Beer and Duct Tape... Need I Say More?
Not too long ago, I stood ever so patiently in line at the grocery store behind a very pregnant woman who looked to be somewhere between 35-40 wearing flip-flops, shorts, and an oversized T-shirt bearing the inspiring phrase ‘Beer & Duct Tape . . . need I say more?’ And from the amount of foodstuffs I spied in her shopping cart, one might have thought she was buying supplies to last through a nuclear winter. But one look at her 3 sons, all under the age of 12 and sporting very short summertime crew cuts, and I knew she was probably buying provisions that might last the next 7 to 10 days.
When Megan, the checkout clerk at register #4, greeted her and asked if she had a frequent shopper card, La Femme de Beer-n-Duct Tape quickly said 'YES!' and frantically started searching through her pocketbook looking for the thing. In her mad hunt, she pulled out a hairbrush, a book of stamps, a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes (well, at least they were lights – that has to count for something, right?) and a mini-lighter which she then handed to her eldest son saying, “Jamie, baby, keep uh eye on that for Mama.”
As she continued her search, her youngest child grabbed hold of the hem of her shorts and started tugging on them saying, “Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama. . .” (I lost count after the fourth Mama).
She looked down at him and said in a very exasperated tone, “WHAT!?”
He pointed to his middle brother and said “Joey took my Octopus Prime and he ain’t giving it back to me.”
Joey retorted with, “It ain’t Octopus Prime, Mama. It’s Op-toe-mist Prime.”
The woman, who had finally found her frequent shopper card and triumphantly handed it to Megan, looked to her middle son with the wild expression of a woman on the edge of a parental breakdown and snatched the action figure out of his hands as she scolded, “Joey, I done told you before to keep your hands off’a Josh’s toy.”
With the Optimus Prime saga behind her, the mother turned her attention back to the rhythmic ‘boop-boop’ of the price scanner as Megan methodically swiped each canned good, boxed item, and bottled liquid she picked up out of the overstuffed shopping cart before swiping it across the barcode reader. Now typically I’d have gone to another register, but I had always known Megan to be an efficient checker who slows down only to look at the produce code chart when she comes to fruit or vegetable items she is not familiar with; so, I decided I’d tough it out for a few more minutes. Besides the other two open registers had fairly long lines and I figured it would look terribly rude to dash away just so I could stand at the back of a longer line.
At first things moved along at a brisk pace. Mark, the witty bagger who graduated from high school a few weeks earlier, offered silly little bits of information as he quickly placed the cans of cream of mushroom soup, tuna, and giant sized Chef Boy-R-Dee ABC’s & 123’s into the shopping bags as fast as Megan could place them on the yard long conveyor belt. Their checkout groove was so solid that Megan was even able to slap 3 red ‘Thank You’ stickers on the 3 gallons of milk that were in the cart and return to her super-fast scanning before Mark could replenish the stand that holds the plastic bags.
But then after a couple of minutes of rapid fire barcode swiping and bagging, the Beer-n-Duct Tape Mama, who had been carefully watching as each scanned price flashed on the register’s display screen, reached out, quick as a flash, and grabbed hold of a small package that had been scanned and moved for bagging. Megan stopped swiping and Mark stopped bagging and they both stared at the frazzled looking woman.
She handed Megan the package and said in tone that is best described as irritated, “That souse is supposed to be two for $5.49.”
Souse. Pronounced 'sows' – like cows only with an ‘s’. I tell you, there’s nothing quite as interesting as this Southern pork product! For some people it's a delicacy though for others, myself included, it's avoided like the plague.
So, just what is souse you ask? Well, you might know it by other names, but south of the Mason-Dixon Line souse, a pork product which is also known as head cheese, is a sausage-like luncheon meat made by mixing together the meat of a pig’s head (and sometimes the tongue, feet and heart) that has been stewed with herbs and spices. This mixture is then put about into a square mold (like a typical loaf pan) leaving a about a ½ inch gap up to the lip of the vessel. Then the loaf of pork by-products is coated with warm pork stock.
The loaf pan then goes into a refrigerator where the stock congeals. If you’re still having issues trying to conceptualize it, think of one of those Jell-O molds popular in the '70s with the bits of fruit floating around inside. Only instead of it tasting like lime with tasty bits of pears, it’s pork flavored and has chunks of meat in it. And for people who can tolerate the consistency of gelled, mashed meat and don’t really care where it came from on the pig, it’s quite tasty. Or so said my father, a man who, mind you, liked to eat bread doused in buttermilk for a snack. Oh, yes, my Daddy l-o-v-e-d souse (as well as it’s much less popular pork cousin, scrapple) I tried it –souse that is– once. It wasn’t for me. And as for scrapple I think I would have to be under severe duress to eat it.
I suppose it’s a texture thing because I love a good helping of hash and rice. Oh, Lordy, Lordy...let me guess–you haven't got a clue what Southern pork hash is...do you? Think souse without the weird gelatin then add in a good bit of barbeque sauce (I prefer honey mustard style) and let it stew for a couple of hours. When that spicy, sweet aroma knocks you backward and you begin to salivate, it’s ready. Next, you’ll want to spoon a huge ladleful it over some fresh, hot rice. Presto! You’ve got another flavorful, historically southern version of a classic meat staple that has helped many families stretch out their dollars during lean economic times. And I LOVE it! (Incidentally, my husband, a . . . Yankee even likes it, too!)
Oh, how that makes me laugh to say it! Because a few generations ago, my family (the side of family tree with the snooty leaves) would have balked at the idea of marrying anyone from up North! Lucky for me, my grandmother was a maverick and bucked the system back in the early 30s when she married a fellow from Ohio and then in the late 30s when she . . . oh merciful Heavens . . . divorced him! Then she had the gall to marry a fellow from England! Yes, my grandmother was quite the woman indeed.
Good grief! Please pardon my tangent. Where was I? Let's see...yes, yes...the souse was mispriced -
Megan sighed and handed the parchment paper wrapped cold-cut product to Mark, “Hey, can you check this? She says it’s supposed to be a two-fer.” Mark smiled, took the item, and dashed off to the rear of the store as Megan started scanning the items that had been stowed at the bottom of the cart.
