Apple Butter Mea Culpa

When I was very little, my mother took me and my brother Jon to the grocery store. In the seventies it was not uncommon for stores to display canned goods stacked in large pyramids at aisle end caps and, well, kids will be kids. I reached my little hand out, grabbed a can from about mid height and yanked it out, causing a cacophony of collapsing cans that sent them rolling across the store in all directions. Every head in the store swiveled toward me, including my mothers. I looked up, knew immediately I was in trouble, and for some reason, perhaps hoping for distraction from my predicament, decided to yell out "please don't beat me!"

This began a long line of slanderous abuses my mother has suffered at the hands of her children that continues as recently as my last post. Of course my mother never beat me, but a dozen or so strangers thought she did at the grocery store that day. I asked her when we visited for Christmas what she though of the apple butter post, and her brow furled a bit, and she told me that I was wrong about her "cheater" method. She never cooked down store bought apple sauce. When she told me she cooked down a jar of applesauce in the slow cooker she meant her own home made, and I almost immediately saw my mistake. 

70's mom.

For a moment I was relieved. I was really very upset to hear that something my mom made that I really loved was not as authentically mom as I had thought. But soon after guilt swept in its place. I felt terrible for maligning my mother's good name. She said when we were kids, mom and dad were "Whole Earth Catalogue hippies." They grew a large garden and mom made so much of what we ate everyday from it, including catsup, which her spoiled rotten children complained about regularly, as it was nothing like Heinz 57. She also went on to remind me that when Crisco became available for housewives in the south like my aunt Bobby, it was a replacement for lard in things like biscuits and a huge convenience item and meant that you weren't out of biscuits when you ran out of lard (which you got from rendering fat from the hogs you raised yourself). And the truth of the matter is, you will never
make a biscuit as flaky and tender with butter as you will with Crisco (or lard). And so the guilt deepened.

More 70's mom with a sliver of
skinny dad.

So I am at the computer to apologize for besmirching their kitchen habits. The fact is, I write about my mother, my aunt Bobbie, and my Nana with frequency because they are tremendous cooks, and I have been influenced so much by their skills in the kitchen. I would not be a chef today were it not for them. And even though I cook professionally in a very

Eurocentric style these days, you don't have to look very hard to find deep down southern technique imbedded at the root. 

My mother kept me fed and healthy growing up. If that weren't enough, she gave me the seeds of my career and a cooking ethos that has helped me discover a style of my own that is not forced or trend driven, but honest and self aware. I can never thank her enough for providing such a strong foundation to build from. If there are better habits to use as the foundation for kitchen skills than those borne of the American south, I am hard

Great aunt's from the left: Gladys, Mae,
my Nana Lora, Phillys, and Bobby

pressed to identify them. It is certainly true that if you are to grow up poor, it is best to do so in a home that has a good southern cook in it. And a couple of Whole Earth Catalogue hippies don't hurt either.