Previously: If you can swallow an oyster, you can swallow a man’s heart.
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 most recent letter, which we are proud to publish in full here.
There’s some work hands weren’t meant for. What kind of work that is, I don’t believe you home cooks ought to know. Keep them busy kneading dough, and pitting stone fruits, and soothing a chicken before wringing its neck; keep your hands doing their own work so they can’t find any other, that’s the key, friends.
If you hear a sound at your door that isn’t a knock and isn’t a hello, you ought to turn right around and leave what you’re doing – leave the sauce on the stove, leave the fire on the hob, leave the iron in the grate – and put yourself in the sewing-closet, door locked tight like a heartbeat, until the sound passes. But if you were to go to your door, which no true Vermonter would do, you would see a shape that wasn’t a dog and wasn’t quite something that wasn’t a dog, neither. And you’d have to follow it.
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, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you can’t let it in, you can’t stop the knocking. And it doesn’t want to come in. So what can you do?
The pig roast was a big success this year. Dissension on this topic was not permitted.
Coleslaw without mayonnaise, that’s the key. Waterfalls of vinegar. Pour it into your hand.
Feet belong on a path. Food belongs on a plate. Hands belong to themselves. Ingredients belong in their proper place, in order, served with maple syrup. Always with syrup.
I once hiked in the Pyrenees and was headed toward the village of Banyuls-sur-Mer. Around midday, I took a turn from the true path and ended up in a dark forest, filled with wild boar runs. I have never returned.
How to smoke a brisket, how to salt and cure an unfaithful heart, how to send a curse out from your house and bury it in the body of a rabbit, how to tap a maple run with no eyes, that’s what a man does.
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting.
Tags: chris kimball, food, letters from the editor, quotes from the haunting of hill house
This is perfect and you are perfect.
And honestly, the actual letters aren’t any less ominous or creepy.
This iteration of Chris Kimball kind of sounds like the peach farmer in Welcome to Nightvale that Cecil hates. I know Mallory doesn’t do Welcome to Nightvale, but there is serious cross-over appeal here.
In terms of real-world Chris Kimball, my aunt, who worked at WGBH, met him once, and says he was a jerk to everyone around him. So that thinly veiled contempt all his assistants have for him is real!
I thought Mallory wrote for WtNV before? Or was supposed to? Did I miss something? I agree there is definitely crossover appeal here.
I didn’t find anything, but it’s possible! I kind of hope you’re right.
Joseph Fink had a guest piece on here a few months ago, maybe that’s what you are thinking of? http://the-toast.net/2014/12/16/let-tell-new-york…
Nah I thought I remember Mallory writing in a post somewhere she was going to write an episode or something. Buuut I could be making it all up in my head.
I am Internet Friends with the guys who do Night Vale, and I like them a lot, and every single time I write something in the least bit weird or creepy, 90% of the comments are “Hey, have you heard of Night Vale? They invented surrealism, and horror literature, and this is exactly the same as one of their episodes,” and it drives me CRAZY.
I remember you doing weird creepy horror in your comments in the Hairpin days. So I know it’s really you who invented surrealism and horror literature.
Apolgies, and I hope that right now some kid out there is listening to Nightvale and going, “this is just like the Toast, it’s perfect!” to the confusion of her teenage boy friends.
oh and it’s totally not something anyone should apologize for, no one is being a jerk, it’s just like, THE COMPARISON HAS BEEN MADE and also HAVE YOU HEARD OF SHIRLEY JACKSON
also, good lord, this is not a real problem
The forces of Strexcorp have been here: Cecil and John Peters (you know, the farmer?) get along just dandy; it’s Steve Carlsberg who is awful.
I just finished reading The Haunting of Hill House, so yes, I did jump a little at that last line, and yes, I am now worried that I’m being haunted by The Haunting of Hill House.
Oops, I thought it was a Shakespeare reference. Now I feel both smart and dumb.
It’s both! You’re just the first thing.
