The 100 Year Old Pot

Nobody knows the exact age or the origin of the pot.   It is pitted like ancient pewter, stained like my great-aunt Rosie’s store-bought teeth, and has roasted meat for at least four generations in my family.  Some said it was one of the few possessions brought to America by my grandmother’s mother, but I remember my mother saying it was a wedding gift to my grandmother when she married my granddad.  My uncle, the last of my mother’s generation, turned 102 last November.  Do the math.  The pot is older than dust.  


When my Grandma was a young bride, meat was smoked, canned, or dried.  There was no refrigeration.  There was ice for only as long as it withstood the summer heat in the icehouse.  By spring, the only meat that was safe to eat was twice-smoked German sausage and ham---except for meat that resided in vacuum-sealed glass jars and had been cooked, canned and stored in the fruit cellar.   Whether freshly killed or canned, when meat was cooked in my grandmother’s kitchen, it was either fried to a leathery consistency or was roasted---in the pot.  


Pheasants, mallard ducks, quail, grouse, sage hens (and something that I believe had been hunted to extinction by the time I was ten and deemed old enough to hunt with my granddad) ended up roasted to perfection in my grandma’s roasting pot.  Smoked hams, freshly butchered beef roasts, pork chops and ribs all came from the pot. I cannot remember a Sunday dinner that did not include something from the pot.  Some years before my grandma died, my mother became the caretaker of the pot.


It was my baby sister who first discovered the mystical powers of the pot.  Like my father, she was an inventor whose imagination knew no bounds.  She discovered that a marble, when dropped into the pot and forced to swirl around by swinging the pot with both hands, made a musical note.  Every marble had its own note.  Sometimes, two or three marbles at a time made music that caused our dog to howl and our mom to send us outside until dinner.  


On the weekend while we listened to the radio and, years later, watched television, popcorn popped over the open flames in our fireplace was tossed into the pot. Melted creamery butter would be poured over the top.  Fine-ground salt would be added, and the lid of the pot would be fit tightly into the groove that ran around the upper edge.  Thirty or forty shakes later, buttery salted popcorn would be passed around the room as our dog, Sandra, followed it and did amazing air-borne tricks, leaping to catch a piece of popcorn in flight.  We didn’t need video games or an iPhone to keep us entertained.  We had the radio, popcorn, Sandra and the pot.  


The next morning, my sister and I would run to the kitchen and fight over who would be first to run a small handful of popcorn around the bottom of the pot and scoop up the remaining butter.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, that ever emerged from the pot was as wonderful as the popcorn left from the night before that I shared with my sister (and Sandra, of course) as we stood on the cold kitchen floor in our bare feet.  


Over 35 years ago, after my wife and I stopped “living in sin” and got married, we visited my parents. As we packed the car to return home, my mother secretly added a set of silver flatware that had belonged to her mother – and the pot. The 100-something year old pot has been with us through many moves and now resides in our 130-year old house built by the daughter of a survivor of the Donner Party. 


For the first 20-plus years of pot ownership, I only used it to recreate the popcorn ritual. After I was suddenly thrown into culinary duties, I looked at the pot differently. If I was going to be a successful cook, I would need the guidance of my grandmother and her pot.