Appalachian Mothers Went to Town Once a Month — 21 Rules That Made It Last (I Still Live By Them)

🔗 97 secrets every Appalachian grandmother kept in her kitchen. How many still live in yours? https://burlsizemore.com/her-kitchen My mother went to town one time a month. Eleven miles down the road and across the river, one trip, and she came home with everything nine people would eat for the next thirty days. She never once ran out of coffee. She never once ran out of flour. I grew up at the head of a hollow in Letcher County, Kentucky. My father worked in the mine, his pay came in at the end of the month, and that was the night the list got written, at the kitchen table, by the lamp, with a pencil she sharpened with a paring knife. So sit down with me and I will give you all twenty one of her rules. Why she slept on the list and crossed off three things every morning. The four lines she scratched with a nail inside the coffee can. Why the sugar bowl stayed off the table. The rice she divided into four jars the night she got home, and the hard day shelf nobody was allowed to touch. The two cents she made a young clerk give back while the whole line watched. And the sack of orange slice candy she counted out, one each, every Sunday, and never ate herself. And I will tell you about the one line at the bottom of every list she ever wrote. She wrote it every month, and every month she drew a line through it. I did not find out what it said until she was gone. Women like my mother carried all of it in their heads. The list, the count, the shelf nobody touched, and a hundred things at the stove that no box ever printed on the back. Almost none of it was written down. So I put ninety seven of those old kitchen secrets on paper, every one with the story behind it and a recipe that proves it. The monthly list is only one of them. I am Burl Sizemore. Before you go to the store this week, sit down at your table the night before and write your list on paper. Then come tell me what was at the bottom of your mother's list. https://burlsizemore.com/her-kitchen