New Fire
The fireplace in this thumbnail photo doesn’t look too bad. Does it? Twenty-five years ago I would have been a real snob and scoffed at it, describing it as cheap and tacky. On the other hand, I would have thoroughly approved of the fire in the kitchen. It is in a big open fireplace built in the 1800s, complete with wrought iron pot crane and hobs big enough to hold large round logs. Queen’s County hardwood is crackling away and warming my bones as I write.
In past years I have always favoured things made from scratch and shunned the artificial. The heights of tackiness to me was the brightly coloured plastic parrot hanging on a fake brass hoop in the doorway to the living room in Grammy Parsons’ last house. I remember being scolded by her when this lack of respect for fake things was manifested in Ricky and me flicking the parrot with the end of a cup-towel, trying to knock the feathers off. We would never have considered doing that to her potted geraniums. Fake flowers were unappealing – they reminded me of graveyards and Grannies. I always found processed food distasteful and refused to use Certo in my jams and jellies, opting for the more natural but more risky methods of gelling. And then there were my hamburgers. I would make my own home-made buns and hand-formed patties which I grilled on a home-made fire pit down by the brook in Bauline. I found a Bon Appetit article on home-made mustards and went on to make my own rich grainy Pommery-style mustard. It shared the patty with ketchup I made from scratch and bottled using a crate of tomatoes I bought at a warehouse where they sold dented cans, punctured bags and over-ripe fruit and vegetables. Somehow food seemed better if it had been rescued. The cheese was a tangy old white cheddar we bought from a friend who was a member of a cheese co-op which purchased cheese in bulk from a farm in Quebec. Ah, how I loved to use food with a story. I only wished that I had raised the cow and used her milk to make my cheese before I slaughtered her and ground my own meat for the burger patties. (I had a package of rennet in the fridge for two years without ever getting around to making cheese from scratch).
Much later, when I started making moccasins from deerskin I purchased from the Winnipeg Fur Exchange, (I lined them with warm woolen fabric which I wove myself), I went so far as to get my own hunter safety permit so that I could kill my own deer and tan its hide.
Card Carrying Deer Hunter
I even considered getting a trapping licence so that I could prepare my own fur for the slipper trim. In the end I didn’t kill anything – I went on to have children and suddenly every animal was some baby animal’s Mommy or Daddy. I smiled the other day when I saw my own daughter reading my book on the preparation of animal skins and taxidermy. My obsession with making things from scratch is no longer so close to requiring an intervention.
Back to the fires. In the front room of the house by the Mersey is a fireplace which goes from the bedroom right through to the living room. The living room side has a lovely cast iron grill but the bedroom opening was covered with an unpainted piece of plywood. What should have been the focal point of the room was just a big ugly redundant fixture. In the spring and fall it seemed wasteful to heat the whole end of the house just to warm the bedroom briefly so when I saw a fireplace insert for sale I nabbed it. My tacky fake fire with the undulating red LED lights and the plastic grate and even more plastic logs seems ideal.
New Fire
It requires no fetching of wood, no spring clean-up of sooty ceilings and is not half as likely to ignite the cat’s tail. It can be turned off with a switch, nay, a remote control, and the heat is not sucked up the open chimney after it goes out. Real fires be damned……Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the fire warms my feet……
Then again, there is something wonderful about a real fire.
(c) Judy Parsons March 19, 2011
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After reading your entry, I was reminded of the time when Mom, Aunt Marie and I were going through Grammy Parsons’s things at her house following her death, I guess to get rid of what was of no use or value. I wasn’t very old at the time, but I can still clearly remember being in her bedroom and coming across a small moss-green velvet jewellery box. Thinking that it housed some priceless antique ring, I opened it with anticipation only to discover a silver chain with a brightly coloured shiny plastic hot dog pendant, a tan bun with a red wiener inside. I can remember how hard the three of us laughed at the discovery, until we were breathless and red-faced.
I’ve always wanted to make my own cheese, ever since I can remember. I think it stems from one of my favourite books that I had when I was little, Socks for Supper, in which a poor, hungry turnip farmer trades his wife’s hand-knit socks–made from unraveling the sweater off his back–with a neighbor in exchange for their homemade cheese and milk from their cow. For whatever reason, I always imagined myself as the type of person who would make and share cheese with the poor farmer, but they didn’t explain in the book how complicated the cheese-making process is. All that heating and rennet adding and temperature taking and straining—it’s exhausting just to read the recipes.
Anyway, I must have a mixture of everyone’s genes in our family because not only do I have an appreciation for cheap and tacky kitsch, but l also love to make everything from scratch where possible. The best of both worlds. 🙂
H.
Heather, what a wonderful memory; you made me laugh out loud (shows my age I guess, that I spelled that out). Glad to hear that you are constituted from chips off several old blocks. Did you keep the hot dog necklace?
Judy
No, sadly, I don’t know what happened to that hot dog necklace—I wish I’d kept it! We all laughed at it at the time, but it probably held some special meaning to Grammy that we just weren’t aware of. But that was part of Grammy’s magic!
The funny thing is, I squeal with delight (well, on the inside) when I see mini food now, like PetitPlat Food Art: http://petitplatbysk.blogspot.com. She’s an artist who makes amazing teeny food miniatures out of polymer clay, including faux food jewellery. I don’t think she sells hot dog necklaces, but she has sub sandwich earrings! Miniature food jewellery is pretty popular these days, so maybe Grammy was on to something.
H.