody whose talk was better than good food.
After the plates had been polished cleaned with bread that my mother used to cut holding the flat, four-pound loaf against her chest, the pudding came out, and let me tell you my mother’s puddings would make you hold your breath to eat. Sometimes it was a pie or stewed fruit with thick cream from the farm that morning, but whatever it was, it was always good.
And after that, then, a good cup of tea.”
Happy Thanksgiving!!
Hungrier?…. Can you guess the book?…
Tags: dinner table, food, happy thanksgiving, home