Cecil Baldwin, is that you?
NO
IT ISN’T
IT IS ME
I got ninja’d by FriendOfDaja pretty hard, and now I see your response to that sort of thing. Will keep in mind!
Also, the actor’s name is Cecil Baldwin. The character is Cecil Palmer.
Hmm hmm hmm. Mayo on the coleslaw, that’s no good, but check the bottom of the vinegar barrel before you add any to your cabbage. Some people and things don’t like cabbage.
Now, this recipe’s so good we call it the hand of glory coleslaw, but you’ll have to wrest the secret ingredient out of my withered, clawlike grasp. Use apple cider vinegar for a bit of a zing.
A) SO HAPPY to see this return.
B) He’s right about the coleslaw.
C) I bought The Haunting Of Hill House a few weeks back but am too nervous to start it. Can anyone tell me how scary it is, measured in months I won’t be able to pee alone?
It could be as long as the rest of your life.
You won’t be able to sleep alone, but you ALSO won’t be able to sleep with another person in the room.
Depends on your proximity to old houses in Vermont. I read it around Halloween while living there. In an old house. I was doomed from the start.
I just finished reading it today. The first half is not particularly scary, and has moments of humour; the second half is not so scary that I can’t sleep but scary enough that I was kind of jumpy even when I was reading it on a crowded bus.
I feel the inexplicable urge to turn this into haiku –
food belongs on plates
hands belong just to themselves
always with syrup
coleslaw, no mayo
waterfalls of vinegar
pour it in your hand
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, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you can’t let it in, you can’t stop the knocking. And it doesn’t want to come in. So what can you do?
This is 100% true to my experiences in the 1840 Vermont farmhouse that my parents live in. 100%.
There is a knocking from within and without. There are things in the walls. Normal things, rats and chipmunks, things that keep the cats occupied during the long winter nights, watching the sounds run from one part of the ceiling to the next. But there are other things to. Sounds that fill the house with life even when it’s empty. I have come over to pick something up and left after having brief, one-sided conversations with whoever I can hear upstairs, only to find out later that the whole family was up in Burlington. My sister and I have felt tentative touches in the night. But we’ve never heard the children.
Only my mother can hear the children.
My house was an 1847 house. The bedroom definitely had a ghost. It was a woman, and she was not happy. She got a lot less vengeful after we had the homebirth, but she was definitely there.
This makes me miss the ghost I know j saw in our 1924 house just after we moved in. Haven’t seen her since. :-/
I just got a full-body shiver reading that last line.
My parents had a haunted barn, but we figured it was just haunted by the ghosts of cows. Occasionally it would smell strongly of manure for no reason at all, and you could sometimes hear shuffling hooves from below if you were in the hayloft. They tore it down and built a jumbo garage for their RV and the ghost-cows went away.
Chris Kimball is creepy and awesome. He gives absolutely no fucks. Here’s Jessica Gross interviewing him, and he seems so much like Mallory’s interpretation of him that it’s, well, eerie.
http://blog.longreads.com/2015/06/23/the-craft-of…
“Very few people play music, very few people do art, sculpture, painting. Very few people write poetry; people don’t keep journals like they used to.”
Chris Kimball is one of the skin-suits that Old Henry likes to wear, sometimes.
“So we go through a process of trying to blow up the recipe to figure out the most lethal mistake you can make.”
“Waterfalls of Vinegar” is actually the name of my memoirs.
I just got a full-body shiver reading that last line.
My parents had a haunted barn, but we figured it was just haunted by the ghosts of cows. Occasionally it would smell strongly of manure for no reason at all, and you could sometimes hear shuffling hooves from below if you were in the hayloft. They tore it down and built a jumbo garage for their RV and the ghost-cows went away.
I think in terms of genuine anxiety per word this is the best horror story I’ve ever read
I always imagine this read in Mr. Rogers’s voice and cadence. Makes it a bajillion times creepier.