Beech Tree News Network

Growing up, I never did much cooking.  My sister-in-law, Charlotte, tells stories of standing in a chair cooking things for dinner after she got home from school each day.  Garey’s mom, Agnes, worked a public job at the time.  Charlotte was age seven when the responsibility of preparing some of the evening meal was passed on to her.  Agnes wouldn’t let her fry anything; she fixed mostly peas, beans and potatoes.  By the time Charlotte reached middle school age, she was fixing fresh green beans in a pressure cooker, and did quite well at it too, until that afternoon she fell asleep on the couch during the process.  It took her several minutes to scrape the beans off of the ceiling, but she was able to do it before her mom got home, and Agnes was none the wiser, until sufficient time had passed to make the telling of the incident rather humorous.
I envy Charlotte the confidence that was placed in her at such an early age.  My stepmom didn’t want us in the kitchen.  To be fair, she had a large family to cook for, and the distraction of extra kids in the kitchen would have been frustrating.  She was and still is a very good cook, which seems a bit unusual for a woman who felt more at home in the outdoors than in the kitchen.  Garey taught me how to cook basic things after we were married, but there were things that I had grown up eating that only my stepmom knew how to fix.
I would call her, and she would walk me through the process over the phone.  If it were a dish that she didn’t have measurements for, she would fix it as part of her and Dad’s next meal, measuring out flour or oil or spices that she usually just guessed at, so she could tell me over the phone how much of something to add.  It is amazing how much you can learn from the human voice.  We didn’t have video chats, directions had to be very specific, and Mom was an expert at giving them.
Spaghetti and meatballs came with directions not to drain all of the fat from the meatballs before they were added to the tomato sauce—the flavor was in the fat.  Pineapple upside down cake had an extra tablespoon of butter to keep the cake intact as it slid from the iron skillet.  Every time she tried to measure out a recipe for a pumpkin pie, she always ended up with two pies, so that’s the way I make pumpkin pie to this day, as a pair of pies. 
Agnes walked me through her fair share of entrees and desserts over the phone.  I will never forget the day she taught me how to make kraut in a stone crock.  Kraut is basically cabbage and salt that is left to its own devices to ferment, but there’s a definite procedure to it that involves a lot of shredding and salting and packing and weighting and checking.  I’m exhausted just thinking about it, and I know Agnes was worn out from all the questions and phone calls that came during the during part before the kraut became kraut.
I also learned to make fried apple pies from Agnes over the phone.  I remember puzzling over the term “stiff dough,” and wondering how much sugar “takes the tart out of the apples.”  Was a spoonful of dough an exact teaspoon or a heaping teaspoon, and how thin was thin when it came to rolled-out dough?  These were quandaries that are hard to answer without a visual, but Agnes was very patient with me, and after a few tasteless- as- shoe- leather pies, I finally got the hang of it.
The thing about learning anything from someone who is trying to talk you through it, whether it’s a technology geek trying to help you remove a computer virus or an air traffic controller trying to help you land an airplane, the fact is that eventually you have to believe in yourself enough to complete the task.  I learned a lot from Mom and Agnes over the phone, and what I learned went way beyond Sauer Kraut and pumpkin pie.  I learned to trust my own wings.