The World’s Safest Food kitchen with everything from dill pickles to apricot jam. Unlike the rest
of the year, when her mastery of the kitchen seemed effortless, now her
movements were fastidious, her measurements exacting, her attention
toward two well-used pressure cookers unwavering.
Between the daily tasks of rewashing last year’s bottles, snapping
green beans, and peeling peaches, she constantly referenced her notes
and kept an eagle eye on temperature and time. As she removed the lid of
the hot cooker and lifted out each bottle using tongs, she carefully wiped
away the water, then placed each one upside down as an added measure.
After the bottles had cooled, she re-inspected each for air bubbles. The
occasional one that failed to meet her standards never made it to the
pantry.
Those dog-eared index cards that my mother checked and rechecked
contained specific safe-canning protocols, her safeguards against real
threats such as botulism, a bacterium whose spores produce one of the
deadliest toxins ever linked with food. She understood what was at stake.
Her vigilance was our protection that the food we ate was safe.
Long hours of toiling in the kitchen were part of the daily rhythm.
Farm life also meant that, each spring, freshly turned soil was prepared
and furrows were marked off for planting tomato and strawberry seed-
lings. Rows of vegetables like cucumbers, sweet corn, varieties of squash,
and beans were also sown. A few short months later, the harvesting
began and continued until ground covers placed at night no longer pro-
tected the last remaining vegetables from autumn’s frost.
Our farm was reminiscent of an earlier era. Step back in time to a fledg-
ling nation when most people produced and prepared the food they ate
and farm life dominated an entire economy. As the harvests rolled in,
attention turned toward preservation and preparation. From past tradi-
tions and their own experiences, they learned how inadequate cooking
or ill-conceived shortcuts sometimes had real consequences—including
death. Passing along fundamental safe-food-handling skills to counter
often unknown microscopic organisms, toxins, and physical impurities
was a matter of survival.
Yet as the modern food system gradually took over American life,
generationally transmitted lessons, culinary practices, and cultural