Kitchen Therapy

The world sure seems all roiled up lately...can't get away from it no matter what you listen to.


More earthquakes, wars, bad news--everywhere you look.


It's unavoidable; it's not just something every now and then, it's many things--every single day.


Gives us plenty of reasons to pray.

For a little diversion from thinking about what a mess things are...there's nothing better for the soul than needing to do some canning.  


It's a job that has a beginning, an end, and a pleasing result--all lined up to see, touch and to taste.

Just what I need to soothe the soul.  

Time to think.  

Peel and pray....

Give this big bushel of worries I have to Someone bigger than I am.

Pray, peel.  Pray for that special little grandson who will be eating this applesauce, and pray for his little brother or sister growing inside of mommy, a little miracle blossoming like the buds once did last spring on that flowering apple tree...

Peel...peel the McIntosh, peel the Empire.

The whole process is cathartic.

I first must go to the orchard.

It's the same as it was twenty years ago when we moved here--and years before that, too.

It's in the same spot, hasn't moved.

The lady who sells me the apples is the same pleasant lady who always sells me my apples, their homegrown popping corn, or the maple syrup, it's either her or her sister...how can you not like a humble family of apple farmers?  


Brother is out back working on the equipment or in the fall, he's got the forklift going moving huge crates of apples.

Today, it's snowy, icy, and one sister is out front shoveling off the cement in front of the old building that serves as their store.  Tree trunks are used to hold up the porch roof, rustic and beautiful, probably made from their apple trees from an older orchard somewhere back in time...the hand painted sign that says 

"APPLES --OPEN ALL YEAR" 

is still hanging where it always does, and the little bell on the old wooden entry door still pleasantly jingles as I open up to go choose my apples.

Sister follows me in and I ask her the recommendations and tell her I need a half bushel.  I take her advice and scoop them up after I pay her and, of course, we have to have our usual conversation about the weather...

Then...

I smile all the way home.

The whole mile, I smile.

There's a therapy to putting food up.  
It should be recommended instead of anti-depressants.  

It's our connection to our foremothers.

We are doing the same chores that they did, in their cabins, their soddies, their farmhouse out on the big, windy prairies, the lodge in the mountains, it was a ritual, necessary for life to be sustained.

Such a pleasant ritual.

That familiar chore, putting on that apron, going into the basement and finding the right number of jars, gathering the lids and rings, washing the fruit, reaching in for that next apple, watching the pile of peelings and cores mount up. 

I imagine that many mothers and grandmothers before me worried and fretted about what was going on in the world, too and what kind of country their kids and grandkids would inherit--and yet the food still had to be "put up".  

Life still marched on in spite of devastation by weather, wars, or worries.

I can pray --just like I imagine our foremothers did who had sons off to war--and I remember I don't have any worries such as that.  


I think about how big their problems must have seemed to them, too as I take the knife to break the skin on each apple and core it, and I can think about my chubby little grandson, who  happily knows no trouble, no worries.  

I can picture him taking the food with a little open "O" mouth like a hungry bird, taking his food from the tiny spoon mommy offers him.

Some things will never change.  Thank you, Lord!

Babies will always need their mommies and daddies...


...And they'll always need some "appa sauce".
(That's what my little ones called it!)

Grammies will always worry, pray, and sometimes even fret.


But we can be reassured for a little while, 
as we hear that familiar sound we wait to hear...

*Pop**Pop**PoP**pOp**POP*

All ready to go to Levi's house.

xoxoxoxoxoxox
Nana LOVES Levi!