The stressed out mother then looked back at me with my half-filled, half-cart (yes, half-cart which I truly believe was designed for those of us who don’t really need a standard-sized cart but enjoy the ‘push the cart’ experience while shopping) and my eco-friendly canvas shopping bags (not that I’m a plastic-bag-hating-green-freak . . . I just like getting the bonus shopping points for using them) and smiled apologetically as she said in one of the deepest Piedmont North Carolina (tobacco country) accented voices I'd heard in a long time, “I’m so sorry. But my granny loves her souse and since they don’t give it to her at the home, I always like ta snatch it up when I see it. I slice her up some for sam-a-ches and take it to her on Sundays after church.”
I’m not really sure why she felt the need to apologize to me or to justify her price check request. A sale is a sale no matter if it lowers the cost of pricey caviar or sausage encased in gelatin. Maybe she did it because she thought I was wearing a perturbed sort of expression. But if I did have a sour look on my face, I can promise it had nothing to do with her request. Not in the least. No. If that was the expression she saw, it was probably because her youngest two sons kept running into my cart while playing ‘I touched you—I touched you back’.
Then again, she might not have been directing her apology specifically towards me. Because when I glanced behind me, I saw an openly annoyed young woman who was in her early 20s wearing extra small Barbie clothes on her tiny frame and carrying a basket filled with wheat bread, yogurt, and organic alfalfa sprouts in one hand and a Heineken six-pack in the other. Of course, I could be wrong about her age because once I hit 35 my ability to guesstimate ages of people younger than me started to slip. But with the beer in hand, I assume she was at least 21! Though to be honest, she acted more like a bratty 13-year- old as she stood there rolling her eyes to such extremes you would have thought someone smacked her chin with a 2x4 so hard her eyeballs got stuck at the top of her eye sockets.
But despite to whom the polite statement was directed, I shook my head and replied with a smile and an emphatic, “Oh, no need to apologize. I understand. I’m not in a hurry.” Which drew a smile from the harried mother who was rubbing her swollen stomach and looked like she might go into labor right there.
Within a few moments of my reply, Mark returned with the down-low on the souse. Was it a really a two-fer or was she mistaken? Mark sighed as though he was informing a loved one about a death in the family when he said, “I’m sorry. The sale is only on the pound sizes. This is an 8 ounce package. I can go trade it out if you want.”
I heard Barbie girl groan and mutter something as she dashed over to checkout #5. Then I glanced at the T-shirt sporting mother with the belly button popped out like a thermometer on a Thanksgiving turkey and saw a look of genuine disappointment on her face as she said, “No. That’s fine. Granny’ll never eat that much. I’ll just take this one. Thank you kindly, though.”
In the end, her grocery bill wound up being $144 and some odd change. Wow, I must say, I was impressed. She got a lot for that amount but then I worried, how can she possibly afford that? Yes, I suppose I did judge her economic status based upon her style of dress and the fact that she practically tackled Megan, the innocent checkout girl, over a sale that would have saved her all of about $2. But when she pulled out her wallet and doled out $160 in cash, I knew either she or her husband or someone had worked awfully hard to earn that money and it reminded me to not judge someone just because of how they look. And the fact that she wanted so badly to please her elderly granny by bringing her something so simple as souse reminded me also to consider how those little things really matter.
As the ready to pop Beer-n-Duct Tape Mama and her 3 sons, left the store, I giggled listening to her lay down the law about holding hands in the parking lot. Yes, that was quite cute.
But if I'm being totally honest, the real reason why I started giggling had to do more with the fact that the snotty, pencil-thin girl who'd dashed over to the next lane (that, if you'll remember was actually a longer line) thinking she'd somehow be able to move faster because no one was stopping the checker with what I'm sure she felt were stupid price check requests, got stuck behind and older gentleman who was buying just a few things . . . one of which was a half-gallon of Breyers ice cream. As Megan rang up my goods, the old man's checker and Megan were going boop-for-boop . . . who would finish first?
Then, I heard the old man say, “Oh, oh. Now . . . now. . . hold on up there a minute, young lady! That Bryers is supposed to be on special! I said so in the paper." And as he grabbed the advert sheet from the register line and pointed at the sale price, Megan and Mark had finished scanning and bagging my items. Then as I grabbed my reusable bags, I turned and saw that the ticked off Barbie-girl had apparently entered into some sort of 'Oh my God!' trance as her eyes were once again rolled up to the top of her eye sockets!
PRICE CHECK!!
Holy Lollipops and the Fatback Black Market Queen-Pin
The story you’re about to read makes mention of a few items that, if you’re not from the South, you might not be familiar with, so I thought I’d give you a quick course in Southern breakfast cuisine . . .
Buttermilk biscuits—this is a no brainer people for who hail from my neck of the woods, but I realize there are some folks out there, people with funny accents and whatnot, who are sorrowfully confused about just what a buttermilk biscuit is. These poor folks are under the misconception that this particular biscuit is a cookie! Land sakes – nothing could be farther from the truth of the matter! Southern buttermilk biscuits are most commonly served at breakfast when they’re warm and fluffy and either swathed in salted sweet, cream butter or jelly or maybe smothered with tasty creamed sausage gravy. (Lordy, I should’ve written this after I ate!)
Fatback—the thick, extremely salty wholly fat outer layer of bacon. It’s often used as a seasoning agent in all sorts of Southern dishes. It’s also the stuff from which pure, unadulterated lard is made. Some people love to fry up the stuff until its super crispy and then eat it as if it were a fine delicacy; however, I am not one of those people.
Grits—they’re made from hominy which is dried corn that’s been soaked in a limewater solution, dried out again and then coarsely ground. It’s a staple in a great number of Southern households and is most often served as a porridge-like side dish at breakfast. Grits are probably the best indicator of whether or not someone is truly Southern because Southerners don’t put milk, sugar, syrup or anything like it into their grits. No, just some butter and salt.
