Biscuit Bowls and Conversations

Cheryl Parham is a middle school educator I happened to meet while peddling books at the Prater's Mill Country Fair back in October of last year. She stopped by the authors' tent and talked to me and Janie Dempsey Watts for a few minutes about our books and keepsakes. A few weeks later, she invited me to come to her school and talk to her students about the writing process.

Cheryl Parham shared a story about her mother's Jadeite biscuit bowl. Read other keepsake stories in Project Keepsake.

And so in February, I spent three fun days working with teachers and students at Heritage Middle School in Ringgold, Georgia. I explained my method for writing keepsake stories and encouraged them to write their own stories. Some did, and in the next week, I will feature a few of their stories on my blog.

But I start with Cheryl's story about a Jadeite biscuit bowl. As I read it, I could see the wrinkled hands of both of my grandmothers working dough into buttery biscuits. 

Don't know what Jadeite is? It is a stain- and heat-resistant, milky green glassware that was popular in the 1940s and 1950s. It was commonly sold in dime stores. Sometimes, a bag of flour or oatmeal would include a piece of Jadeite dinnerware in the bag. Wanting to collect more pieces, consumers—like Cheryl's mother—would loyally continue to buy the product brands featuring Jadeite dinnerware. 

I love Cheryl's story titled, "Mama's Biscuit Bowl." What do you think? Leave a comment.

“Mama, guess what happened to Sharon at school today. A bird pooped on her head. Out of all of us kids on the playground, the bird pooped on Sharon’s head. We laughed so hard at her.” 

Mama just smiled as she continued to knead the biscuit dough. Nearly every weekday night you would find me perched on the counter rattling off about my day at school as Mama stood at the counter and made biscuits. I knew the routine by heart. She would get the biscuit bowl from the cabinet. With the flour and sifter already in it, she would set it on the counter, get a snuff glass from another cabinet, walk to the refrigerator and fill that glass half full of milk and then stop by the sink to fill it the rest of the way with water. Our time to talk would then begin.

 Mama was all mine during those years. I was the youngest of eight children, but the closest to me was seven and a half years older. Three of my sisters were already married by the time I was born. The other four were working on it. I grew up—just mama and me. 

As I watched and talked—mostly talked—Mama would sift the flour, hollow out a hole in the middle of the flour, and then scoop three fingers full of Crisco into the hole. After pouring the glass of milky water in as well, she would begin to knead.

“Why are girls so mean? I think I would rather play and talk to the boys at school instead of the girls. They talk about me all the time.”

“People only talk about you when they’re jealous of you,” she explained. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.”

The kneading was done and now she was rolling the dough in soft balls in her hand. I continued to mull over my thoughts as she patted them flat and spaced them equally in rows of three in the bread pan that she had already greased with another scoop of Crisco.

“Mother, I was soooo embarrassed today!”

“Well, what happened?”

“It was very quiet in English class. Everyone was working. I sneezed and pooted at the same time. You should have heard everybody laugh at me. My face was blood red!”

“What did the teacher say,” she asked with a huge grin.

“She didn’t say nothing. She just looked at everybody. They all made fun of me in the hall though."

“Oh well, it will be alright,” she said.

By this time, the biscuit bowl with sifter had been returned to its place, along with the Crisco. Mama would open the oven door from time to time and check the biscuits by touching them. She knew when they were done by touch. She would pull those beautiful, lightly browned masterpieces from the oven and pour them onto the plate so that they folded over into a perfect stack. I never figured out how she did that.

There were so many conversations. So much of my junior high and high school life was shared over that Jadeite biscuit bowl. I could go on and share the “facts of life biscuits,” “the how do you get saved biscuits,” or the “why I cussed the softball coach biscuits,” just to name a few. Almost every mama lesson I remember was learned in the kitchen, and most of those were while making biscuits.  No matter the topic of the day, the setting was the same—me on the counter and Mama making biscuits.

Years later, after my Daddy died, Mama wasn’t able to live by herself. It was not necessary to take her homemaking items with her so she went ahead and gave all of her children the things they wanted. All of the “Mama, can we have this or that when you die” things were being dispersed. The biscuit bowl had to be mine. None of my sisters argued with me over it because it did not hold the memories for them that it did for me.

The biscuit bowl has been retired from service now and holds a special place in my dining room. Not too terribly long ago, I learned that Jadeite is considered an antique and that you can find bowls like Mama’s in antique stores for about $50. That may not sound like a lot but considering it was probably bought new for a few bucks fifty or sixty years ago, that it is a pretty good rise in value. Nevertheless, it is, and will always be, priceless to me.

—Cheryl Parham, 2014

sale

Sale Price:$16.99 Original Price:$18.99

Thank you again Cheryl for inviting me to Heritage Middle School. I enjoyed my time there, and I hope that I inspired several young writers. Maybe they will put their pens to paper and begin their writing journeys early. I hope! And thank you for sharing such a lovely keepsake story with me and with Project Keepsake readers.

Do you have a keepsake? If so, share its story with friends, family, and the world. Keep storytelling alive. If you don't know where to start, consider buying a copy of Project Keepsake. The book's fifty-five short keepsake stories are examinations of why we keep the objects we keep. The last chapter takes you through the process of writing your own story.

To order a signed copy, click the link on the right. Shipping is free. Or you can download the book in electronic form from Amazon. Happy reading! Happy writing!

