Preserving Memories

As fall approaches, it brings back memories of cooking and preserving food with my grandmother. She vividly remembered the depression, so every year she made sure that she “put up” lots of food for the winter.

Pitting cherries, plums and peaches was messy, sticky work. By the end of each canning session, we would all look like multi-coloured modern art masterpieces. Apples were sorted, with the best ones stored to be tucked into school lunches and the gnarled ones peeled, cored, and turned into pies, each carefully wrapped in aluminum foil, covered with plastic then labeled with masking tape recording the date.

Produce from the garden turned into crinkly beet pickles cut with a zigzag blade, dilled beans crunchy and green, and circles of bread and butter pickles to put on sandwiches. And then there were my favourites - sweet mustard pickles with onions and green tomato relish.

One of the best parts of the fall was when “the aunties” came to visit from Winnipeg, because then we would cook big batches of perogies to put in the freezer. We made them with different fillings - potato and cottage cheese, sauerkraut and pork, and fruit perogies with plums and cherries inside. We had to pinch the edges very tightly so they wouldn’t split when they were boiled. Afterwards, we would fry the savoury ones with bacon and onions and serve them with sour cream. While we worked, the aunties filled Grandma in on all the news about people she knew back on the prairies and then told favourite family stories about when they were growing up.

At the time, I thought we were preserving food but now, looking back, I realize we were preserving memories.