Livermush—it’s sort of like sausage, only it’s minced finer and the final product is shaped like a brick before packaging. It’s made up of pig’s liver, corn meal, and the pièce de résistance, select portions of the pig’s head. It’s adored by 1,000s in the region where I live; but just as with fatback, I am not a fan of the stuff.
And with the vocabulary lesson out of the way it’s time to get to the heart of this story.
Several years ago when my daughter was preparing to return to school after a long and fun filled summer vacation, my husband and I had purchased all her supplies and insisted that she start going to bed earlier and waking up earlier . . . to help her get back into the school routine. The only real hurdle was getting her back into the habit of eating breakfast because being a teen at the time, she would have much rather just waited until she got around to it which meant she’d wait until around noon before the Spirit moved her towards the kitchen.
However, I was (and still am) a diehard believer in the positive effects of eating breakfast as a way to get you ready for the day ahead. It’s something that was engrained in me as a child because my parents did not let me go to school without having something on my stomach otherwise I was like a moth in a room full of candles and couldn’t pay attention to save my life. Of course, now I know part of that ‘brain flitting from here to there’ scenario has a lot to do with the fact that I have ADHD. (But that’s fodder for another book all together!)
When I was a kid, my mother didn’t really mind what I ate for breakfast whether it was made up of cereal or bacon and eggs or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And there were some occasions (especially on really cold mornings) when she’d even allow me to enjoy bowl of tomato soup. But as for my father, the issue of a proper breakfast was an entirely different thing because breakfast was not breakfast if it did not include at least two eggs some sort of meat, biscuits, and a side of grits.
And if my father happened to be the one making breakfast he would always ask me if I wanted a fried or a scrambled egg. However, I’m not sure why he asked what kind I of egg I wanted because I always chose scrambled since my father’s fried eggs were a bit too runny for my taste. Although I suppose runny is not the right word because my father liked his eggs over easy.
Really over easy. So over easy, in fact, they practically floated on his plate!
I can still envision him breaking open the yolk and then mixing the gooey stuff with his grits so it thickened a bit and turned into a pale yellow sludge that would drip between the tines of his fork. And since my Daddy wasn’t one to waste food, after he’d shoveled up and eaten the thickest part of the egg stuff, he’d put his biscuit on his plate and use it like a boom spread across the water to collect oil spilled from a tanker as he’d proceed to sop up as much of the residual stuff as he could.
Needless to say, when he was done his plate always wound up disturbingly clean looking by the time breakfast was done. Oh, the number of times I'd just stare at him wide eyed watching whatever bread product happened to be trapped beneath his fork while he swabbed the deck of his plate free of any and all traces of egg yolk. Gosh. Just thinking of it, though it was decades ago, still makes me a bit green about the gills.
Don’t get me wrong. I love what I call ‘stickety’ eggs where the egg is fried so that the white is completely cooked and the edge of the yolk is firm but the center is filled with a thick liquid into which I can happily dip my bread. But honest to goodness, I cannot eat runny - not quite done egg whites. I can’t even look at them.
Seriously.
I kid you not. Runny eggs make me queasy and my first instinct whenever I see the gelatinous clear to near opaque squishy stuff on my egg is to get as far away from the plate as possible. My family thinks it’s hilarious to see me when I encounter an egg that doesn’t pass my strict protocol. I, however, do not.
But stepping away from one of my weird food issues (as there are a few) . . .
Aside from preparing the eggs, my father would also fry some bacon because meat was a vital part of the breakfast meal. Granted eggs are protein powerhouses, but I think it was my father’s belief that if it wasn’t actually slaughtered then it wasn’t really meat. Sometimes my father would opt to put aside the bacon and fry a few slices of livermush perhaps thinking that, according to him, I would have come to my senses and would suddenly be head over heels in love with the stuff.
But I didn’t. No. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.
There were also mornings when my father would fry up a mess of fatback at breakfast time and then he would use the rendered fat left behind in the pan to cook other things later in the day. Once the fatback was so crispy it could crack, he’d always offer my siblings and me a piece of the stuff. However, unlike my siblings (especially my older brother) who loved, loved, loved the stuff – I didn’t like it at all. Because while fatback does provide a fabulous seasoning to things (after all, it’s basically extremely salty bacon and in a Southern household, pretty much everything is better with bacon) in my opinion, the crispy remnants of fried fatback is what I think it would be like to nibble on a skillet-fried salt lick.
But as I said my brother simply adored the stuff and would gobble down his piece and mine as quickly as he got it. I can still recall the way his eyes would light up like it was Christmas Day when Daddy would walk to the kitchen table carrying a grease-soaked paper towel holding pieces of the crisped fat-stuff. A paper towel that, mind you, would become stiff when the liquefied pork fat it soaked up would cool. Even as a kid I knew that could not be good for a person.
And the crazy thing is . . . people thought I was the weird one because I wasn’t thrilled to death over the stuff.
Seriously. When I was a kid in elementary school, before the age of let’s try to make the school lunch look healthy, fatback was given as a treat on Fridays to students that the ladies who worked on the lunch line liked. And apparently I was an angel in their eyes because I always got a piece for which I’d say ‘Thank you, kindly’ because I was polite. Then, once I was seated at my table, I would offer the salty stuff to whoever promised to give me the little cup of ice cream that we got every Friday after recess.
Oh, my . . . how I did adore those little cups of ice cream the school got from the local dairy plant, Cabarrus Creamery. Gracious, there was something so tasty about eating that cold treat with the little wooden spoon. Of course, I was a picky ice cream eater. I loathe plain vanilla ice cream and I don’t think I’d bat an eye if someone outlawed the orangesicle because it still reminds me of those disgusting St. Joseph’s chewable asprins. No, I was and still am a chocolate ice cream lover.
So, if someone wanted to wheel and deal with me on Friday at lunchtime for my fatback, they better have made the smart decision to order chocolate ice cream back on Monday morning when we turned in our lunch money. And I wasn’t stupid. No.
