Ann Fitzpatrick Gordon grew up in a small Yorkshire town during the early part of the 20th century, a time when industries such as coal and textiles were in decline. Her father Eugene Fitzpatrick and her three brothers were part of the wave of workers made redundant during an already difficult time. Ann’s mother Polly, a very resourceful woman, looked to her cooking skills to help her husband provide for their family. Polly had a gift for turning discarded food into a nutritional meal; fish heads, cow intestines, pig’s blood and chicken necks were just a few of the cast-off staples she transformed on a regular basis.
Ann, being younger than her three brothers and four sisters, was usually the one by her mother’s side as she scurried around the peculiar smelling kitchen. One day three scrawny chickens wandered onto the Fitzpatrick property; it was assumed they came from an abandoned farm which had recently been foreclosed on. Eugene and Polly never questioned the arrival of the malnourished birds; they considered it a miracle, and within a year they were the proud owners of a very productive chicken coop. Immediately after the arrival of these chickens, chores were assigned to all eight children; Ann’s job was gathering eggs each morning, a chore she looked forward to doing every day mainly because it gave her a chance to fondle the baby chicks she was so passionate about.
One morning Ann decided to smuggle one of the newborn chicks into the house. She gently placed the fuzzy little critter in her apron pocket and headed toward the house, hoping she could bypass her mother and make it safely into the bedroom she shared with her four sisters. The moment she walked through the door, her mother called out to her, “Ann! Take the muffin tin out of the oven; be careful of the hot grease!”
Ann rushed into the kitchen and carefully opened the door of the brick oven. The grease in the muffin tin was burning and the oven was filled with dark smoke. Ann quickly snatched off her apron and began using it to remove the sweltering tin. As she tried to retrieve the burning pan, the baby chick she had hidden in her apron pocket fell out and landed in a pool of hot grease. Ann was frozen with horror as she watched the helpless critter struggle for freedom. Through the mind of a child she thought the baby chick was calling her name, literally. “An an Ann, an an Ann” she heard the tormented bird cry.
For weeks her brothers taunted her with all kinds of crude remarks. “Ann likes to bake baby chicks in her Yorkshire pudding” was their favorite comment. It would be months before Ann could erase the vivid images of the charred bird from her mind; it would be even longer before her appetite for Yorkshire pudding would return. However, with a surplus of eggs always available, Yorkshire pudding became a constant in the Fitzpatrick family and as the years went by, Ann became a master at baking them perfectly.
Valerie FrameWork 