Previously: There’s some work hands weren’t meant for.
“The Board of Directors of Boston Common Press, the parent company of America’s Test Kitchen, today announced that Christopher Kimball’s employment with America’s Test Kitchen is ending.
While Kimball’s departure is immediate, he remains host for the 2016 seasons of the America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country television shows.
“Since its inception, Chris has been an important component of America’s Test Kitchen, as the co-founder of the business. We made every effort to offer Chris a reasonable contract that reflected his significant contributions to the company and are disappointed that we could not reach agreement,” said David Nussbaum, CEO of Boston Common Press.”
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 final letter for Cook’s Illustrated, which we are proud to publish in full here.
In the Good Book – there’s only one Good Book, children, and you must see to it that your name is found there – the disciples went out to teach the people, and the good Lord told them that when they came to a town, if the town was deserving, to let their peace rest on it. And what were the disciples to do if the town wasn’t deserving, girls and boys? They were to take their peace with them, to leave that place and shake the dust from their feet as a testimony against them. Let the dust of my feet be a testimony against wickedness.
Things won’t work in America’s Test Kitchen once I’m gone, children. Not without my floured hands at the wheel. Mandolines won’t slice. Knives will separate at the seam and clatter to the floor. Biscuits won’t rise. Dough won’t proof. Hens won’t lay. Roosters won’t crow. Oven won’t bake. Drawers won’t close. And who’ll pay Old Henry what’s due to him when he comes striding up the walk some fine autumn morning? Your hands aren’t strong enough to hold the tithe. Only mine were. Only I could give Old Henry what was due him, before the dying of the year, and when I’m gone, he’ll exact his terrible price. And you’ll pay it. You’ll all pay it.
Saw a man in rags on the north end of my cornfield this Saturday at dusk. He appeared as if out of nowhere, dancing nervously between the rows. He spoke only in rhyme. Said his name was Granger. Said he used to work the grapevines up in Maine. Worked like a dog. Never saw no money, never met no one named Luck. One day he spat in the ground and said he wished Death would come for him. Then Death came and caught his eye, and he lost his nerve and ran. Been running ever since. His voice was thick and hurt to hear, like his throat ached to say it. “I called for Death, he learned my name/ Now I run through cold, I run through rain/ Oh, I wish I were in the fields again!” He took off before I could offer him a slice of the peach pie I’d made. Someone was walking in his direction after he left. Walked that way a long while. Walking fast against the horizon.
The fiddler’s warming up, readying for to play my swan song. Can you hear him? He’s playing a tune of his own making. Everyone ought to know how to cook. You’ll find me wherever a man is plating his first Oysters Rockefeller, wherever a home cook is learning the best way to scoop drop biscuits (a seashell King Neptune gave you). Turn on your gas range, and you’ll see my eyes in the blue light. Close your refrigerator door, and I’ll sweep through it with the darkness. Scrape your knuckles on a cheese grater, and you’ll see a familiar bowtie in the bloodstain. I won’t be far, home cooks. Always close to hand, that’s Chris Kimball. You can’t get rid of me. Why, I can’t even get rid of myself.
Fall’s coming on. And after fall there’s always winter. Mr. Winter always walking just a few steps behind Mr. Fall, hiding his foosteps in the echo of Mr. Fall’s. Someone will go missing this winter. They always do. Someone who went missing the last winter back will show up on the frozen edges of Fike’s Pond, but with different-colored eyes this time. They always do.
Have you seen Old Henry yet today? Old Henry says hello. I saw old Henry out by the hitching post, and he was doing just fine. “Spry as a mule with a chicken’s ear,” he said with a low, rumbling laugh. He clacked his heels together and I gave him a silver half-dollar, as is my custom.
Ever ridden on a ship of fools, children? Where the mob has drugged the captain and tossed the sextant overboard, and the direction-stars hide their crystal faces out of shame? It’s a dismal cargo of souls bound for noplace. Here comes the mad carnival, pulling into the harbor. The gangplank only goes up, never down.
It’s an old Vermont custom – as old as sinking your mother into a vat of fresh-churned butter and storing her in the jam-cellar for freshness – and it makes for a good harvest.
I remember a time before chicken dinners at the Presbyterian hall behind the fire house. Before bric-a-brac sales. Before Jim Standish put the sign “Gas – $8.50 a gallon” to keep the tourists moving past the weigh-in station. I remember a time before hot. Before cold. Before eyes opened, when all mouths were closed, when nothing moved without permission. I remember it all, and I’ll remember you too when I shake the dust from my feet. I hope the Devil learns your name.
Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring?
I was born in my own home, and I’ll die with my eyes open. Bury me at a crossroads with my face pointed up and a silver dollar in my mouth for Old Henry.
Mandolines won’t slice.
Okay, so maybe this won’t be ALL bad…
Now I’m afraid that simply by reading this that Old Henry can find me.
Will stringing homemade popcorn and cranberry garlands around the house provide adequate protection? Should I burn cedar and sage in the hearth nightly? Rub the threshold with maldon salt?
Somewhere along the line I decided that marshmallows are a defense against evil spirits. I don’t actually believe there are all that many evil spirits wandering around (ten maybe but a dozen tops) but I still tell people in case it’s true and they need protection.
I mean, I can’t say I’ll miss mandolines *that* much seeing as how they are nothing but machines of devilment out to extract their pound of flesh from us skeleton slipcovers.
Holy shit I never realized I was a skeleton slipcover but I totally am, aren’t I?
Skeleton Slipcovers is my new band.
Is skeleton slipcovers a WTNV or TAH reference? Because it sounds familiar and is driving me nuts!
I am just so distraught. How will I know what knives to buy and which ones are a waste of money and made of garbage???
WHERE WILL MY VERY SPECIFIC VERMONT FOLK WISDOM NEEDS COME FROM?
When the flour sifter breaks and the sour cream suddenly goes spoiled as I’m trying to bake up America’s Test Kitchen’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake, lo, I will curse my lot.
In the interview, Nussbaum said America’s Test Kitchen would strive to honor Kimball’s vision. But, he said, “Nothing stays the same forever. It can’t.” He continued, wiping his glasses nervously on his shirt. “I know it can’t. But oh god, it’s so soon. It’s too soon. I don’t want to–” before beginning to weep as he was carried away by the Assistant Wives of Past and Present, both former investors in and eternal collectors from the show.
this reminds me of the Toast’s “People’s Sexiest Man” series.
Mallory, showing us the twisted-Shirley-Jackson-bark that all of society is.
I miss that series when it’s away.
this is truly a thing of beauty.
Off to open a restaurant in Night Vale…
(just to piss off Mallory obvs)
OMG does Mallory Not Approve of Night Vale?
She loves Night Vale, people are just always saying THIS IS LIKE NIGHT VALE about things she writes.
(I have actually never once listened to Night Vale.)
It’s ok, the Sheriff’s Secret Police pipe it in to your home subliminally while you sleep.
I like Night Vale very much! Every time I have written something mildly eerie, for the last two years, someone has left a comment saying “Wow, this is like Night Vale,” EVERY TIME, like Night Vale invented creepiness, so I yelled one time (but it is all in good fun, I am not Legitimately Annoyed)
That makes complete sense. I hadn’t thought that the ubiquity of Night Vale might have that sort of effect. To me the Kimball letters have more in common with Shirley Jackson and that sweet spot where King’s countrified pastiches of Lovecraft are really cooking with gas.
In a similar vein, I had to laugh when I read a review of The Black Tapes podcast where someone claimed it was a ripoff of WTNV when it is VERY CLEARLY a pastiche of Serial.
Night Vale is creepy rural Arizona instead of creepy rural Vermont and I think that’s an important difference.
I am 80% sure the Black Tapes are recycling the interstitial music from Serial.
I’m so glad I am not the only one who thinks that.
A helpful and supportive thought: next creepy time, let’s all be like, “Wow, this is like that ‘You Might Be A Redneck If–‘ guy” instead.
For the record, I find your brand of eeriness to be far fuller of dark malice and senseless ruin than Night Vale. Night Vale is adorable-eerie like baby fruit bats. Mallory’s eerie wears adorable like a pelt to get in closer to the herd before it strikes.
Agree! Night Vale, especially recently, is like funny-weird. Mallory’s writing goes for the throat.
Precisely. I don’t recall the piece, but I read something without checking the byline once and when I got to the phrase “dark and liquid glee,” I knew it was you.
See, I find your writing more upsetting than I find Welcome to Night Vale. Night Vale does the creeping horror that surrounds us. You do the creeping horror that is us.
Which is all to say that I have never once felt the need to exclaim, “JESUS CHRIST, JOSEPH FINK”
it really hurts me in tender places that they’re making a big fancy screen adaptation of American Gods when Bryan Fuller could have chosen to dramatize the Chris Kimball letters as his next project instead. Although I shouldn’t be so quick to assume you’d let him have the rights.
