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PatchWork |
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PatchWork |
Last Updated 09/06/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
Pressure
Cooker And Summertime
Is there anybody out there who still picks
green beans, sits on the porch stringing and snapping and piling up a dishpan
full, slams ‘em in a hot water bath, crams them in glass jars, screws on lids
and sets ‘em in a pressure cooker on a hot stove????
Oh there probably is somebody who still cans green beans and maybe other
stuff like squash, peaches and tomatoes, but I’m willing to bet not too many
folks are willing to work that hard anymore.
When I came through the backdoor, holding onto
Mother’s old pressure cooker with one hand and carrying the top with the
little pressure gauge in the other. Tom
said something to me that he’s said several hundred times in our lives
together, “Joyce…..what in the Sam Hill is that thing and what are you fixin’
to do with it?”
“Didn’t your mother ever can?”
“Can? Can what?”
“Everything that she could find in the way of
food. Why in the summer time my
Mother just lived to pack stuff in glass jars and cook the contents under
pressure. Dad was always afraid
she’d blow herself up like one of neighbors did.
I remember hearing about Eva Mae’s cooker lid blowing off because she
built up the pressure till it busted the latches.
They said there was canned corn sticking all over the kitchen ceiling and
Eva Mae was lucky that she didn’t get burned bad.”
I set the cooker down on the kitchen cabinet
and started to work on the dirt-dauber nests clinging to the wire rack inside
and covering the pressure valve on the lid.
In spite of being nearly 70 years old, the thing looked to be in good,
used shape. Mother always did take
good care of whatever she had and besides this old canning device was built to
last, like stuff used to be. I had no intention of using the cooker, I just
decided to take down to my booth at Hometown Antiques and see if anybody wanted
to buy it.
As I washed and dried the pressure cooker,
mentally I traveled back 70 years to a time when just getting something to eat
wasn’t nearly as easy as driving through a fast food place.
During
late spring and through the summer long rows of green beans, trailing vines
heavy with green cucumbers, yellow squash, tomatoes, English peas, sweet corn,
tall plants loaded with okra were there for the picking, cooking and
eating and canning. In the fall
there was pop corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes and turnips.
Orchards always seemed to be loaded with cling and freestone peaches, and
pears. Often there was a big dewberry patch. My mother canned everything we
couldn’t eat at the time.
There was always somebody shelling peas or
cutting up peaches or slicing cucumbers. I loved those cucumbers soaking in
brine getting’ ready for Mother’s quick hands.
I remember grabbing a pickle out of the big crock where it was floating
in a salty, garlicky bath and running into the yard to swing and enjoy delicious
bites. Another favorite of mine was
pickled peaches, each with a clove stuck in the side. My sister, Audrey made those and when I visited at her house,
she always gave me a jar to take home.
Before the canning took place, a washtub was
filled with warm water and I was handed a wash cloth and a cake of lye soap.
“Your little hand can get into the jar and do such a good job,” my
mother told me often. And I would
beam under this great compliment and sit on the floor and scrub away.
Mother was tricky like that. She
made me feel like I had talents that were the envy of everybody.
“Here, Hon, will you thread this needle for me. Your eyes are so much
sharper than mine.” After I had rushed to poke the slender thread through the
needle’s eye, she’d say to Dad. “Just
look at that, Gene! She did it the
first try.”
The hoard of food, preserved in glass jars, was
stored in the cellar where it could enjoy a more moderate temperature than it
could above ground. Therefore when
the spring storms drove us from the house to the protection of the cellar,
somebody would always say, looking at the shelves packed to the ceiling with
full jars, “Well, we’ll never starve to death, if the house blows away.”
No, I doubt there is much canning going on
today. We’ve grown used to
letting the Jolly Green Giant grow, shell, and can our peas.
Can openers are cheap and they last a long time.