The salt cellar used to have a little wooden spoon. The spoon did not have a bowl like a conventional spoon. It was more like a little snout, the same all the way round, that you poked into the salt, and somehow you had more control over the sprinkling than with a more spoon-like spoon. In some move from house to house, the shaft of the spoon got broken, was taped for a while, then eventually, sadly, abandoned. The bowl survives, if scuffed, salt now dispensed with the fingers. Probably unhygienic, but quite pleasing from a tactile point of view. There is something about things we have known since childhood. The deep familiarity so reassuring whilst almost forgotten.
My Dad used to grind pepper over his fried egg and his baked potato. Probably over other things too, but I especially remember these. I used to find this sprinkling of black dots deeply irritating, I cannot explain why. Only that the use of pepper marked my father out as different. No-one else used it. And that was somehow the way my father was seen in the family. Now I love my pepper; grind it over eggs, potatoes, and most other things too.
6 comments:
I don't like pepper at all but I love your little story about the salt bowl. Such tiny details give an intimate glimpse into other lives. Thank you.
Absolutely with you about those long-retained artifacts. I have a stubby, broken-bladed kitchen knife, the bone handle wrapped in waxy string so ancient that it's blended with the material. My dad used it for a multitude of tasks and I do now. Such a tangible, functional link with those tiny, perfectly-formed memories.
Oh lovely! I didn't know the little spoon had gone west, it always pleased and fascinated me how it worked. Perhaps a friendly wood turner would make you another.
Black pepper and pepper mills were slightly exotic and bohemian I think, for a time, (white pepper in a shaker was traditional). I think my family discovered them somewhere in the 1970s. I would have thought yours were quite firmly in the black pepper-and-generally-a-bit-continental-in-your-habits bracket (you drank wine that wasn't sherry or Liebfraumilch other than at Christmas for heaven's sake,and used orange Le Creuset casseroles...), so I'm quite surprised that your dad's pepper grinding habits were considered outre.
Sorry your feed seems to be not updating on my new widget; I don't really have any control over how it works, but I get you straight to my inbox (though only the wanadoo one, which I don't check as frequently) anyway, so I'd have picked it up by end of the day. I'll re-enter your URL and see if it works better... There seems to be something a bit funny going on getting your blog anyway at the moment.
I don't know how anyone else felt about my Dad's peppergrinding. May have just been me, and it wasn't a judgement, just a visceral reaction... My Mum used black pepper in cooking certainly!
What do you mean about something a bit funny going on getting my blog?? Not here. Anyone else?
While I appreciate the "by hand" beauty of the act of grinding pepper, as waiters love to do for you in fancy restaurants, I find that mill-ground pepper comes out in chunks that are too big for my liking. Nothing ruins a meal faster for me than having my teeth come down with a crunch on a piece of peppercorn.
I love pepper of all kinds and colors - and I certainly use it on my eggs, as well as most everything else I eat. I just prefer it finely ground, out of a regular pepper shaker.
The funny business, which consisted of the blog repeatedly opening in new windows, seems to have stopped, but not alas the failure to update on that feed thing I've got. Don't know what to do about that.
Back to read new post shortly...
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