I for one don’t believe Chris Kimball is really going away. he’ll be back, but not until we all forget about him. that’s his way. if you want to keep him gone, you have to keep him in your mind always, think and think of his face under the loam with the dirt in his open eyes, that silver dollar barring the way and blocking the small creatures from getting into his insides. stop thinking of just where he is and what he looks like now and who knows where he’ll be next time you think of him.
That’s what it is–Chris Kimball is obviously Hinzelmann!
It’s horrible in its perfection.
i was also thinking american gods! specifically the part with the lake and the truck and the young girls. which is the second time in less than a month that the toast has brought that part to mind. there’s no such thing as coincidence
I mean I’m sure nice production values will only elevate what merits that book may be said to have, it’s got good parts, but it’s not art and truth, not like this.
just don’t want to be mistook for someone making vulgar comparisons, don’t want Old Henry to come after me for my impudence.
I would maybe liken Mallory to Manly Wade Wellman at his best but to little else
make your comparisons, Old Henry follows his own star and there is nothing you can do to change your inexorable fate
he is coming
I had forgotten that part so now it is time to re-listen.
the first entry in this series is my favorite horror story of all time and I repost it on Facebook once a month or so. “in every house, there’s something that knocks on the doors. It doesn’t want to be let in. It wants you to know that it’s there, and it can knock at you.” GAH. helplessness + ignorance = utter dread.
Mallory, this is folksy and terrifying, and I absolutely love it. What should I give to Chris Kimball, should he walk through my town? Will a scoop of flour, rubbed into the threshold, ensure his blessing, or at least turn his wrath from me? Who will I invoke now when the biscuits fail to rise?
Continue to invoke His name! For all that is holy don’t anger him now that he is finally free!
This is literally every Tom Waits song at once.
and just reading this, the opening melody of “Watch Her Disappear” wafts into my minds’ ear.
I didn’t know Night Vale was in Vermont.
EVERY TIME, YOU GUYS
BAHAHAHAHAHA
This comment is going in The Ledger. It will haunt you, come The Reckoning.
But what if this is just Old Henry testing us???
O.O
Turn on your gas range, and you’ll see my eyes in the blue light. Close your refrigerator door, and I’ll sweep through it with the darkness. Scrape your knuckles on a cheese grater, and you’ll see a familiar bowtie in the bloodstain.
Well, I’m never going into my kitchen again…
My gas range already cooks like 15 degrees hotter than it should, I don’t need another reason to be afraid of it. 🙁
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh wgah’nagl fhtagn in an iron skillet, gently warmed for 15 minutes.
This makes me wonder why a Southern Gothic series in the style of Night Vale doesn’t yet exist, or even a Prarie Home Companion take on Midwestern weird.
Why does saying something three times make it so much creepier than just saying it once?
Once is a statement, twice is a repetition, three times is a spell.
Yes, three is the witching number.
Merricat, Merricat, would you like to go to sleep?
it just does it just does it just does
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
There’s someone at the door.
I literally saw a headline about Chris Kimball leaving on FB, thought “OH NO what about his letters”, clicked over to The Toast, and saw this at the top of the page. I’m very impressed by the turnaround time (as measured by when I personally find out about things).
Well I happen to know a lovely crossroads if you’re interested. Privately situated on a small mountain, good country roads, lovely quality permafrost in the winter, impassable apocalyptic mud for three more months, good firm dirt the remaining three, old cemetery down the road, scenic view of Camel’s Hump through the mist, quiet neighborhood, surrounded by the last few struggling rock and cow farmers and the decaying, failed dreams of those that came before them.
You too can be buried there and enjoy all the excellent local amenities, plus the occasional sacrifice in your name of a coyote/wolf when one is caught and hung on the post as a warning. All we ask is that you put in a good word for us. You know who to.
A cut-resistant glove is great for lowering anxiety while using mandolines, BTW.
Please feel free to come to this morning’s link roundup where we are having an impassioned discussion about cut resistant gloves.
…. I sort of wish I was joking about that.
I don’t read the link roundup as often as I should. =( Thanks for the tip! But I have nothing to add there; looks like everyone’s already said everything.
But does a cut-resistant glove lower anxiety when Old Henry’s shadow darkens your stoop? No, children, it does not.
Okay, all the website shows in ‘previously in Chris Kimball’ is this article, four times, which is legitimately Appropriate.
Those are all different installments, to confuse and delight you.
Aaaaaaaaah! They actually are!
This is all I was hoping it could be when I learned the news of Mr. Kimball’s departure. Pardon me I need to go put a saucer of fresh cream behind the door.