Before any sodium soaked skillet-fried sow passed from my hand to some salt junky, I demanded to see the little slip of paper that we got back on Tuesday morning in our cubbys confirming our ice cream orders. Looking back on it now, I suppose it’s fair to say that on Fridays, the little angel who always got a piece of fatback when she was in elementary school, turned into a fatback black market queen-pin once she got to the lunch table.
Of course, when we went to Middle School, I realized I was headed down a dark path if I kept up with my fatback/chocolate ice cream extortion ways even though they didn’t do the Friday Fatback treats. But they had other things I could have traded up to in the shady world of tasty lunch table bargaining. Honestly, if I’d not changed my ways, I’m sure I would’ve started dealing in those tasty yeast rolls that the school made each day as I always seemed to get two of them – perhaps my angelic reputation preceded me. Either that or the lunch ladies felt like they needed to fatten me up because I was so itty-bitty back then. But no matter what the reason, I always wound up with an extra rolls and I only ate one. If I had wanted to, I could’ve eaten my weight and then some in ice cream and french fries (back when they used to deep fry them in beef tallow). But I chose, instead, to simply give my extra rolls to one of my friends. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it)
Now you might think the doling out of fatback was something unique to my elementary school. But it wasn’t. No. It was a practice that was rampant in the school cafeterias in my area. In fact, my husband, who moved to the South from New York when he was around 10 tells the funniest story about how on one of the first days at his new elementary school, a lunch lady yelled 'FATBACK!' out to the students as they sat eating their lunches. And before the word had fully escaped her lips, the students all jumped up from their seats and dashed to get a piece. To hear my husband describe the scene it was almost as if Jesus, Himself, had stopped by and was handing out the stuff like Holy lollipops.
And so my husband, not knowing what he was in for, also jumped up, ran with the crowd and was given one of the coveted pieces of fatback. He thought for sure that fatback must be awe inspiring to have caused such a commotion. He says he excitedly took a bite and instantly thought Oh gross! as he spit the stuff out of his mouth. Apparently chowing down on crispy fatback was not a spiritual moment for him. However, just as I had done, he too, learned how to use the valuable brittle tidbit to his bargaining advantage. Honest to goodness, when he told me that, even though we’d been married for years, I knew it was fated that we were meant to be together. After all, how rare is it for two people – one Southern, one Northern – to come together and not adore a crispy piece of fatback?
Of course aside from getting to enjoy an extra two to three whole ounces of ice cream each week there were other benefits to avoiding the fatback. Benefits I wouldn’t realize until years later. Because when I consider how much saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium is in one little piece, I swear I’m surprised I couldn’t hear my friends’ 10-year-old arteries hardening right there as we sat at Mrs. Eudy’s 4th grade lunch table. And now that I’m in my fabulous 40s, I cannot help but wonder how many of my old classmates are dealing with high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes considering the amount of deep fried, salt covered, carbohydrate packed foods that were ingested back then.
I’m pretty sure they don’t do Fatback Fridays anymore in elementary schools considering the kids have to eat things like oven-baked tater-tots and flavorless wheat rolls which they can wash down with chocolate flavored skim milk. Yum. And in an odd sort of way, I feel sorry for my daughter because she never got to enjoy the power a thick piece of fatback gave a kid even though as Peter Parker’s uncle said to the soon to be Spiderman, ‘With great power, comes great responsibility’.
Obviously, Spiderman’s uncle didn’t know how good the chocolate ice cream that the Cabarrus Creamery made was!
Goodness Gracious, Gotta Get Me Some Southern Style Green Beans!
Food.
It has the power to take us back in time - back to good times. Times when our stomachs could handle just about anything we threw in them without so much as a gurgle or a burp. (Although, my four brothers would say that the 'burps' were the best part of a meal . . . I, personally, beg to differ!)
There are certain foods that make me feel happy if I do nothing more than think about them. And if I am lucky enough (or if I have enough gumption to prepare it myself) I can actually have a few morsels of one or more of those foods that take me back to those days when I sat around my dining room table and enjoyed dinner with my family. I’ll bet YOU have a food or that reminds you of a story from your youth, too!
You might not know it from my long-winded ramblings, but there was a time when I used to teach history - mainly US history because I have a Master’s Degree in in the subject and there's not a lot a person can do with that sort of degree aside from teach. I could have chosen any number of other subjects to study (and I did - for a while I was a PoliSci/Econ double major and then I was a Theatre major - yes, I am one of those people who tested the extremes of the College of Humanities)
But in the end, I chose History because even though I went from one end to the other in the humanities - there was always at least one history class on my schedule. One day I realized that my major had been right in front of me simply waiting to be seen. I suppose it's because I loved all the personal stories that lived within the history I was studying. And I carried that love into my classroom hoping that with each passing day I'd inspire at least one kid with my stories which were always a little goofy the way I'd been inspired all throughout my life.
My love of history came long before college. It started when I was young and would spend hours (yes, hours) sitting at our big, round dinner table practically every evening listening to the stories my father used to tell about his childhood, his college days, and his years in the military. You see, unlike most of my friends whose dads were in their 30s or maybe in their 40s when they were born - my father was 52 when I was born in 1970. A quick bit of math and that’ll tell you he was born in 1918 which means basically I lived with my own personal, walking, talking history book. And did my father love to talk and tell stories!
He especially liked to tell his stories was while he was cooking. You see, my Daddy was a Stay-at-Home Dad before there ever was such a thing as S@H Dads! Only he didn't stay home because he wanted to. Oh, no. he would have much rather been working but he couldn't because he had his first bout with cancer from '77 to about '80.
The radiation and chemotherapy treatments, which weren’t nearly as pleasant (if you can imagine such a thing being pleasant) back then as they are today. And as a result it left him too tired to 'work' so he stayed home while my mother went to work. Now as I said, my Daddy loved to tell stories while he was cooking and now that I look back on it, I think he told his stories that way because he wanted me to associate all his sharable life moments with something tangible . . . something I could see or smell or taste later on in life that would trigger my memories so that his stories could come to life long after he passed on.
