Previously: Merry Christmas.
Each issue of Cook’s Illustrated begins with a folksy letter with news from down on the old Vermont farm by founder and editor-in-chief Chris Kimball. These charming, old-timey updates remind us all of a slower, simpler way of life, where neighbors stop to swap plowing tips out by the trading post and run when they see Old Henry coming. Who’s Old Henry? Why, what a question, stranger. Old Henry knows who you are. That much is certain. Old Henry knows who you are just fine.
The Toast has received an advance copy of Mr. Kimball’s March letter, which we are proud to publish in full here.
Folks used to have common sense. They didn’t plant their potatoes too close together, lest they develop strange habits not native to root vegetables, and learn to speak to one another when their stalks swayed in the night winds. They never burned an old rabbit dog before the daffodils came in. They parked their cars facing toward home when they went in the Old Forest, so they didn’t offend anything that still moved in there when human eyes weren’t looking. They never killed a cow twice and they never made hay without spilling blood on the threshold, and they never spilled blood on the threshold without nailing the house-spirits into the wall behind the chimney. They kept their shoes in the walls and their virgin bones buried in the foundations. They never opened a bottle unless they were willing to make a deal with the witch who lived inside. They kept their unguents separate from their elixirs separate from their tonics separate from their balsam physics. It was always spring, then. Always spring after spring after spring after spring, and the people stayed young and happy and their throats never sank into their breasts and their smiles were painted onto their lips and never came off, never never never.
It’s not like that now.
Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring?
I don’t. Nobody does. Something different’s coming after spring this year, something that isn’t named summer, something that casts a long shadow and laughs without making a sound.
You can kill a cockatrice, but not before it screams out every lie you’ve ever told to the one you love best.
People didn’t used to leave their houses to go see what lay on the other side of the hill. If I’ve told you what’s on the other side of the hill once, I’ve told you what’s on the other side of the hill a thousand times: a perfect and exact replica of this very town, right down to your very own double, with one small but noticeable difference that you can’t quite place your finger on, and you must never go there and must never look your double in the eyes. The town on the other side of the hill isn’t your home, no matter how much it looks like it. Don’t listen to the beautiful girls who stand on the edge of the town on the other side of the hill and call out your name in plaintive and lovely tones. They have murder in their voices.
There’s a girl made entirely out of nails who lives in the ceiling. Don’t look up; she’s very shy.
I’ve never seen a Vermonter run for anything. They just figure that whatever it is, they’ll eventually catch up with it, or it’ll catch up with them. No point moving so fast you catch something’s attention, out here in Vermont, where the hills bury any sounds a body can make. The hills like for things to stay quiet, here in Vermont, and the hills have been around long enough to know how to get just what they want.
You ever look in a painting and see a little dark man in the background who wasn’t there a minute ago and disappears when you try to look closer? I see him. I see him more and more with every passing year, but he delights in dancing just out of my vision. There’s always something behind me on the stairs, too. I hear it, but I don’t see it. But I hear it. And I know it hears me, and it sees me too.
To a Vermonter, or any country person, common sense is what keeps you alive. Common sense keeps you from angering the sheela na gig or teaching a seventh son to read the letters carved above the stairs.
And shall-meet desert creatures with jackals the goat he-calls his-fellow lilit she-rests and she-finds-rest and there-she-shall-nest the great owl and she lays (eggs she lays eggs) and she-hatches and she-gathers under shadow the hawks and also they-gather, every one with its mate.
A man who is not dependable is no good in the sugar house. A man who’s no good in the sugar house must be returned to the soil, even if he doesn’t want to go. The sugar house won’t tolerate fools.
Common sense is just another way of saying you learn from your mistakes. Some people don’t. They end up going to Old Henry. Some animals don’t. They end up with the sheela na gig.
Take a horse. Some will shy away from a puddle of water in the road every time—they keep thinking that it might be ten thousand feet deep. They might be right, too. A horse can’t trust water. If you lose a horse to the water, you have to walk home.
What if a demon crawled up limbless out of the earth, and writhed after you, sending up clouds of red dust as it hitched broken-back behind you, calling out to you in your loneliest loneliness, and say in a red and in a dead voice this is the life you will live once and again and innumerable times more and you will feel this way always you will feel this way when the sun burns to a cinder and starts itself anew and your heart will be a wall and every thought and every sigh and every gnashing of the teeth you have ever had will come again when the hourglass becomes the wheel, and if you looked back at him his spine would splinter into fragments and dust and he would scream in crippled agony and bleed out into the white and stricken earth, what would you do then?
