Crystal Wilkinson > Quotes

“Makes about seventy-two 3-inch cookies 16 tablespoons (1 cup) vegetable shortening 2 large eggs, beaten 2 cups sorghum molasses (see Tip) 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1 tablespoon ground allspice 1 tablespoon baking soda ½ teaspoon table salt 6 tablespoons hot water (110°F) 5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour, sifted, plus more for the work surface Beat the shortening in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or in a bowl with a hand mixer, on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Stop to scrape down the bowl. Add the eggs, sorghum, ginger, allspice, baking soda, and salt, beating on medium speed until well incorporated. Add the hot water and start by adding 4½ cups of flour or more as needed, beating on low speed to form a soft, evenly caramel-colored dough that just pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to overnight. When you’re ready to bake, move the middle oven rack up one level and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line several baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Lightly flour a 2-inch cookie cutter or the rim of a small glass, your rolling pin, and a work surface. Turn out half the dough and roll it to an even thickness of ¼ inch. Cut out the cookies, transferring them to the prepared baking sheets, where they should be spaced 1 inch apart. The cookies will spread as they bake. Re-flour the cookie cutter and rolling pin and reroll the dough. Gather up the scraps and reuse them as needed. Bake one sheet at a time on the repositioned rack for 7 to 9 minutes, turning the pan front to back halfway through. The cookies will be lightly golden and soft. Let them sit on the sheet for a few minutes, then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool while you repeat rolling, cutting, and baking the remaining dough. tip: Sorghum molasses (syrup) is different from blackstrap or unsulphured molasses. It’s made from the cooked cane of sorghum grasses, and it is sweeter, lighter in color, and thicker than molasses.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“But some of us have moved away and they are the ones who miss this street the most. They will always belong here even when they think they no longer do.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Water Street

“When Frank X Walker founded the Affrilachian Poets,”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“My grandfather was a tobacco farmer and also raised corn, pigs, and cattle. He farmed the old way with horse-drawn equipment well into the 1980s and early 1990s.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“Patsy bought, married, and freed her husband, William Riffe. Among Aggy and Tarlton’s children and grandchildren were blacksmiths and business owners, but farming was in their blood. These”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“The concept of the kitchen ghosts came to me years ago when I realized that my ancestors are always with me and that the women are most present while I’m chopping or stirring or standing at the stove. The art of cooking and engaging with my kitchen ghosts made me realize that food is never just about the present—every dish”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“Aggy of Color (who later became Aggy Wilkinson) was born in 1795 and presumably brought to Kentucky when the white Wilkinsons moved from Powhatan, Virginia, to help settle Casey County, Kentucky, in 1808. Though I don’t know what her duties were as a Black woman in the 1800s,”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“All a man needs is a good woman and a piece of land.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, The Birds of Opulence

“My father had been buried for a month when my mother came back to claim me. She returned as somebody even I didn’t recognize—a spirit barely alive imprisoned in her body, a husk. When we returned home, I mourned as much for the loss of my mother as I did for my father. Even then her shoulders had started to slump in surrender. Her skin had begun to wrinkle.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Water Street

“But it was long before then that I realized that my mother was no longer there. That she had died with my father. I was a little girl being raised by spirits. In”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Water Street

“the African presence in Appalachia was documented as early as the 1500s, when enslaved Africans and free persons of color arrived in the region with Spanish and French explorers.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“Casey County was formed in 1806, two years before Aggy of Color, my fourth great-grandmother, was likely brought from Virginia”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“On Water Street, every person has at least two stories to tell. One story that the light of day shines on; the other that lives only in the pitch black of night, the kind of story carried beneath the breastbone, near the heart, for safekeeping.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Water Street

“There are varying accounts, including census records that indicate she became a freed woman of color when she married Tarlton Wilkinson, a white man. From Tarlton and Aggy came our lineage,”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“My grandmother, like many women from Appalachia, called the meal in the middle of the day dinner. I remember chicken and dumplings, pot roast, or peas and pork chops. Sometimes there were brown beans, vegetable soup, or chili. Fried corn fresh from the garden. Sometimes she placed a salad in the middle of the table in a brown wooden bowl. There was always cornbread and rolls. There was always pie. Granny”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

“Sixteen years move in slow motion; then catch speed, fast, like the pages of a book being flipped.”
― Crystal Wilkinson, Water Street