My father successfully won the battle against the cancer that got hold of him in the late 70s. But sadly, he lost the war as he was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 1993 and died three months before my wedding. Now, now . . . no need for tears! With all those lovely stories he left me as well as a poem he wrote just for me and my future husband - months before he was ever told officially 'This is it, Steve, enjoy what you can while you can' - I have nothing but joyful thoughts.
Moving right along, when my Daddy got to cooking dinner it was usually well before the dinner hour at 6PM. And that’s because good, old-fashioned Southern-style cooking takes a little time to reach that ‘Oh, my Lord that’s SO good’ stage! Besides, the prep time for the foods I grew up on were the best times to catch up on things that were going on.
Somehow, I imagine this is true in many households where dinner isn’t something that is ‘just about refueling as quickly and as mess free as possible’. I kid you not when I say there were times when I'd get off the school bus and you could smell the aroma of whatever my daddy had been working on wafting down our long driveway on a soft Southern breeze.
And in our house a meal wasn't a ‘meal’ unless it had:
1. A meat: for instance buttermilk fried chicken; crusted cube steak with mushroom gravy* (a.k.a. chicken fried steak); or, big ol' fried pork chops smothered in rich, creamy gravy. Notice the overriding emphasis on the 'fried' part. Sure you could do an 'oven baked crispy style' for each of the foods mentioned he had wanted. But he didn't want to. Truth is I'm not much for frying foods these days. But there are times when I just have to let loose and go all Southern-Fried-Yum-Tastic on my meats!)
*In my house, gravy was its own food group, mind you. Oh, Heaven help me, do I love me some good country-style gravy.
2. Two vegetables like: fresh creamed corn; wilted spinach cooked with thin strips of crispy salted fatback {I’m personally not a fan of eating the fatback—however, I do love the flavor it imparts in a dish}; or, -green beans. Oh, Lord have mercy! Those green beans! If I'm lying, I'm dying because my Daddy’s green beans were mouthwatering and amazing!
3. Some sort of starch (potatoes, rice, or pasta)
4. Bread. Granted bread, in whatever form you have it, is starchy in some way. But in my house bread, like gravy, was essentially a food group in and of itself. And my father would make fresh country white bread, sweet corn bread, and buttermilk biscuits all from scratch. (Oh, dear . . . my mouth just started to water as thoughts of how wonderful the smell of those tasty food are crept into my head!)
5. Dessert. Now we didn’t have a dessert all the time. No, no. But once a week or maybe twice, we’d always have something sweet from the kitchen. He’d make homemade cakes, pies, and cobblers. To be honest, I loved the cobblers best of all thanks to all that buttery, fruity, sugary yumminess that came together in a way that made my taste buds explode!
Today, when I make a cobbler, my husband who love, love, loves cobblers gets all excited as does my mother (who’s diabetic so for her to get cobbler is a MAJOR treat) and my daughter (whose eyes sort of glaze over when I mention it!) It boggles my mind that we’re all not big as houses because when I get to cooking . . . I go all out!
My motto is No pot shall go untouched. No skillet shall be left alone. When this Belle throws on her Magnolia Blossom apron (and yes, I really do have an apron with magnolia blossoms on it) she goes four-to-the-floor for broke.
Sorry - went off on a little tangent there! Getting back to the road this story was traveling on before that little turn . . .
My Daddy knew how to make a feast fit for a king from the simple fixins we had on hand. For those of you who may be up in arms at my apparent misuse of the word 'fixings' - I hate to tell you, but in this case you're wrong! Fixins is spelled correctly! In the South, we fix food and you need fixins to fix food!
And to make the very best foods you need really fresh foods. Meats were a grocery store sort of thing but not our veggies . . . those were best if they came from the Farmers’ Market. If they came out of your own garden that was even better! Unfortunately, we didn’t have a garden (save the tomatoes we grew!) but, our cross-street neighbors, the Kirks, they didn't just have a garden, they had a full-scale farm and they were two of the nicest people I ever knew. My father called them 'salt of the earth' sort of folks.
Mrs. Kirk was a farmer’s wife through and through. She was a plump woman who spent her days baking, canning, pickling, and making most of their clothes. Mr. Kirk was a lean, hearty man who woke up at 4AM each morning to deliver bread from Bost’s Bakery all around our small town and then came how to do his real job as a farmer. The Kirks had a full-working farm with what Mr. Kirk called a 'little garden' that was about 4 acres deep and wide and required a tractor to work it. Needless to say, when people today talk about their 'big backyard gardens', I just grin because their version of 'a big garden' and my version of 'a big garden' are a wee bit different!
I was such a lucky kid because I was able to help out in the garden and with the animals and all that other ‘stuff’ one has to do when on a farm. What great fun I had at Mr. & Mrs. Kirk's house! Of course, most kids today might not agree with my version of 'fun'. Because the fun I had required a lot of physical labor especially when we were in the garden where we had to do things like hand plant row after row of seasonal vegetables. Sure it was hard work, but it was well worth it!
And Mr. Kirk didn't care one iota that I was a very small little girl. Nope. Instead of saying I was short, he used to say I was lucky to be so much closer to God's beautiful Earth. He also told me that God obviously made me the way I was so I could be a good gardener. Now when someone tells you God thinks you'd be a good gardener - you try your best to do your best!
Apparently I impressed Mr. Kirk enough that he actually taught me how to drive the tractor when I was all of ten years old. Yes, he let me drive a giant orange, stick-shift tractor with a tiller and plow attachments. Mind you, I could barely reach the clutch to change the gears but I did it. Now come on - you've got to admit that at ten years old that's cool. Now that I'm older, when I look back on those days, I know the Kirks were helping me simply be a kid amid the chaos of the cancer treatments my father had to undergo.
But getting back to those green beans. Whenever the sting beans would 'come in' over at Mr. Kirk's, he'd call my Daddy and tell him, "Steve, I've got me about 4 rows of green beans I won't be able to get to and I was wondering if you'd mind sending that nugget of yours over to pick a couple of rows to take home? It would be such a shame to let them go to waste because Margie won't be able to can 'em before they go bad."
