The Eater and his Ancestors

Abstract

A woman remembers a weekly family ritual about preparing an apple pancake that was always served on Tuesdays when she was a child. The grandparents came to look after the little girl: “My grandma used to stand in the kitchen and stir the batter, in a big yellow stoneware bowl. While she was doing this my grandpa sat at the kitchen table with me, told stories and cut slices of apple, one for me — one for the pancake. The slices were cut off round the apple so that at the end a precisely cut cube was left round the core, and I gnawed this off as well. I can clearly remember those straight surfaces on the apple core that I bit into and left the pattern of my teeth. Then the apple slices were put in the batter while it was still wet, and it got drier and firmer and drew the apple slices into it, octagonal, hexagonal, square and almost round apple slices that floated on the batter like patches. When my grandma couldn’t come any more my grandpa made the pancakes on his own. And later, when my grandpa was dead as well, my father took over making the apple pancakes. It is quite clear to me that the apples have to be cut just like my grandpa did for apple pancake. And I think that when my children start asking me about my grandparents the first thing I will tell them about them is this picture of Tuesday and the right way to make apple pancakes.”