"We aren't cooking Spaghettio's here."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8th7wl2ahc&feature=player_embedded#at=83

When I am plugging in name after name  of  family members and dates, I tend to forget the time frame that I am working in. Two hundred and 50 years ago it was 1761.  I have to make myself STOP what I am doing and think about these people, for a moment.
What were their lives like?  I can get a pretty good picture of their surroundings by looking up their location and reading a description of the lay of the land.
I can look up a time line in history and see what activities were going on in their part of the world, at that time.
What I don't get is a very clear picture of how they, especially women, managed their day to day activities.

I've been to Williamsburg, VA and observed actors showing us how shoes are made and I suspect that I watched someone make soup or bread in an open hearth fireplace.
It's the WHEN that I saw these things that is important. I was young. Much younger than now and I don't think I truly grasped the amount of work that my early ancestors had to put into just, say, creating a meal.

In the video, Mercy talks about how it's not much different than today, it's applying heat to cook the food.
Then the camera pans to the trussed up chicken, the extremely HEAVY iron pots and I know that the application might be the same but the amount of time and energy certainly isn't or wasn't.

I remember going on a couple of trips, with my mother's parents and their friend Helen, to Helen's cottage about two hours north of Shamokin, PA.  It was an old farmhouse with a wood stove, well pump for water, outside the kitchen door and a fireplace in the living room to warm the house.

It was my Grandfather's job to "prime" the water pump which seemed to mean that he got it going and then turned the job over to me, to fill the waiting pails with water.  He would carry them into the kitchen and that's what we used for cooking, drinking water and washing up.

The outhouse was within sight lines of the kitchen window and the rule was, when you had to use it you left the door open, then everybody would know it was occupied.
It was unnerving to sit out in a tiny little wooden hut, with the door open, watching deer moving through the woods, squirrels stopping by to peek in and well, it just seemed a little creepy.

You could visit the outhouse at night with a flashlight. I don't know who in their right mind would do that, I can tell you this little 8 year old didn't. If you used the bucket, under your bed it was your responsibility to take it outside, in the woods and empty it. I'm positive I had the strongest bladder in the world, at that age.
I wasn't going outside and I certainly wasn't going in a bucket!

My grandmother, Beatrice was an excellent cook.  Something, she neglected to pass on to my mother.
I remember watching her put little pieces of wood, into the cook stove and then put a cherry pie or blueberry pie into the oven and it would come out of there, mouth watering good.

I was probably 10 when Helen decided to have a modern kitchen put into the cottage farmhouse. I remember my grandmother and Helen oooooohing and aaaaaaaaaaaahing when they turned on the sink facet and water came out.

My grandfather still primed the pump.  He said there was nothing in the world better than cold well water that you earned, to drink. We put our tin cups under the running water, filled them to the brim, clinked cups and drank our fill.

I love the memories but there is no way I would trade my kitchen for anything from the past. I like all my modern day appliances. And, although my grandmother's cooking skills seemed to have skipped  my mother I think they may have landed with me.

Remind me to tell you about the time I entered every pie category at the Verona State Fair.  I think I came away with a second place.
I know the auctioneer told his wife to be sure to bid and keep bidding on my Jimmy James banana cream pie.  :)