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November 03, 2006
Chapter Three
Back in her kitchen she pulled the last pans of roasted pumpkin from the ovens. Leaving them to cool she tidied the tea service. Instead of putting it away she readied it for the morning. It would be a very late night to bed and few little preparations would make the morning much easier. Just add hot water and the grandmothers would have their morning tea with the least amount of fuss.
Etta knew she would be working until after midnight to prepare all of the pumpkin she had baked. The loss of sleep was a small price to pay for providing one of a kind baked goods at the fall market the following day. The money earned would provide the extras for Christmas for the children. The late evening hours also made her work more efficient. When the children where awake and in the kitchen there was so much going on it hard to accomplish much at one time.
Flour, sugar, eggs, spices, dried fruits and nuts, a splash of orange flavored liquor all went into carefully measured batches of the pumpkin puree. She poured out the mix into prepared loaf pans, small tins, and round cake pans.
Bits of wood were added to the firebox to maintain the perfect temperature in the ovens for baking.
It wasn’t long after placing the baking pans of batter into the oven that the kitchen began to smell of cinnamon and cloves. It was a warming scent and made her smile while she worked. The kitchen was beginning to overheat, one of the reasons she preferred to work in the cool of the night. She raised a window and welcomed the cooling night air as it brushed her skin.
The large pumpkins at the far end of the work table was for the children to carve into jack o ’lanterns for their Hallowe’en display for the booth. Saturday’s festivities were one they were all looking forward too. There would be crafts and food and games set up for entertainment. There would even be a special cake competition she planned to enter.
The grandmothers had finished just last week their work on a quilt that was sure to draw a blue ribbon as well. The children had been fattening up a little piglet for the livestock showing. Everyone in the village was expected to turn out.
Exchanging cooked bread from the oven for pans of batter she left the first loaves near the window to cool while she popped down to the cellar for butter from the spring room. When she returned she expected the night air would have cooled the pans enough she could turn out the sticky loaves of sweet pumpkin bread and prepare the pans for yet another batch of batter.
Lighting a lamp she slipped on an old pair of leather slippers and opened the door that led down to the cellar. The stairs were made of stone and could be slippery if not swept down and taken proper care of almost daily. She picked her way gingerly down the steps walking past the alcove that held bottles of wine, the bins filled with apples and cabbages and potatoes to only name a few vegetables there, passed the area hanging with dried, salted and smoked cured meats to the very back most portion where the trickle of water echoed as the little spring bubbled past her crocks and pots and pitchers. She took an earthen tub of butter to make pastry for her pumpkin pies and returned to her kitchen. The heat of the stoves was a welcome greeting. She had chilled considerable with just that quick of a trip to the cellar larders.
With the butter on hand she expertly rolled out pie crusts and lined her pans with little lost time. She had become proficient over the years with the cooking and baking. The Judge had often urged her to hire a cook for their kitchens and she had steadfastly refused. At times she had hired on a girl or two to help with the preparations and clean up but the actual cooking had always been her job and one she enjoyed to the extreme.
Bread baked away in the brick ovens and the cast iron stoves where ready for the pies. The process of baking the pies would take much longer as she could only bake a few at a time as space allowed.
It would be nearly an hour before the pies were finished and she contemplated taking the waiting pies to the coolness of cellar but decided instead to cover them with a cloth and set the outside of the kitchen door on the bench in cool night air.
Moving to the far side of the work space she turned out the loaves of pumpkin bread onto clean wire racks. Reaching for the sixth loaf pan she stopped short. What she saw at first perplexed her then slightly frightened her. The loaf pan was empty. As if nothing happened she made her way across the kitchen, humming a bit to herself and went into the pantry. There she took down the old shotgun that hung on the upper pegs. The Judge had made her keep a gun in the house, knowing her penchant for staying up late puttering around down there alone.
Her slippered feet made no sound as moved toward the door leading outside. She eased open the big swinging door and then thought better of it. She looked around as best she could in the shadows of the light that spilled from her windows. She could see no one. Quickly she brought in the trays with the pies and bolted the door. Walking the lenth of the kitchen she made sure the windows were secure as well. She closed the opened window and hugged her arms about herself. She felt frightened and a bit vulnerable knowing someone had been outside of her home and she had not known it.
There had never been any problems with prowlers before. Had they lived in the city she could expect during hard times for a pie or bread left to cool might come up missing but here in the country there was little need to worry about such things. Most folks knew that is they approached any of the homes they would be given a meal or at the least bread and butter with something to drink to wash it down with. It was almost an unwritten rule. She couldn’t begin to count the times she had fed men who were simple down on their luck and passing through. She hoped that should any such thing befall any of her own kin that a kindly woman would do the same for them and they wouldn’t know shame for asking for the handout.
The missing loaf began to explain a lot of things that had taken legs over the past week. It also explained why one of the nanny goats who often gave more milk than any of the others had begun to give less than usual. There was someone out there in the night living off what they could steal from her gardens, hens and goats. It wasn’t something that angered her, so much as the fact that had the someone asked she would have freely given what had essentially been stolen from the mouths of her own children. She wouldn’t alarm the children but she needed to alert the grandmothers to what happened. She would also have a talk with that new sheriff that came around periodically. Perhaps he could tell her if others were also missing things or if there were any vagrants or runaways reported in the area. For now all she could do was shake the feeling that made her stomach knot up and finish with the task at hand. She planned to finish and crawl into her own bed as soon after midnight as was humanly possible.
Eventually she did finish. With everything clean and in its place she banked the fires in the brick ovens knowing that when she rose in a few hours the kitchen would still be warm. The work table was laid out with baked goods cooling. When morning came she would wrap them in muslin and paper and tie them with string. The children would be more than happy to help with that chore while she and the grandmothers got breakfast for the family.
There was a bit of pumpkin left over and she covered it in a dish and left it to sit on the table. There would be pumpkin pancakes for breakfast with butter and syrup. She would fry up bacon and make cocoa before everyone got ready for the festival. She also needed to prepare and pack a picnic lunch for them all for later that day. The last thing she did before leaving the kitchen was to slide a venison shank into the roasting oven to begin a very slow cook during the few hours she would sleep until morning.
Posted by Angie at November 3, 2006 10:55 AM