Kitchens

A couple weekends back was a birthday weekend. My youngest turned eight, and my Sister in law turned… more than eight. We tend to clump them together; it turns out that it’s less likely we’ll gather on a standard grownup birthday anymore; the milestone ones, certainly, but the rest, no. Except, of course, my Lovely Wife - she has a Holiday Birthday; there’s always a party.

Historically, during things like this, I gravitate toward the kitchen.

I’ve always felt most comfortable in a kitchen. Doesn’t really matter whose it is, either. It probably started in the late 70s after we moved to the Sticks.

Interestingly, the Kitchen as the social gathering point was not the case in my ancestral home, growing up. No; our kitchen table was most commonly buried a foot deep in Papers, boxes, knitting, Kitchen gadgets, Placemats, flotsam, and junk – and if you could sit two people on the outside corner to eat – at a table for six – you were pretty lucky.

It was also in the same corner as the Dogs’ dishes, and subsequently where the dogs commonly slept… up until Mom had enough in the mid 80s and they became Outside Dogs.

Relax. We built them a most excellent accommodation, lined with straw, big enough for 2 large… and still let them in when it got cold. But I digress.

And stacks upon stacks of frikkin newsprint. This was before both Internet-based news sources, and a decent recycling program, so paper was kind of a problem. Dad liked to hang on to some at least; made great kindling.

It got cleared off every now and again; a couple times a year for holiday meals; otherwise for other major productions. Like bottling.

We kept bottles – beer, mostly, but liquor, too - like we kept newsprint – the difference was the bottles were worth something (well… there were a few years where we didn’t have a depot in the Sticks… that was interesting) and we actually had a use for them.

One of the Harbingers of the Christmas season in the Sticks was Mom would pull out a number of bottles – a large number - and start washing them.

The Liquor bottles she would set aside; they were for Kahlúa. The Stubby beer bottles, though – those were for RootBeer.

A single batch of Rootbeer would produce 5 dozen bottles. That made sixteen rootbeers for each of the four kids – but that never worked out quite right. We looked forward to the rootbeer every year, but, if memory serves, it was very often flat, and really not all that tasty… or, occasionally, Rootbeer like. But it was one of the absolute unshakable joys of the approach of Christmas when I was a kid. Eventually, I took over the production of it. I think I was 16.

I love Rootbeer. But I haven’t made it since. 

I mentioned Mom set aside liquor bottles for Kahlúa.  Evidently, Kahlúa is made with Rum – But I remember Mom starting with an awful lot of Rye. It would end up several gallons of sweet coffee liqueur, tho – most of which was slated to be consumed at the nigh-Infamous Black Russians for the Road Party.
 
Aaaaand once again at the risk of mortally offending the BCTF, I’ll leave that one for another time. Suffice to say that those events also were iconic childhood harbingers of the Christmas season for me... and was the annual event that rooted me in my love for Kitchens; during it, I effectively owned the kitchen at our house from the time I was 13. 

It was also usually the only opportunity we got to pig out on Bugles.

Other times of year the empties went toward Dad’s efforts at home brewed beer. He had a large number of specialized one-litre stoppered bottles, and a lot of really good brewing equipment. It didn’t seem to help much. I don’t know why. 

I thought recently that it might be fun to try brewing my own beer. Unfortunately I thought this out loud… and my Lovely Wife kindly suggested that it was a fairly unhealthy decision.

Evidently she heard about Dad’s beer.