Every meal required careful planning.
No food was wasted.
No unnecessary ingredients.
Every piece of meat, every vegetable, every grain had to be used as sparingly as possible.
Her kitchen became the heart of the farm.
Neighbors remembered the enormous cooking pot she used.
It was said that it could hold almost ten gallons.
To outsiders, such a pot seemed enormous.
But for the family, it was necessary.
She filled it with everything that was available:
Stews.
Beans.
Potatoes.
Vegetables.
Meat, when they could afford it.
The meal would be prepared in large quantities, because many people were waiting for it.
But despite the size of the pan, the food was finished quickly.
A ten-gallon (approximately 38-liter) pot can be emptied in one meal.
Fourteen people sitting together around a table can make even an enormous amount of food disappear within a few minutes.
The empty pot became part of the family legend.
