Colleen's New England Kitchen

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Worry Worn, Hard Working Woman My Nana Morrill & Best Cook I know!

Here’s the lady who was widowed in her early 50’s, my grandfather was 30 years her senior. She always said; “It was better to be an old man’s darlin than a young man’s slaves.” I’m not quite sure how that worked for her, but she said when they were in bloom he always picked a bouquet of wild roses on his way home from work. She took 4 grandchildren at at 63 ages, 3, 7, 10 & 11 after she buried her daughter, my mother. She worked cleaning houses for wealthy people and spring cleaning summer camps on Kingswood Lake in Brookfield, NH, and ran the laundry operation at Camp Birchmont in Wolfeboro, NH until her early seventies.

She cooked a big supper every night, make breakfast for the 4 of us kids, my great-grandmother, and handicap uncle (her youngest of 10 children). She could take little to nothing and make a meal fit for a king. She taught me to cook at 11 years old, and you wanted to pay attention the first time around. patience was not one of her virtues. She always said; “The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!” And I’ve seen that prove true more than once.

She ran the thrift shop at Pleasant Valley Grange in Milton Mills, NH and was the janitor who hauled the water to make the coffee and do dishes for the meetings. After she started the wood fire so the hall would be warm when the folks showed up. My older sister and I helped haul water for the Grange and for home. We took more baths in the river down by Green Tannery and the “hallin out place” in Lovell Lake on route 109 Sanbornville, NH. And when a hard rain came we stood under the eaves at the house with a bar of soap and our bathing suits on. The well at the old place was always dry.

This woman was and is; My Nana Morrill. She and my grandfather owned the Prior - Belknap Farm years ago, she took in laundry, boarders and cleaned houses. My grandfather worked in the woods and was a horse trader. They lost a little boy 5 years to a tractor accident there. Then on to the Stoneham Road in Wakefield NH where she raised most of her children, and worked for Sarah Hamilton from Sarah’s Spar. I still have the collection of 1/2 dollars that Sarah gave me as a little girl. Then on to Union when she worked for Isabel and Author Fox and then Milton Mills, where I grew up. Life was mighty hard at times through those years, but, I can’t boast. I didn’t get this way or know what I do today had it not been for her and many mighty hard lessons. Oh, and my ability to cook (and tell people off if I have too), without question came from her too!

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