In Grandma's Kitchen is an exciting and heartwarming journey through time, looking at generations of food and the hearth fire, viewed through the lens of one family. Maria Cattell, the author, is both central to this family and a professional anthropologist.
I'm Maria Gleaton Cattell,
daughter of Munsey & Anne.
People know me as an anthropologist...
writer... knitter... gardener... Quaker...
Mom. Grandma.
Once upon a time I lived on a farm in York County, PA,
went to a one-room school,
became a gardener (thanks, Dad)
and a knitter (thanks, Mom)
and learned to cook (thanks to both of you).
Once upon another time I was a wife and mother
who morphed into a graduate student
and lived in Kenya for two years,
doing my dissertation research on aging and older people.
Nowadays I return to Kenya to visit
those once strangers
who now are friends and family.
In this present time I'm into food.
"Termites Tell the Tale" is about how I learned to eat termites in Kenya.
This year, in May, I'm giving a talk to a local group:
"From Three Stones to Replicators: Home Cooking through the Ages."
And now there's this book,
In Grandma's Kitchen: Food and Family in Olden Times,
with stories about my family
and the family recipes the grandkids insisted be in it.
All in honor of my daughter, Kharran,
who loved to cook, to feed her family,
to make her community a better place
by helping to establish a grocery store
emphasizing fresh, local, organic foods.
Kharran died too soon
but lives on in these pages.
Yes, it's toasty warm in the kitchen. It's the coal range. Of course in summer it's too warm, but this time of year it's great. And yes, that's bread you smell. Mom often has fresh bread for us when we get home from school. Do you want crust or inside? When the bread's just out of the oven, we prefer crust. We like it so much we cut off all the crusts‒top, bottom, sides. Slather crust with butter. Eat hot. Yum!
When we get up tomorrow, we'll dress behind the stove. We'll be glad for the warmth. There's no heat in the bedrooms.
Smells like chicken bog for supper. That's chicken boiled with rice so the rice grains gleam with chicken fat and have a rich chicken flavor. It's one of Dad's Southern dishes. And apple pie for dessert. Mom's pies are delish: flaky tasty crust and plenty of fruit. With apple pie there'll be cheese, good sharp cheddar, and Mom's reminder that "An apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without the squeeze." She's a Connecticut Yankee and insists that New England apples are superior to Pennsylvania apples.
Have a seat. We do most everything at this old oak table, cooking and eating, schoolwork, craftwork, sitting around chatting. When the electricity goes off we get out the kerosene lamp. The lamplight changes the kitchen to a world of light and shadows. It changes colors too. Once I was coloring a school assignment by lamplight. Daylight revealed that I had used a purple crayon for something meant to be black.
Welcome to Grandma's kitchen. She was Mom to me but for my kids, she was Grandma: Anna Scofield Gleaton, also known as Anne and The Queen. This was Dad's kitchen too. He was a wonderful cook. Mom said Dad taught her to cook. But he was more of a weekend cook. Mom did the day-in day-out cooking. Her sisters recalled that Anne didn't learn to cook from their mother because she preferred to be outdoors. But in our family Anne-Mom-Grandma was the one who kept the kitchen, day after day, week after week, year in and year out.
And welcome to my world of memory, the world in which I grew up, without TV, without the Internet or cellphones. We didn't look at the world through screens or Google glasses. We were in it, inside it, our world of home, family and food. Welcome to the heart of our home: Grandma's kitchen. As my brother John liked to say to visitors:Come in, come on in.
Welcome all the time! We're always at home.
Many recipes are mentioned in the narrative text. If the recipe is included, its location is indicated thusly: ►Chapter 23.
IN GRANDMA'S KITCHEN:
FOOD AND FAMILY
IN OLDEN TIMES
Maria Gleaton Cattell
Volume I
The Family and the Farm
About This Book
Table of Contents for Volume I
Introduction
PART I. THE FAMILY AND THE FARM
1 Welcome All the Time
Family Tree: Gleaton & Cattell
3 The Instigator: Kharran Ann Cattell
4 Kharran's Cookin'
5 Home Is Where the Heart Is: Our Farm in Pennsylvania
Map: York & Lancaster Counties PA with inset map of the Gleaton Farm in the 1950s
6 Quiet Rebel: Anna Morgan Scofield Gleaton
Map: Long Island Sound & Rowayton/Norwalk CT
8 Behold a Man: Munsey Sinclair Gleaton
Map: South Carolina Counties Relevant to Dad's Story
10 The Gleaton Kids & Their Nicknames
11 Rural Pastimes: Gleaton Kids on The Farm
12 Mickey Won't Eat His Macaroni
13 The Cattell Family
14 Second Generation: Cattell Kids on The Farm
Map: The Gleaton Farm in the 1970s
15 Cisco Saturdays: Sausage & Grits & Redeye Gravy
16 Millennials Rising: Our Next Generation
PART II. ANCESTORS
17 Lives Remembered: Katherine Christina Koch & Harry Ellsworth Scofield
Family Tree: Koch, Scofield & Sheffield
18 Queen of the Kitchen: Nannie's Cookin'
19 Lives Remembered: Julia Agnes Dawsey & William Cinclair Gleaton
Family Tree: Children & Grandchildren of WC Gleaton & Agnes Dawsey
20 The Mikado's Cookin'
21 South Carolina Ancestors
Family Tree: Dawsey, Jenrette & Portervine
Family Tree: Gleaton, Bolin & Salley
Readings of Interest & More Information, Part I
Recipe Index for Volumes I & II
Volume II
Home Cookin'
Table of Contents for Volume II
PART III. HOME COOKIN'
22 Our Culinary Cornucopia: Yankee, Southern, Pennsylvania Dutch &
Good Old Home Cookin'
23 Eat Yourself Full: Pennsylvania Dutch Cookin'
24 Home Cookin' through the Seasons
25 Spring: Persephone Returns
26 Food, Family, Community
27 Summer Time & the Eatin' is Easy
28 Celebrations
29 Fall: Reaping the Bounties
30 Thanksgiving & A Terrible Turkey Tom
31 Winter Pleasures
32 Christmas
PART IV. LET'S COOK: MORE RECIPES
33 Let's Cook
34 Baking: Helpful Hints & Pet Peeves
35 Desserts First: Cake Recipes
36 More Sweet Tooth Recipes: Cookies
37 More Sweet Temptations
38 Bread Recipes
39 Bounty Savers
40 Hearty Eatin': Main Dishes
41 Sides, Salads & Sunday Suppers
42 More Good Eatin'
BACK MATTER
Gratitudes
Appendix I. Arcane Lists
Where did the Gleaton brothers get their names?
Where was MSG (Munsey Sinclair Gleaton)?
Gleaton & Cattell Family Nicknames
What we read on The Farm
Writings of Maria Gleaton Cattell
Appendix II. Songs, Poems & Wordplays: Some Farm Favorites
Appendix III. Finding the Ancestors: Doing Genealogy
Appendix IV. Private Sources of Information
Readings of Interest & More Information, Part II
Recipe Index for Volumes I and II