Cooking With Magic

At first glance, the little brown jar didn’t seem like much of a bargain. Round, fat, and short—about the size of a grapefruit—it didn’t even have a lid. But Linda Owen Vinson, a single mother of three young boys, bought the jar for a dime at a yard sale.

That was in the early 1980s. At the time, Vinson was struggling to make ends meet, and she never imagined the priceless returns she would receive from her 10-cent investment.

“I just thought it was neat, so I brought it home, studied it, and figured out what to do with it,” says Vinson, of Honea Path, S.C. (pop. 3,504). A creative cook who relied on her garden of green beans, corn, and potatoes to feed her growing sons, Vinson devised an idea to start adding a “little pinch of magic” from the jar to her recipes to entertain her boys.

“I would wave my hands (over the food) and say ‘razzmatazz’,” Vinson says of those early days. “My grandmother always said to put love in your cooking, although for years I didn’t know what she meant.”

Two decades later, that little brown jar still sits in her kitchen, and Vinson, 55, knows exactly what her grandmother meant. As the author of a new cookbook, A Pinch From the Little Brown Jar, Vinson shares her simple recipes—made with some enchanting ingredients—along with stories of her life, and family photographs. She hopes it might help others get through life’s rough patches.

As for those magic contents, well, they might vary from person to person, but Vinson kindly reveals her own secret.

“Take a little jar,” she says, “and fill it with love, laughter, surprise, joy, and one box of baking soda. Mix and store in an appropriate place in the kitchen, and use one pinch at a time while cooking.”

Many of the stories in the book revolve around Vinson’s experiences as a single parent. During one particularly dark time when her sons were 12, 8, and 4 years old, Vinson got divorced, and a short time later, lost her job. Not long after that, her son, Shane, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. “I can give out, but I can’t give up,” Vinson repeated to herself as she sought comfort from prayer. She also found solace in the kitchen. “Everything that was good came from that little brown jar,” Vinson says. “But the real magic was my three boys.”

In the section of the cookbook titled “Divorced and Poor,” Vinson includes potato recipes for each day of the week, an experiment she once tried. The first night, she made mashed potatoes, the next night, potato cakes. Following nights included baked potatoes, potato casserole, and potatoes and cheese. She also pulled fried potatoes and potato soup out of her chef’s hat. Eventually, the boys had had enough potatoes. “They said, ‘Mama, we don’t want to do this anymore,’” recalls Vinson, laughing at the memory.

Such stories helped Vinson come up with her book idea. For years, she had scribbled recipes, poems, and her daily thoughts on scraps of paper before stuffing them in drawers. When friends encouraged her to compile them into a cookbook, she turned to her cousin Amy Garza, a published author, for help.

“I’ve always known Linda had talent, although she didn’t believe (it),” says Garza, of Sylva, N.C. (pop. 2,435). Two years ago, Vinson packed up her scraps of paper and set off to her cousin’s home for two weeks. While Garza edited, Vinson showed her appreciation by whipping up her home-cooked dinners.

The initial printing included just 150 books, which—through mostly word-of-mouth—sold out before a second batch was printed. Vinson, who now works part-time in a local school cafeteria, dedicated the book to all single mothers, as well as to her own mother, grandmother, and sons.

Today, Vinson’s sons, David Ray, 30, Shane, 26, and Davy, 22, enjoy cooking for their own families. Christmas 2001 was especially poignant for them, since the first printing of the cookbook was completed in time for Vinson to give a copy to each son as a gift. But Vinson says she thought something more was needed, so she searched through thrift stores and stopped at yard sales until she’d found exactly what she wanted—three little brown jars . . . one for each son.

Karan Robinson is a freelance writer from Clover, S.C.

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