Miss Eula Pritchard kept a list in the back of her recipe book of every person in Bitter Root who had ever fed her in a hard moment. The list went back to 1948 and was not in any kind of order. Some of the names had a year written next to them. Most did not. A few had a small sketch of a flower, which no one, including Miss Eula, was ever willing to explain.
Every August she put up forty quart jars of stewed tomatoes. Twenty for her own pantry. Twenty to be delivered, one at a time, to twenty names off the list. She rotated the names so that no household received the same jar two years running. She kept track in pencil. When she ran out of names she went back to the top.
A pantry that does not give back is just a closet.
The recipe is in the cookbook, as printed and as her granddaughter Mae could remember it. There are a couple of small changes. Miss Eula used a pinch of brown sugar that she would never admit to. Mae includes it. Miss Eula also used a particular brand of canning salt that you cannot buy anymore. Mae has tested three substitutes and the one she settled on is in the headnote.
The closet line did not make it into the cookbook proper. We tried it three different ways and it kept sounding like a sermon instead of like Miss Eula, who never sounded like a sermon a day in her life. So it lives here instead, in a field note, where it can be quoted without anyone having to explain themselves.
If you make the recipe, and you have a jar to spare, think of someone on your own list. You probably have one. Most people do, even if they have not written it down.
