What can I do with chicken thighs tonight? A long time 'go-to' for me is Ann Williams' Curried Chicken. In 1989 a group of parents and teachers from Warren School, the school where I taught for many years, decided to do a fundraiser by selling cookbooks of community recipes. The cookbook was a wonderful way to preserve treasured recipes from our little town. It was a way to share memories of school days of the past. It was a way to celebrate how food has centered the community. And years later it is a way to remember individuals when I see their name attached to a recipe.
Note: an average class size for me was 12 and when I got up to the high number of 15 students I got a full-time aide.
Note: I replace honey with Maple Syrup, I am after all from Vermont and 'the valley' had many sugaring operations.
Ingredients:
- 4 or 6 chicken pieces (breasts or thighs)
- 1/2 stick butter
- 1/3 cup honey (or a little less of maple syrup)
- 1/4 cup dijon mustard (I just do a large dollop)
- 1 crushed garlic clove
- 2 tsp. lemon
- 1 tsp. curry (or more if you love curry)
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350
- Spray or oil a baking pan
- Arrange chicken in dish
- Melt butter in saucepan
- Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk everything together
- Pour this over the chicken, cover and bake 20 minutes
- Uncover and baste
- Continue to bake uncovered for 10-15 minutes until chicken opaque.
I serve this with rice and a vegetable
Throughout the book there are memories from elders who were in the school years ago.
- the school was heat with wood
- the outhouse was out back and many students did not feel it was fit for use
- a bucket of water fetched from the stream from which all students dipped for water breaks
- the first schoolhouse in Warren was built in 1805
- two popular games at recess were 'six-sticks' and 'bull in the ring' a form of baseball
- few people had cars in the early days, it was horse and wagons
- During mud season kids were often out of school for a month due to the roads being inaccessible. And during mud season it was also sugaring season so children were expected to help with sugaring.
- Lots of kids 'lived in'. They lived so far from school that they would live in town with a family or couple in exchange for room and board. They worked before and after school only getting home on weekends.
- It was the families that were responsible for keeping the school clean.
In the 80's, those years of teaching at Warren School, I would go to Rupert's barn to get raw milk from his holding tank; just walk right in his barn, past the cows in their stanchions and into the milking parlor.
I loved going to Ernest's sugar shack when he was boiling.
I would walk down the road to Mrs. Stetson's shed and use her kick pottery wheel. And for those of you interested, I could throw a mean pot, but my glazing techniques was so bad that I finally got other people to glaze them for me.
Then there was the Warren Store, with a history of serving the people of the town... stagecoach stop, inn, boarding house, post office, hardware store and finally a country store selling every necessary and unnecessary object 'needed' by the townspeople. Still to this day it draws people in.
When Russ was a bachelor living in Warren he was on a 16 household party line. For those of you who don't know what that was, it was ONE phone number for multiple households. That means if you wanted to make a call and you picked up your phone someone might already be on the line and you'd have to wait. Some would hang up and try again later or you could listen in. Velma Loose was the queen of listening in, interrupting "Rusty, that's not how it was!" It was certainly a different world of communication than we know of today.
When that cookbook was compiled, I was living the life of 'hippy girl'. I had a huge garden, canning and freezing vegetables for the year. I raised goats, rabbits, chickens for their meat and milk. I lived in a cabin with an outhouse. Overall I was a person my parents would run from had they witnessed my chosen lifestyle. (they never once visited me in my adult life) I once made flour from cat o' nine tails! I wore holy & patched jeans to work and was not the little debutant my parents would have preferred. There is good news and bad news from those years. The good news is that I learned so much about survival that I know I could do it again if I had to. Have you ever plucked a turkey? Believe me, it's gross! The bad news is that I was living a life that 'wasn't me', it was all an escape from a world that had became too much for me to handle. That happens for many people, they get sidetracked from their true self as they wander life's journey, sampling, challenging, choosing until the fit works. I can't say my life is unblemished, but I can say that those years at Warren School helped me to grow. I can say, even with Parkinson's looming in front of us that I am in the right place. I can say that each time I take out that little cookbook, I revisit memories and understand how I got here, in this place and time. My testimony would be that I am proud, for the most part, of the end story.