August 18, 2005

It wasn't until I left home that I realized how lucky I was to grow up "poor" with a mother who could make a wonderful meal out of "nothing".

And the luxury of being poor and coming home after school to fresh-made potato water bread (saves milk), and cinamon rolls with home canned plums.

I really don't think many families (uh, that would be mothers) do that any more. They just bitch about not having enough money to live well, like the folks they see on TV. We didn't have a TV. And were richer for it.

They had to be good cooks, there was no "fast food " back then. They had to LEARN to cook good. My wife's grandmother was the best I've known.Dutch oven biscuits (cooked in the fire),fried eggs,bacon and homestyle pan gravy for the hung over crew in the morning. I miss that women and her cooking.

Rob,
You didn't have fancy stuff, but you were happy weren't you?

Scott G

Damn right I was, Scott. And I was well-fed, too.

I lived in a house full of love, and that's better than most kids can say today.

Yes yes, chicken and dumplings, I'm with you there. My mother seldom makes them, but they are my absolute favorite food. Better than steak, better than sex.

Our house ate about the same. Rice was the winner with my mama, she was American Indian and they loved rice. We had chicken and rice, very little beef and rice, pork and rice, collards and white, and her favorite was any type of beans and rice. We always had plenty of food and love at our table, we just did not eat fancy. My mama and daddy raised four outstanding men, Cat

Dosed in cod liver oil?

What does that mean?

Cod liver oil was considered to be good for kids. (Well, adults too, but kids were forced to drink a spoonful of the stuff every day back in the days before fruit-flavored chewable vitamins shaped like cartoon characters came on the market.) It's exactly what it says, oil made from the livers of cod fish.

My grandmother tried to get me to take cod liver. Once.

Love is the secret ingredient that turns the simplest fare into a feast fit for kings.

I didn't know the recipe until I became "Mama" to the kid who'd rather have pork chops with lima beans and rice than Mickey D's or even Outback after a weekend away, "'cause they taste like home".

Two favorites I'd give a lot to taste again:

Grandmother #1: Pinto beans with a little bacon or salt pork thrown in for flavoring, with her cornbread served on the side. Both my wife and I can make beans, and they taste pretty good, but they don't taste the same as grandma's.

Grandmother #2: Chicken-fried venison chops, served with mashed potatos and a peppery pan gravy. I've never been able to make venison - or gravy - that came close to matching hers.

I'm a decent cook, married to a really good cook (in all honesty, a better cook than either grandmother) but I miss the meals I remember from when I was a kid.

Your mama sounds a lot like my Mammaw, my mom's mom. She passed away half my life ago. Anyway, she was possibly the best Southern cook I'll ever know. Fried chicken, fried okra, blackeyed peas, cornbread, greens, real mashed potatoes with lumps in them, veggies cooked in oil.
She was a good woman. I never heard her say a bad word about anyone. Not that I ever heard. I wish she was still here; she passed when I was 17. My mom misses her immensely. And so do we all. My husband never knew her.
Pappaw died 11 years after she did. I know he's happy to be with her again.

Stories like this is why I love coming here.

If not for Pinto beans and cornbread most of us in the south would have starved to death! My dad raised a big garden and my mom canned greens, green beans, blackeyed peas that were about half snaps and half peas, pickled beets, corn, tomatoes, and made several different types of pickles including pickled okra. We ate good in the summer , fall and most of the winter but always seemed to run out of the good garden stuff along about March and it was a lot of Pintos and cornbread until the garden started producing again. I have made a lot of meals on just cornbread hot from the oven and a quart of fresh. unpasturized, un homogenized, sweet milk cold from the ice box.

I'm feeling very fortunate that my Mummy taught me to make the good old German staple stuff before she died - potato dumplings and pancakes, bean stews with pork that would fill you up for the whole day and so, but whenever I cook them it's still not the same as when she did...
I'd give anything to come home and smell one of her cakes or bread baking again too...

Steve over at hogonice.com had something a while back about 'give a southerner some basic stuff and you'll get a feast'.

Good doesn't have to involve 'fancy'.

My Mother was ill with cancer for 2 years...and I stayed with her as often as I could.......

those final 2 years were spent teaching me how to make her delicious potato salad, macaroni salad, chicken and dumplings, tomatoes and dumplings, scalloped potatos, her secret brownies.......heck I even learned how to make head cheese.

Now when I miss her I can eat what tastes like her food......and I can't wait to teach my own kids.....

When I was a kid I was ashamed that I slept a
with wash tubs full of potatoes beneath my
bed. There were times later in life that I wished I had just one o those taters to have eaten. We have raised a generation of computer experts who don't know how to fix a
leaky faucet.