Kitchen Heirlooms
...and why they're more precious to me than money
Old kitchen gadgets. Few things stir in me the sheer happiness that they do. It sounds ridiculous…how can an old cutting board or a plate bring someone happiness? Well, as I’ve said before, it’s not so much the object as it is the stories and memories around the object that make them priceless. Growing up, most family gatherings and holidays were food centric, though I’m not sure any of us realized the importance of it then. I think, as with most families, we always cooked and ate the traditional dishes for whatever holiday we were celebrating.
Easter was the time honored Ukranian practice of preparing ham and hard boiled eggs. Farmer’s cheese and kielbasa and Grandma Mary’s homemade bread…hauling it all down to the church on Saturday night to be blessed. My mom still has the candle my great Grandpa Wasil would stick in the corner of the food basket to light as the priest prayed over all the food. That thing has GOT to be over 100 years old. It doesn’t have much left to burn anymore, but we still put it out every Easter just to feel the nostalgia of it all.
Christmas Eve was at my Aunt Evy’s house and she went all out Italian feast. Baked manicotti and bread and butter and garlic took over the long table. While we never did the whole seven fishes thing, my aunt always made sure to have, I hope you’re sitting down for this one, pickled herring in sour cream and garlic for my Grandma Mary. Guess who had to sit next to grandma in the car, squished into the backset, on the hour long ride home…ding ding ding…ME. While I was devastated by my Grandma Mary’s death, I was NOT devastated to cut the pickled herring from the Christmas Eve menu. Though I do remember it being a very emotional change for all of us. No one was going to eat the damn pickled herring but it felt almost disrespectful to not make it. I honestly think that for a year or two after she passed, we continued to make it and it just sat on the table…no one even brave enough to eat it in her honor. That should say it all right there.
What has always stood out in my mind about preparing meals or gathering with family is that there were certain kitchen tools you just used to make certain things. The corkscrew that was 100 years old or the teacups that were really way too small but I couldn’t remember ever having a cup of tea at Grandma’s in anything else so I just drank two cups instead of using a larger one. I’ve gathered a few of my most treasured kitchen items and I’d love to tell you some stories about them.
My all time favorite thing to have with me in the kitchen is old recipes. If they’re handwritten, my heart will skip a beat and I’ve been known to jump up and down like a four year old on Christmas morning. When my Aunt Linda passed away, I inherited her hundreds and hundreds of recipe cards, all catalogued and labeled in individual metal boxes. There is a strange feeling that follows seeing something written in a loved one’s handwriting after they’re gone that stirs something inside your soul. When I arrived home from my aunt’s funeral a few years ago, there on my counter, was a thank you card from her for some cookies I had sent…if that wasn’t a gut punch I don’t know what is. I opened the card and cried my eyes out right there in my own kitchen and I carry the thing with me in my journal every darn day. What were mere words when they were alive is now somehow some weird sort of connection to them. Aunt Linda had some BIZARRE tastes in food (remember those raisin mashed potatoes…) and her recipe boxes did not disappoint. Will I ever make most of them, no. But every now and then I pull out the index cards and just read through them, always putting a smile on my face.
The rack of McCall’s cookbooks. This thing is PURE GOLD. I have always told Bella that when I die, the jewelry doesn’t matter…take the McCall’s cookbooks. In the mid to late 1970’s, the McCall’s company had several different branches of homemaking products, the most beloved to my heart being the publishing house that brought us this treasured set. As you can see, the cookie book was the most loved, as the binding is long gone and its basically now just loose sheets of paper torn to shreds at the edges. SO many of our beloved holiday cookie recipes came out of this gem, so I will boldly say that this one single McCall’s Cookie Book has shaped literally how mine and my family’s Christmas was celebrated for over fifty years. There are cookbooks in here on casseroles and desserts and salads and pies and literally any food you can think of. Some of them are barely touched and some are falling apart, but the set still sits on my kitchen counter and when I look at it I am immediately transported back to my childhood harvest yellow kitchen filled with Pyrex and CorningWare when the world and life was just simpler…and it does my soul good.
Up next are Grandma Mary’s teacups. Every single cup of tea I ever had at my grandma’s was served in one of these two cups. They are the only cups still around from the set and I’m happy to say that not only have they survived four moves, including one cross country, they have survived life with my kids, who were forbidden to ever even look at them. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I would even let them near the cups now, as adults.
