Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson

Author:Crystal Wilkinson [Wilkinson, Crystal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Published: 2024-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

When I call Uncle Sherman for the cobbler secret, he says, “You know how to do it, don’t you?” He tells me the secret is in the crust. “Don’t work it too much,” he says, or it will be tough. He tells me, “Work your lard or shortening into the crust with a fork until it looks like meal, then pour your water in. I make sure mine is cold.” I close my eyes and I can hear Granny in his voice. Pour your filling in. I ask him if he uses cornstarch or flour for thickening. He says no. I want to keep the subject to the blackberries, but he reminds me how to can tomatoes and green beans. That Granny dried her own apples on tin to make fried apple pies, and we remember pawpaws and mulberries and hickory nuts and walnuts. Though the homeplace has been sold for many years now, he reminds me where the best blackberries are on the property, where the walnuts are, where the fattest hickory nuts are, and where the small ones grow that taste best. We remember a cellar full of canned blackberries so there’d be cobbler even in winter. I tell him I make both the traditional cobbler and the quick one.

“You and Aunt Lo come the closest to making cobbler like Granny,” I say to him.

I think of Aunt Muff and Aunt Naomi, who I’m out of touch with, and I know they lean into Granny, too, when they cook.

“I bet Lo does better than me,” Uncle Sherman says, but I can hear him grinning with pride.

I imagine Grandaddy’s thick fingers around the handle of a pail of blackberries or on a hoe in the field. Imagine Uncle Sherman’s hands working at IBM for all those decades or his hands pulling on the reins of all those horses he’s trained. Then I see those same working hands, gentle, flipping the crust onto a perfect cobbler, sprinkling that tablespoon of sugar on top before he slides it into the hot oven.

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