In this deeply satisfying book excerpt from Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, Crystal Wilkinson explores her upbringing in Black Appalachia, in Indian Creek, Kentucky. Wilkinson recalls the unceasing labor of farm life and her Granny Christine’s love, served up on heaping plates of greens and in slices of jam cake.
But most of my memories of her are nestled in the growing, the cooking, the preservation of food.
Hoeing the garden. Stroking the long necks of the yellow squash. Stirring butter beans in a pot. Pouring hot bacon grease over new lettuce, onions, and cucumber. Canning runner beans.
Every morning of my childhood, my grandmother donned an apron and cooked breakfast. Slow. Precise. Deliberate. She equated food with love, and she cooked with both a fury and a quiet joy. She fried bacon, sausage, or country ham. She scrambled eggs. The eggs came from our chickens. She made biscuits from scratch. The lard was rendered from our pigs. The milk from our cows. She rolled out the dough and threw flour into the air like magic dust. She churned butter, made the preserves from pears, peaches, or blackberries that she had harvested herself.
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