What a lovely man Mr. Kirk was. He knew our family didn't have a lot of money around that time because the treatment for my father's cancer was quite costly.
And offering use those green beans, which weren't expensive at all, wasn't meant to be some grand gesture . . . rather it was Mr. Kirk's way of saying 'Hey neighbor, my brother in God's eyes, I want to share this bounty with you because I care.’ Yes, that's the sort of people I grew up around. I suppose I was a rather lucky young lady.
As for the beans that came into the house . . . my father took great care to instruct me in how to make them so that one day I might be able to make them just like he did and I could think of him while I did it. He taught me very well, too. Because today one of my daughter's favorite foods is the Southern Style Green Beans my Daddy taught me to make back when I was just a kid.
Of course, all this talk about how good those beans are probably has you wondering if I'm pulling your leg. And I'd hate for you all to think I was just talking to hear myself talk . . . so, I thought I might share the recipe my Daddy taught me so long ago.
After all, this IS a book about food - I figure it's only polite to throw at least one honest to goodness Southern dish in it for you to make on your own! Besides, my Daddy wasn't one much for keeping recipes secret. He'd say 'Why hoard something wonderful when you can share it?'
Southern Style Green Beans (From my kitchen to yours)
The Fixins:
*1 to 2 pounds fresh green beans (cleaned with the ends clipped and the 'rib strings' pulled.)
*4-8 slices of thick smoked breakfast bacon (I never said it was a healthy dish!)
*1 large sweet onion chopped into quarters (no smaller, trust me on this one and look for Vidalia onions, they're SO good!)
*4 tablespoons of salted butter (And do NOT use margarine. GROSS! Real butter is natural and our bodies can process natural a thousand times better than that fake stuff!)
*1/4 cup apple cider vinegar (Yes, it MUST be apple cider vinegar. And don't rush to put it back in the pantry because you might find that you need more!)
*1 tablespoon dried Rosemary (You can use the fresh stuff if you want but the dried works just as well)
*Salt and pepper to taste.
*** You NEED a DEEP cast iron skillet or cast iron Dutch oven for this dish ***
Actually, if you don't have either you REALLY need to get at least one of them. Every home should have at least one (I have 5) because NOTHING beats cast iron for cooking. If it's seasoned 'just so' and taken care of properly, food will NOT stick to it . . . ever!
You'll also need a stove top for convenience (this I say because you can actually cook these over a camp fire or on low-n-slow grill but I'd wait until you master the stove top method first)
Putting the Fixins together
1. Put all the fixins into the deep cast iron skillet (that you may have run out and bought because you don't want to ruin these amazing beans with anything other than the 'perfect' cooking vessel)
2. Cover your fixins with water.
3. Put a lid over your fixins
4. Set the burner to medium high and bring the beans to a boil.
5. Turn down the temperature to low and let those beans slow cook for about 4 hours. Yes, at least 4 hours (Sure, you can cook them faster but it requires a lot of tending...this low-n-slow method is guaranteed to make people beg for dinner)
6. Every 30 minutes or so, check to see if you need to add more water. Taste the beans every so often for 'doneness' the longer they simmer the better they become. As they cook down, you might want to add in a bit more cider vinegar. With the bacony goodness you need to add a bit of a 'bite' to draw out the best of that smoky flavor.
7. You'll know your beans are ready when the bacon is stringy and falls apart, the onion has practically disappeared and the beans have a soft body that melts in your mouth.
**Hints**
1. Don't over stir the beans when they get close to being done or they'll turn to mush.
2. Make sure you've always got enough water to cover the beans or they'll burn.
There you go. Hope y'all enjoy them as much as we do at my house. Land sakes, now I'm feeling absolutely famished. I think I might just have to see what fixins I've got in my pantry so I can fix something to take away the hunger pangs that have suddenly made themselves known!
Fudge Rippled Memories
Ice cream.
Some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around hot summer days when my family would go to the Cabarrus Creamery to get ice cream cones topped with scoops of the frozen treat so high, I’m sure they defied the laws of gravity. I used to always get one scoop of fudge ripple, it was my all time favorite, but apparently the people that were employed by the creamery’s scoop shop had issues with counting because their version of one scoop always looked like two to me.
In fact I remember being seven years old and putting my hands on the glass partition that separated me from the pimply faced scooper and counting out loud as he or she would scrape the scooper across the thick frozen concoction until they’d formed a huge ball of the stuff and then would place it with ease on the crispy ice cream cone. Then they’d do it again. Apparently they couldn't hear me on the other side of the ice cream.
Luckily their inability to count did not get in the way of their ability to expertly fill a cone so that never once did one of those giant dollops fall while it was being made. Although once it was handed off to me, all bets were off. When I’d finally get the cone in my hand, I always felt like I was in some mad race to not only eat it before it started to melt and drip down my hand and down to my elbow but to also keep the tasty tower from tumbling off its perch on the cone and subsequently land on the ground.
My father would laugh at my frantic efforts to enjoy my cone and give me his very small, single ply napkin so I could wipe my chin. My dad always . . . and I mean ALWAYS . . . got two - well, four scoops of black cherry and had mastered the ‘side to side head tilt-n-lick’ method a good 50 years earlier (yes, my father was older than most typical dads). And it never failed that sometime during our outings he’d tell me about when he was young and would get to have ice cream. Even then I remember thinking ‘Gosh, he’s so old. That must mean ice cream is super old.’
Of course, as I’ve grown older I have come to realize that the 50ish to 60ish year old age demographic isn’t really that old. But I’ve also learned that ice cream is much older than 50 years. In fact, ice cream or rather ‘frozen treats that on occasion had cream added’ actually dates back 1,000s of years ago.
There are accounts of the wealthiest of the ancient Greeks sending slaves to collect huge chunks of ice from mountain tops (as that’s pretty much the only place that one will find ice anywhere in the Mediterranean area) and then they’d crush the ice and mix it with honey, a common ingredient in Greek sweets. And thanks to writers like Tacitus (The Agricola and Germania), Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum) and Cassius Dio (Romaika), there is even evidence which suggests that like the Greeks, the Romans, specifically the emperor Nero, who as legend says fiddled while Rome burned, had extravagant parties wherein he’d order his slaves to go to the mountains, gather snow and ice, and then run back as quickly as humanly possible with giant chunks and containers of the icy stuff so that it could be crushed and mixed with fruits and juices.