Chickens don’t bother to look up at the sky, and that’s why they make a good meal for red-tailed hawks. And how many times will a dog chase a skunk?
Every man keeps a demon wrapped around his wrist; that’s all a watch is.
When I was young, I didn’t learn from experience. I’d go fishing in the middle of the day when the suckers in the Battenkill were easy to see but uninterested in feeding. I’d put up a tree stand without knowing whether a deer would ever walk by it. And I would go hiking in strange woods without a compass, a flashlight, or something warm in case I had to stay out all night. Now I owe strange and silent debts to the Men Who Move In The Woods, and I am burdened almost down to the ground with a secret sorrow. I would go back and throttle the past, if I could.
But Time is a wheel that flings us into the furnace of death. Time is a wheel, and the furnace burns, and we will all feed it.
Now that I am older, I am more likely to think about what happened the last time I tried to mow that wet corner of the lower field or let the International 404—the one with the broken emergency brake—idle on the top of a hill. There is a sweet spot there somewhere, halfway between lessons learned and adventure. It’s the sense to know when to pack your bags and when to double down; when to speak up and when to shut up; when to read the signs and when to ignore them. I hear something behind me on the stairs. The Men Who Move In The Woods have come to collect, and I am a man who pays my debts.
Don’t cross the river and go to the other side of the hill. Pay your debts and never open anything if you’re alone. I have loved you all.
Chris Kimball
Tags: america’s test kitchen, chris kimball, cooks illustrated, letters from the editor, mostly they are made up, some of these are real chris kimball quotes and some of these are made up
ho-lee shit!!!!
I got a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated for Christmas, and I can now testify that the real letters are, if anything, even more terrifying than Mallory’s renditions.
MALLORY IT IS SO EARLY IN THE MORNING AND ALREADY YOU HAVE MADE ME FEEL LIKE MY BELLY IS FULL OF SQUIRMY WITCH FINGERS AND MALICIOUS SENTIENT PLANTS
Mallory, how do you always manage to get it so pitch perfect on the ‘creepy and bizarre but not ridiculous’ line? How do you always manage to make me squirm and shiver but not stop reading?
Seriously, how do you do it, I am taking notes.
I’m scared of being no good in the sugar house now.
This is weirdly moving. Can we do a pozible or a kickstarter to get an exorcism done on Chris Kimball?
My favorite Mallory thing, bar none. And I like that she takes her time to hone each one before releasing it into the world to skitter into our brains.
No longer interested in raising my kids in a small town.
Thanks?
JESUS CHRIST MALLORY NO
I, for one, am relieved to get through Chris Kimball’s Spring letter without any fresh warnings for those of us who dare to make substitutions when making his recipes. I’ve been using onions in recipes that call for shallots, again, and I’m certain that Old Henry is going to catch up with me one of these days.
I also substitute onions for shallots and fear there is a special place in hell for people like us.
Well, Old Henry is gonna catch up with us all, one of these days. No doubt about that, friend.
In related horrors, I received this actual email from Cook’s Illustrated (*terrified screams*):
***
Dear Cooking Enthusiast,
We’ve noticed it’s been a while since you’ve opened Letters from Vermont, a monthly email newsletter from Christopher Kimball, founder and editor of Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, and America’s Test Kitchen. We know that unwanted email can be a hassle, so we want to make sure you’d like to continue your subscription.
If you’d like to continue to receive Christopher Kimball’s Letters from Vermont, please click here. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll unsubscribe you.
***
(HOW DID THEY KNOW I WASN’T READING THEM?)
Only moderately terrifying answer: Probably the emails have an image in them which isn’t actually sent with the email, so when you read it, the image is loaded from their web server. If they set it up so the image request is slightly different in each person’s email, then they can tell which people have requested the image, and presumably those are the people who read it.
The good news is, I’m pretty sure this is just online marketing tracking*. The bad news is, I’m pretty sure this is standard online marketing tracking.
* Except for the slip-up where they actually let you know they were being creepy.
