My Mom Invented the “Slow Cooker”

It is a plastic Santa Claus and Snowman ornament from the 1950s.

As I think about it, it was always the last two ornaments placed on the tree, and at the level I could reach from age six forward. Slowly, they crept up the tree.

Some people say they “love” Christmas. I would say my Mom “loved and lived” for Christmas, and for that matter, every holiday when she could cook and be with her family and dearest friends.

Mom was not an extrovert, far from it. However, come home with me for the holidays, and you will be hugged and welcomed with the most gracious and finest Southern meal you’ve ever seen. Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah comes but not to my Mom’s level of a spread.

Mom “invented” the “slow cooker.”

In the 1950s, we got a floor furnace, and we went uptown after getting rid of the coal grates and wood stove. The furnace had a grate and a Honeywell thermostat. The grate got hot! It was hot enough to burn you if you fell or stepped on it when it was at a roar. Since I was in the attic, my bedroom, office, library, laboratory, secret hideout, and “Bat” cave, my grandfather got the heat up to me by cutting a hole in the attic floor right above the floor furnace.

Stay with me here.

The way you controlled the heat coming to the attic was pure “Southern.” I would pull up the steps and let the heat whip easily up to 80-85 degrees, place a piece of cardboard over the grate, and open the window. It was primitive, but it worked.

Remember I said, “Mom invented the slow cooker?” One Thanksgiving morning, I awoke to uncover my attic grate and was greeted by the aroma of my Mom’s incredible turkey and sage dressing. Mom had cranked up the floor furnace, placed her turkey and dressing fixings in a granite-covered utensil, and let it “cook” overnight. And nary one of us ever had food poisoning.

When Mom and my father built their retirement home, Mom was saddened by the lack of a floor furnace. We gave her a slow cooker. She rarely used it. She went on to use the oven on her gas stove, although the smell when you entered the home on her cooking days was there. Well, it was never quite the same.

And those ornaments. I hung them on Mom’s tree every year until they came within a foot of the top.

Mom passed away on 6 May 2006.