If you were to consider all the slaves needed to bring enough ice down from the mountains to make a sufficient amount of the frozen treat for the great numbers of people Nero invited to dine with him, it’s rather mind boggling, especially when you bear in mind that most of the ice probably melted along the way. But whatever Nero wanted, Nero got because not only was he known for throwing extravagant ‘who’s who’ kinds of parties but he was also known for his quick temper and penchant for executing people.
Lots of people died under Nero’s rule - he even had his own mother executed. So I’ll bet that when Nero served the icy delicacy, everyone loved it and ate it as quickly as possible, no doubt enduring painful brain freezes in the process, for fear that he might have them executed for not enjoying the frigid dessert.
However, to be clear, what Nero and his guests took pleasure in eating wasn’t really ice ‘cream’ as there was no sort of dairy product whatsoever in it. Technically it fits the definition of a sorbet and quite frankly reminds me of a glorified sno-cone. But I suppose it’s all relative because if one serves crushed ice with fruit juice and sugar and puts it in a fancy dish, then one can call it a sorbet. However when shaved ice is served in a cone shaped paper cup and a brightly colored, thick syrup labeled ‘blue raspberry’ (or some equally sweet goo) is pour over it - it’s a sno-cone.
So where did ice cream as we know it today actually come from? The first true iced creams can be traced back to the Chinese who had figured out a way to mix saltpeter (one of the main ingredients in Black Powder . . . a.k.a. gun powder, which was used and is still used today to make fireworks and other explosives) with ice (to help lower the melting point thus keeping it a lot colder for a longer time period), cream and sweet syrups to come up with a creamy, slushy sort of treat that ought to more rightly be called an ‘ice milk’ as opposed to an ‘ice cream’. Now as for how the ancient Chinese secret to ice cream made it to the rest of the world, I suppose we ought to thank Marco Polo of Italy, who wrote of his travels to the Far East back in the late 1200s, for bringing not only the formula for gun powder to Italy and the rest of Europe but also the idea of creamed ice as well.
Bear in mind though, it’s not like the Italians didn’t enjoy sweet frozen treats, they’d just not figured out an effective method for mixing creams with them in a way that they could stay cold long enough to enjoy them. Eventually recipes for the cold concoction popped up all over Europe and some of them were quite disgusting too, like asparagus and beef flavored ice creams. But just as most things go through a process of trial and error, so too did ice creams until they’d been pretty well mastered by the mid-1700s.
In due course, ice cream, the popular creamy cold dessert we know of today, made its way to America and it didn’t take long before ice cream parlors started to pop up in the larger cities. The first ice cream parlor is said to have been started in New York City in the mid-1770s where it was enjoyed by average everyday city folk and visitors. It was such a popular sort of special treat that Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President of the United States, asked Dolley Madison, Secretary of State James Madison’s wife, to see to it that it was served to visitors to the White House which she did.
Incidentally Mr. Jefferson was a widower and had asked Mrs. Madison to serve as the hostess for all White House functions. One might say Dolley was the de facto First Lady but when her husband became the 4th President she really was the First Lady. And as the First Lady she saw to it that ice cream continued to be served at the White House. But as for the rest of America, ice cream was one of those things that people rarely got enjoy unless they found themselves in the city because it took a good deal of time, effort and ice (which could be stored in cities in large ice houses) to make the stuff.
Though thankfully, to the delight of people across the nation, in 1846 Nancy Johnson designed the first small hand cranked ‘home’ ice cream maker thus ensuring that it could be enjoyed by more people more often. The recipe was simple. All you needed was the cream, sugar, fruit and a few pinches of salt. But even with the small churn you also needed lots of non-stop human cranking power, some rock salt to keep the container cold, and someone was small enough and also willing to sit on the top of the thing while it was cranked because as the cream thickened it took lots of force to turn the crank so someone was needed to stabilize the ice cream churn.
Yes, the process took a lot of time and effort but the end result was well worth it. Unfortunately the churning machines weren’t really large enough to make ice cream in the quantities needed to serve more than a few people at a time so unless you had access to a lot of churns, a lot of strong arms and several people who didn’t mind if their rears got very cold, it was quite difficult to make the stuff which brings me to the good old fashioned summertime ice cream socials that were organized by local churches as a fun way to get people to come together en masse during the summer to produce gallon after gallon of all kinds of ice creams that were served in bowls or in sweet ice cream cones which were introduced in 1904 at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, by way of Charles Menches who is credited with creating the modern ‘walk-away’ ice cream cone.
The partnering of ice cream and cones in the early 20th century has been a lucrative collaboration that has lasted well into the 21st century and will no doubt continue for 100s of year to come. As for me, when I grew older, trips to the creamery with my family were ‘totally uncool’ so eventually the trips came farther and farther apart until they stopped altogether. But my love of the stuff never diminished and I still enjoy going out with my husband and daughter to get an ice cream cone on occasion - only I can never seem to find good old fashioned fudge ripple anywhere. Of course, it's rather baffling to me that companies like Ben & Jerry's and Blue Bell Ice Cream (THE. BEST. ICE CREAM. EVER!) ever became successful considering the scoop shop employees still can't count to save their lives!
Breakfast Served Sunny Side Up.
Breakfast time is one of my favorite times of the day. Let’s face it, there’s nothing quite like waking up to the smell of eggs frying, bread toasting, and bacon sizzling. Of course, your morning menu might vary . . . but the ‘wake up and get a move on’ essence of whatever food it is that you enjoy smelling first thing in the morning is no doubt the same.
But what is it that makes breakfast different from any other time of the day? After all, the goal of any meal, no matter what time of day, is to nourish the body. Though with breakfast, at least for me, it's a time to also nourish my soul.
