She was at my house this past week, with Abi, her older sister. They were helping me with my chores in the kitchen. First we snapped up a five gallon bucket full of string beans. As I was working on hot packing them in the jars and getting ready to break out the pressure canner, I said:
"Okay - once I get this canner going, we're going to work shelling that big bag of pecans Grandma gave me that I never shelled! Whoo-hoo!" (Trying to make it sound like a fun thing and not a tedious chore I've been dreading for weeks.)
Abi: (In a mopey tone) "Oh, yeah. Yay." (We were going to do it with just the hand-held, metal nut crackers that everyone has.)
Alana was rooting around in my pantry, though.
"Ose-yanna?"
"Mmmm-hummm?"
"What's that?" (Points to my 1940's model citrus squeezer; a treasure I found in the back barn.)
"Oh, that's a thing for squeezing the juice out of grapefruits and oranges. See that handle there? It mashes the orange there, and juice comes out there, and goes into a glass there."
"Oh. Is it old?"
"Uh, yeah."
A few minutes later, she picked it up and set it out on the (temporary) kitchen work table. I thought she was just fooling around with it.
Then I heard a nut crack and watched as the little thinker started cracking pecan after pecan, using the cirtus squeezer. Abi and I just looked at each other and grinned. We never would have thought of that! By jove! I think she's got it!
No comments:
Post a Comment