You’re right: that’s simultaneously more and less creepy than “Chris Kimball knows your thoughts.”
test it out by opening but immediately deleting them from now on, and see if you get another gentle reminder that you really ought to be reading them. Christopher Kimball strikes me as someone who would draw a firm distinction between skimming and really reading.
also strikes me as someone who would use “unsubscribe” as a euphemism for something lonesome and unholy. don’t make him unsubscribe you. he doesn’t really want to, you know.
He loves us all.
Chris Kimball *knows all*
I find this remarkably terrifying.
Me, too!
I just hope “unsubscribe you” isn’t a euphemism.
Thank goodness I’m not alone! The one I got last Saturday displayed the sender as Christopher Kimball himself, and included the following story that I was convinced would turn sketchy at any moment:
I grew up listening to stories in a yellow farmhouse in a small town in Vermont. Since radio is storytelling, let me tell one of my favorites from those early days. It seems that Floyd, a Vermonter, went on a fishing trip in the Adirondacks. A stranger came by and asked, “Doing anything?” “Doing anything?” replied Floyd, “Well I caught forty bass out of this lake just yesterday!” The stranger said, “Hey, do you know who I am?” “Nope,” replied Floyd, “can’t say that I do.” “Well, I’m the fish and game warden.” Floyd thought about that for a few seconds and then spoke up, “Well, do you know who I am?” The warden indicated that he had no idea. “I’m the biggest liar in Bennington County!”
Seconding what Absotively said above. I worked for a non-profit that put out a weekly newsletter, and we had a way of seeing how many newsletters were actually opened and if any of the links inside were clicked. I realize this sounds stalkery, but I think it was more for tracking and knowing what kind of articles interested our subscribers than any nefarious purpose!
Holy hell, I’d forgotten until now that somewhere in my house (on the mantle? in the sideboard? lurking in the attic?) is a sheela na gig figurine.
It seems like something I should have kept track of. Placated. Honored. Now I’m a little worried. (But glad I have only 2 sons, because we all know it’s the 3rd & the 7th who end up causing all the problems.)
Welcome to Nightvale should ask you to write a script for them. Or bring Kimball on the show.
They did ask me! I’m working on a script right now!
AAHHH perfect. I’m very excited for this meeting of the charmingly sinister/darkly comic minds.
WAIT WHAT
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH that’s amazing the combination will be 600x creepier than either alone.
Ohmygosh yay! Please let us know when it’ll be airing.
YAY!!! I hope you will be able to work a Chris Kimball like character into the script. Then all of us will go squeeee!
I just opened my inbox to find an email from Chris Kimball.
It’s like he knows
He might know. Someone at Cook’s Illustrated has to be in charge of keeping track of news about Chris Kimball, right?
but i don’t read Cooks Illustrated
And this, my friends, is what happens when you drink absinthe straight from the bottle while watching “America’s Test Kitchen.”
These are always so deliciously creepy.
In other news, I’m pretty sure Old Henry knows I don’t know how to properly can, and only steamlock things… I dread next harvest season when I too will be returned to the soil. Blood makes the grass grow.
And bonemeal, never forget the bonemeal.
The common sense of yore is hardcore. No wonder it’s in short supply these days.
I read this and thought of you: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/29444
It’s about a discovery in Sardis of an “egg votive” buried under a floor. A small clay vessel holding a pierced whole eggshell, a coin, and a ‘pointy metal thing’ to prevent sorcery against the house.
I love how the passages interlock, i.e. “What if a demon…” to “Chickens don’t bother…” From demonic possession to casual farm observation, this is real life, insofar quick bites of horror are woven nonchalantly into everyday living.
FRIG, these Chris Kimball letters are the absolute best!
Bringing together New England’s greatest exports: Chris Kimball and H. P. Lovecraft.
Just how many doppelgänger towns does America have?!
They are all one, existing on top of each other like parallel universes.
I am worried about Mr. Kimball, though, really, I understand that he doesn’t need anyone to worry about him.
This is the inspiration I needed to start a Dark Jug Band.
I’ll be back with my washboard in a sec.
“39 minutes ago”
You have been taken by the Dark Jug forces, haven’t you? Never to return.
Aaah I didn’t know Chris Kimball is the Test Kitchen guy! I used to watch that show when the only channel I got was PBS.
There’s something very unsettling about his face. And…the rest of him too. These letters don’t help.
This was one of the more terrifying things I've ever checked my ceiling for.
Ohmygosh yay! Please let us know when it'll be airing.
hahaha this guy! what an enigma
If you wrote “cooks illustrated” i would most certainly subscribe…