The fact that the “Previously In Chris Kimball” section is just a series of identical titles and thumbnails makes this all the eerier.
I recently bought the C.I. vegetarian cookbook and Kimball’s introduction is hi-LARIOUS. He basically says “All the garbage vegetarian meals I ate in the seventies, grumble grumble, vegetarian food is stupid, anyway this book might teach you to cook vegetables properly, enjoy. “
I’ll miss him. I enjoyed trying out his old family recipes, until I ran out of old family members.
I laughed so hard at this it sent me into a coughing fit. Bravo.
Oh god wait isn’t the gas price thing real though? I feel like I read that in the actual magazine. It’s starting, isn’t it? My reality is collapsing.
Oh my dear lord, I just realized the italicized bits are Kimball quoting his previous letters. TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE
Dear god, my aunt just shared this on Facebook with the comment “so sad to see Chris Kimball go. I will miss his Vermont letters.” !!!
Paradigms really do shift, inexorably toward the worst possible outcome. Just ask Stephen King. Can I get my PBS donation back?
I was reading this to my husband, and he was only half paying attention. At one point, he interjected, “Who was this written by, Evil John Hodgman?”
I was able to keep up the creepy voice until I hit the Gas-$8.50 a Gallon part and I lost it.
Mallory, my husband has requested you write a Dear Prudence column in the style of Chris Kimball. I…am afraid you might summon something unholy if you do. Old Henry’s posse of wraiths or the Wailing Woman’s eyeless children.
Remember folks, Chris Kimball does NOT walk on water, despite what HE thinks. Large egos are just that, and perhaps CI and CC will be even more instructive. Keep the faith, foodies.
The first paragraph is missing. I quote:
“The Grateful Dead are back on the road again, and so am I. Lay down, my dear brothers, and all my sisters, too; lay down your tools and come follow us. Follow us into the great stream of the American heartland, of hand-made food, and sleeping on the ground beneath the stars. The knowledge of the trials of our forefathers has helped me make it through these last long years with you, but now the seasons have changed and Winter makes its yearly visit. The season of dark is cold in Vermont, but I will not be there this year; for I am on the road.”
CEO…. I guess brilliance is in the eye of the beholder…… Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
So long for now C K. You made me a better cook.
Well, I was all sad and indignant there after just hearing the news about Kimball’s departure,but your snarky comments here have given me the strength to carry on. Beer batter cheese bread and brisket anyone?
I had to let everyone know that Kimball’s letter in the most recent copy of Cook’s Illustrated is, hand to god, about his own house being haunted.
“and saw an old-fashioned preacher without a face” is a LINE IN THE MAGAZINE. Y’all. I don’t know what is real and what is satire anymore, if I ever did.
watched this program since it’s inception. It’ll be different without Mr. Kimball but I imagine still good but in a different way. I wish him well and his wife well
My husband and I are sorry to see Chris go, but sometimes things are ready for a change. I think Bridget and Julia will do a fine job hosting, and I hope Dan gets to do some upfront cooking like they did! But that they dig their hands into the dough, not just “commentate”. Can’t wait for the new season. Hope Chris writes a book one day, and not a sarcastic one. Bon voyage!
Watching tonight’s show, CK asked why we use “al dente” instead of an English word. The reason we use it is because there is no English word that expresses the same thing. Christopher’s suggestion “toothsome” does not mean “firm to the teeth”, it means “delicious” or “tasty”. I am surprised a cook wouldn’t know this! Especially a PBS one.
I think I got the magazine first, or was it the Test Kitchen on t.v. and then the radio? Cook’s Country a folksy addition covering the more traditional, to my way of thinking. To access the database is to search for a philosophy, the recipes are all familiar foods, most too complicated save for the dedicated home cook. Like reading travel magazine one need not travel the country to enjoy the story. The voice behind the attitude and tone has now moved on, proof that everything once begun will later be past. The dedicated cook will continue to peruse this avenue, but those of us here for the folksy Vermont humor will likely not renew. Since my wife stopped making fine concoctions ATK has fallen into similar piles like National Geographic. I feel a weightless falling through a narrowing gorge, a tumbling down a waterfall, moving downstream, gazing at new vistas, remembering the old familiar song. Farewell Christopher, see you later.
I love ATK, but sad-face Chris Kimball, born with silver spoon in mouth…not so much. With Julia, Adam and jack, it WILL survive spectacularly. Isn’t Bernie S. from Vermont? Ew, no wonder I don’t care……I don’t feel the Bern.