Tea in Grandma Mary’s house was Red Rose tea. I can still remember exactly what the tea smelled like when we tore off that outer layer of cellophane and I dug into the new box. Starting in 1967, for reasons unknown, the Red Rose Tea Company began putting small, ceramic figurines in their boxes of tea. They’ve had owls and bears and elephants and rabbits and turtles and birds and…you get the point. As a kid, I couldn’t wait to break into a new box of tea and see what figurine was inside. My grandma always made sure we used every single solitary bag of tea in the old box before we opened the new one and I believe this is where my anxiety began 😭. I would line them up on her windowsill in the kitchen next to the summer tomatoes we picked from the garden and my little eight year old life was complete. You can still get the figurines from Red Rose online orders…so if you’d like a great cup of tea with some weird figurines I have no idea what you’d do with now, go ahead and order some…if you have small kids, I bet they’d get a kick and some great memories out of it. But these tea cups…any time I want to feel close to my gram, I pull one out and I brew up some Red Rose and I just sit. Is it all completely in my mind…sure it is…but that’s what nostalgia is. These cups bring me right back to her little kitchen and the plastic tablecloth and I’m immediately filled with a small sense of peace. I think I’ll make myself a cup tonight.
Let’s talk rolling pins. I have numerous ones. Some work better for pie dough and some work better for sugar cookies and some have a pattern embossed on them. But if I’m baking holiday cookies or Easter roll cakes or anything that has one single iota of a childhood memory attached to it, I use one of these two rolling pins. The darker one is my mom’s…and the ONLY one I will use for butter cookies. This rolling pin sat perched on our kitchen counter from the day after Thanksgiving until about December 23rd. It has rolled out enough dough to feed the world twice over and it has so much butter rolled into it’s wooden surface over the last sixty years it’s smooth as ice. The lighter one belonged to my Aunt Linda and has rolled out countless pie crusts. My aunt loved to bake pies and cakes…every year she baked my dad some sort of apple cake that he went absolutely bananas about…pun intended. When she passed away, it was one of the first things I asked my cousin if I could have. So Mamma Jo gets cookies and Aunt Linda gets pie crusts and I get to feel like I have all their baking superpowers rolled into one when I use these babies.
Speaking of kitchen tools I asked to take from my Aunt Linda’s house…there are more. My Aunt Linda and Uncle Frank had some of the most beautiful pieces of artwork and ceramics I have ever seen. Did I want any of that when they passed away…nope. Not one single piece. I wanted the kitchen stuff. When my uncle passed last year, I wanted his sketches, but I’ll give that it’s own article later this week. I spent three weeks in New Jersey when my aunt passed away. I cooked for all of us and as I used various dishes and bowls and all the things you need to prepare a meal, all I could think was that these could not be given away. They couldn’t be sent to Goodwill and sold for $3 to some random person that wouldn’t think they were as priceless as I knew they were. My sweet cousin must have seen some weird look on my face because one of the first things she said to me was, “Please, I beg you…take whatever you want from mom’s kitchen…she would LOVE for you to have anything you wanted and I know you’ll treasure it.” She gifted me her Le Creuset dutch oven and baking dishes. Her copper baking molds. She even shipped her entire set of fall dishes to me because they are the ones I remember her table being set with the most. They are now the dishes we use in our home every day in addition to my Grandma Mary’s. I also swiped her round cutting board and her set of biscuit cutters. The cutting board lives on my counter and I don’t know if it’s that they’re marked in her own handwriting or just that I know how often she used them, but those biscuit cutters have formed every round cookie I’ve made for the last three years and I thank my aunt every single time.
I guess everyone has their thing. Some people want the clothes of their loved ones and some want the blankets they used to cuddle up with. I have both of those, too…but the pieces that hit me the hardest and give me all the feels are the things found in the kitchen that help prepare the meals that give us the core memories that become part of who we are right down to our very souls. Every single holiday memory of mine includes something, sometimes many somethings, from the kitchens of all the women I’ve loved and have in some way, shaped the woman I am today. So start giving some thought to what items provoke the fondest of your memories, the ones you wouldn’t be you without. I’d love to hear what things make your own hearts stir, the way these stir mine.
With love and wishes you find happiness in the memories,
Krissi