Grandma's Kitchen

"A house is not a home unless it contains
food and fire for the mind as well as the body."

-- Margaret Fuller

When the sweet flavor of "real” butter crosses my taste buds, I savor the smooth, light-yellow smear, with the subtle hint of salt.

My Norwegian Grandmother Bergina’s eighty-year-old, arthritic hands perfectly blended her homegrown flavor. Her butter was always home-churned, never store bought. As this butter melts into a heavenly slurry on a slice of warm, freshly-baked bread, I am returned to her South Dakota kitchen.

The gigantic, white range was fueled mainly by the previous year’s waste, which was recycled from the corn harvest on the great muddy Missouri River bottoms. The homestead had been chosen for its rich black-soiled fields and was remotely nestled between the small towns of Volin and Mission Hill, South Dakota.

The massive cast-iron wood stove never rested as the belly of energy for baking, cooking, heating pails of hand-carried water and a source of tireless, ambient heat source for the modest, drafty, stick-built, pioneer farmhouse.

When the round, cast-iron port holes on the oven's flat top were cracked opened, the dancing spews of flames shot out like a prehistoric dragon breathing fire out of the depths of its inner sanctum. When not stoked up for cooking, it would offer a blanket of toasty warmth that enveloped the home's working center, the kitchen.

The space served as the family gathering place and the source of mental and physical replenishment throughout the long, hard days on the farm. Family and guests would be found seated on high, worn, rib-backed chairs around an expansive oak kitchen table covered with the ever-present oil cloth.

The wood box in the kitchen was tended by the uncles with a seamless supply of dried corn cobs that would be ingested throughout the farmers; perpetual long days. Occasionally a large piece of wood scrap or olden split log would be fed to this hungry beast. But Grandma skillfully mastered the perfect mix of cobs and wood that would be well suited for each specific cooking task or social event that was anticipated. I still sense her love and passion that emanated from her humped-back body as she shuffled about the kitchen on the thread-bare linoleum floor.

I marvel at the flavors, smells and the many savory delicacies that were produced by such antiquated or rudimentary equipment. Techniques, experiences and years of dedication were ripe with unconscious, culturally-earned skills that contrast to today's new cooking technologies.

The stainless-steel manual churn stood like a shrine, polished, shining and cleaned impeccably with her loving, age-spotted hands. When the churn was not engaged, it stood in the corner next to her walk-in pantry, a noble adornment standing guard to the tabernacle of her culinary mystic arts.

The fresh cow's milk in the butter churn had been dutifully hand-milked that morning by my trusted, single Norwegian uncles (Clarence, Alfred and Harold) from the small herd of Mathison's black-and-white patched Holsteins.

They were allowed to freely graze the pasture, chewing the the new spring growth of ancient native grasses into a moist soft cud to fill their stomachs. Their diet would be only slightly supplemented with last year's hay and crib-stored corn. The pasture's rich variety of grasses pumped the sweetening stroke to this morning's separated cream, similar to the glover flowers sweetening the honey of the industrious bees.

With each bite of hot fresh bread, the taste of her delightful butter lingers from the center of my tongue, then my senses are awakened to the heavenly aroma of fresh bread loaves coming out of this giant's gut, mixed with the breath of the warm, smoky, wood-soaked air.

Recipes were stored on the hard drive deep in her sharp, aging brain. I never remember a single note card or cook book assisting her with her daily masterpieces. A craftswomen of culinary arts never needed a blue print, since life had seared her experienced skill deep by the repetitive motion of decades of her toils.

My mother revered her mother's skills with lifelong feelings of inadequacies, envy and that dreaded quality of jealousy. My mother's demon was her own perception. She possessed the exalted idea that there could be only one master of such culinary delicacies and that one would regrettably have to be her own mother. My mother's culinary skills, no matter how hard she tried would never rise to the level of her own mother's legendary and unattainable, earned gift.

Lefse took on the roll of the "Holy Grail" of that Old Norwegian's kitchen. My mother sought out every tool, technique, roller, flat iron and electric flat plates. The taste, texture and the color could never duplicate or match the imaginary high bar set by the master chef of our grandma’s gastronomic divinity on the southeastern South Dakota plains.

She had been forced into the job of homesteader queen matriarch as early as 1893 at the young age of twelve by the early death of her mother from scarlet fever.

Our mother was obsessed as a small child with the distinct delineation of sexual roles and cultural duties; therefore she watched and listened to her own mother as if she was clairvoyant of her destined future.

One spring Sunday afternoon we were driving out of Grandma's meager farmyard on the weed-lined gravel driveway. As an eight year old "city" kid, I turned to my mother and asked, "Is grandmother poor?"

My mother quickly returned, "No, Grandma's not poor; she's Norwegian."

I love to savor the taste of "real" butter.