 

Cooking-Related Keepsakes and Karen Phillips' Pie Plate

When I started asking people about their keepsakes a few years ago, I learned so many of us women treasure items that had previous lives in the kitchens of our mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. We hold onto cooking-related heirlooms like rolling pins, pans, cutting boards, and aprons. I'm not surprised. After all, some of my most beloved memories emanate from my grandmothers' old country kitchens. In the South, food and heaps of home cooking equal love, and both of my grandmothers loved everybody who stopped by their houses.

This is a bowl I took as a keepsake from my Grandmother Lanier's kitchen after she died. In its heyday, I'm sure it held millions of peas and butter beans. And I love to think about all of the hands that touched it as they passed it around the table, spooning vegetables onto their plates. It's cracked and stained but still has great value to me. I loved those people, and I carry a million memories of them around with me each day.

I can still hear their voices saying, "Have some more. There's plenty." I can still see the tables jammed full of platters and bowls of fresh, Southern delicacies. Much of the food was fried— plucked piping hot from the grease of a black iron skillet.

I have a cracked serving bowl that once graced my Grandmother Lanier's kitchen table. Tiny lady peas, brown field peas, and butter beans swimming in a shimmery broth were staples at Grandmother's house, so I feel certain that the little bowl held millions of peas and beans in its lifetime. I wonder how many times it was passed around the table. I think about my Papa Lanier's hands cradling it as he dipped peas onto his plate. After Grandmother died and her house outside of Metter was abandoned, I found the bowl pushed far back in a dark cabinet as if it didn't have any value. To me, it was priceless. I saved it that day.

Karen Phillips has a few cooking-related, kitchen-related keepsakes, too.  She wrote a keepsake story about her grandmother's pie plate. Karen infused her story with great imagery like "a kitchen forever filled with the fragrance of love" and the "glorious fluff of her mashed potatoes." And I love the fact that Karen started her story making a pie from her grandmother's hand-scribed recipe.

Karen Phillips wrote a story about her grandmother's pie plate—a beautiful tribute to "Ma." I love the yellowy glass of yesteryear. Her story begins on page 128 of Project Keepsake.

Like so many of the book's story contributors, I met Karen through the Chattanooga Writers' Guild, a wonderful, nurturing group of writers who inspire me every day. Karen has participated in a few Project Keepsake events in Northwest Georgia. I'm always happy to see her face in the audience, and I love to hear her read her story. She is one of the kindest people I have ever met.

Karen's story starts on page 128 of Project Keepsake. Thank you, Karen!

“As I topped the lemon meringue pie for my mother’s eightieth birthday, my eyes caught on the fluted-handled edge of the glass pie plate. It came from my late grandmother Ma’s kitchen, forever filled with the fragrance of love. Before my mother made it, Ma had created this same pie, and it was her worn recipe in her own handwriting I followed.

The same glass dish had nestled chocolate pie, coconut cream pie, and steaming apple pie. The dish filled my brain with a hundred other aromas—spaghetti, mashed potatoes, candied yams, divinity candy, and spice cake with caramel icing, to name a few. The tangy smell of lemons wafted through my kitchen and carried me back to the small white frame house on Prater Road.

From my earliest memories, I associate Ma with food. In those days, it was a mom’s or grandmother’s best way to communicate love for her family. Though her kitchen was tiny, my brother and I loved to breakfast at the small table, which now serves as a desk in my own kitchen. Nestled in the rear corner of the house, the kitchen boasted two windows allowing sunlight to stream in and make a small space cheery. Ma made homemade biscuits, golden brown with fluffy middles, for us to heap with her milk gravy made from bacon drippings or to butter and slather with honey or red plum jam.

Family gatherings or messy recipes called for an apron, because in Ma’s day, ladies did not wear anything as tacky as sweats around the house. Ma wore aprons she stitched herself, usually from a floral print or plaid fabric dominated by her favorite color, pink. Though I never wear them, I still display two of her aprons.

Standing on a chair in Ma’s kitchen, I helped as she creamed the butter and sugar in her old Hamilton Beach mixer for a moist pound cake. I supervised while she and my granddad Grangie spooned out the divinity candy that had to be cooked on a dry day and tasted as sweet and pillowy as I imagined a cloud would.

My brother and I, spending nearly every Friday night of our childhood at Ma and Grangie’s house, thrilled when we heard and smelled the buttermilk-and-flour- dipped fried chicken sizzling behind the kitchen’s swinging door. The Colonel had nothing that compared to Ma’s fried chicken, nor did he serve those freshly snapped Kentucky Wonder beans with the October bean “shellies” that Ma simmered for hours on the stove. Oh, the glorious fluff of her mashed potatoes!

Before the time of electric ice cream freezers, Grangie hand cranked the homemade fresh strawberry ice cream that Ma whipped up with smashed fresh strawberries, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla. We could hardly wait for the paddle to come out to scrape it with our fingers and taste the strawberry creaminess.

Everything tasted better at Ma’s—even the store-bought foods.”

— Karen Phillips from Project Keepsake

Yes, there are other cooking-related keepsakes referenced in the collection. Jean Lowrey wrote a story about a spoon her grandmother used to stir custard. Mitzi Boyd wrote a story about her Nanny's cake pan. Marcia Swearingen wrote about a big green mixing bowl she received as a wedding gift. I talked to another writer yesterday who said, "I have my mother's pickled eggs crock." And then last night, I selected a knife from my utensil drawer to slice a peach and realized that it had belonged to my father-in-law, George. He was an excellent cook and we inherited many treasures from the cabinets of his large kitchen in Chattanooga.

If you have a cooking-related or kitchen-related keepsake, please share your story with me. Leave a comment or send me a note. And as always, thank you for reading my blog and thinking about keepsakes. To read more keepsake stories, buy a copy of my book, Project Keepsake.