It’s the time of day when smiles and ‘good mornings’ are offered and accepted from passersby without reservation. And for some people that might be the only smile they give or receive for an entire day. What’s more, is that breakfast is served when the news is ‘new’ and when the world seems a little less complicated. Yes, the morning repast is the time of day when one can chat with their friends and loved ones with a sense of hope about the day that lies ahead of them as opposed to grumbling with frustration about the day though which they’ve trudged.
Needless to say, the time I spend with my family during what I consider to be an important part of the day is greatly cherished. Which is why I cherished going out each Sunday to have breakfast with my mother. It was a tradition started shortly after my daughter was born. And up until the time my mother had a stroke and came to live with me, 'Sunday mornings with Mom' (or G-Ma, if my daughter came along) was a ritual. It was a constant that gave me a chance to decompress and her a chance to simply 'get out'.
And another constant in our once weekly, early morning dining excursions is the type of breakfast places we would visit. Neither one of us were ever big fans of the large chain restaurants like Denny’s or IHOP even though we will, on occasion, drop by for a visit. Sometimes the need for an IHOP Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity or a Denny's Lumberjack Slam is hard to resist. Of course the two meals are essentially the same thing only with the Lumberjack you get piece of grilled honey ham and you don’t get any fruit compote or whipped topping on your pancakes. (Not whipped cream, mind you - whipped topping - which makes me wonder, just where do the ‘tops’ that are whipped come from?) But then again, I seriously doubt that any self-respecting lumberjack would dare cover his pancakes with fruit or whipped anything.
There were days when we'd brave the early morning crowds at the Cracker Barrel so we could enjoy the scrumptious buttermilk biscuits and thick, crispy fried bacon. But unless we got to the CB very early, we had to wait for all the traveling folks (those who'd been traveling on the interstate throughout the night to get to wherever they were headed) to be served. I must say, I loved listening to the folks from up North ask questions like 'What's Sawmill Gravy? Country-fried steak, for breakfast? Really? And then there was my favorite question . . . Hashbrown casserole? How can you make hashbrowns into a casserole?'
My mother and I would just giggle as we did shifty-eyed glanes at them like the poor-unfortunate food souls sitting within earshot. After all, casseroles are one of the first things both she and I learned to cook. If it can't be made into a one-dish does all meal, is it worth making? My father used to call a good casserole 'sneaky fixins'. Now, when I go out with my own daughter we do the 'bless their souls' giggle whenever we hear similar questions.
Oh, yes, Cracker Barrel is a nice place to visit. Especially the nifty Country Store you have to walk through before you are actually seated. It's filled with all sorts of uniquely Southern goodies. But Mother and I never had to wait too long since it was just the two of us. Only we never got one of the 'cool' tables by the fireplace or near the big tic-tac-toe boards. No. We were always seated at a four-top that really only seated two comfortably next to the wall. And sometimes, even if we were in the direct line of sight to the kitchen, we'd be forgotten because the big tables with ten, twelve, sometimes twenty guests always got preferential treatment. And after that happened every single time we would go there, it sort of lost its 'folksy charm'.
Now there were some Sundays when we would be feeling somewhat cosmopolitan and would find ourselves at Panera Bread nibbling on double toasted Everything Bagels or warm Spinach and Artichoke soufflés. Or better yet we might opt for something a bit more traditional like an egg sandwich complete with bacon and cheese. Of course, when it’s put between freshly sliced Ciabatta bread - it magically transforms from ‘traditional’ to ‘gourmet haute couture’.
However, odds were most likely during our years of Sunday morning outings that my mother and I would wind up at one of the smaller, locally owned and operated places in town. There was nothing rootin’ or slammin’ or fancy-falootin’ about any of those quaint little restaurants because they were the sorts of places that couldn't afford all that glitz, glamour, or gourmet hoo-dooey. And you could be fairly well assured that there would be no expertly twisted paper thin slices of oranges carefully placed on a leaf of some sort of lettuce that looks more like a weed than anything edible so as to balance out the overall story of the food offered at any of the local eateries.
Don't get me wrong. I’m all for fine dining. In fact, I love all the aspects of going out for a gourmet meal: the muted lighting; the soft, freshly cleaned napkins; and, the leather bound menus that offer delicacies like filet mignon with a light burgundy cream sauce or crispy pan seared duck. Yes, those are the kinds of things I enjoy when I step out for a night on the town. Likewise, I love and appreciate the beauty in a well presented plate, too. However, when it comes to my breakfast, what I’m looking for is a good, hearty, stick to your ribs sort of meal that will give me the get up and go I need to get my day underway.
One of our favorites to grab Sunday breakfast was a little place off of Interstate 40 close to the Piedmont Triad Farmer's Market called Carolina’s Diner. Every time we'd make our way there I'd catch myself humming 'Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning...' because that upbeat sort of vibe is exactly what I'd feel whenever I opened that heavy door.
And it really is a good, old-fashioned diner complete with a Formica covered dining counter and uncomfortable, well-worn, round stationary stools with seats that spin around and allow the sitter to look into the open kitchen. I remember being a little girl and always wanting to sit at one of those seats because they spun around. But I also remember not being allowed to because my parents worried about me spilling my juice all over me and everyone and everything around me. (It was a brief childhood phase . I out grew it. I hardly ever spill my juice now!)
Of course whenever I would look at those seats that familiar youthful longing to sit’n’spin was still there but I was (and still am) able to put it out of my mind. However, I don’t know if it’s because I’m older now or if it’s because I know that if I wanted to sit on one of those stools, I could which sort of takes the thrill out of being able to do it. But spinny seats or no spinny seats, the regular booths at Carolina's were just fine even if the seats were a bit too bouncy and tables had an annoying wobble tbecause those are the kinds of things that helped add to the ambiance of the whole place. (If the wobble ever got too annoying all I had to do was grab a few pink Sweet-n-Low packets and shove them under one of the wobbly legs. Then voilà! Wobbly problem solved.)
They was a jukebox that played all of 'today's hits' at Carolina’s, too. Although, technically it was a CD-jukebox but it still took quarters. Only I don't think I ever saw anyone use it because there was always bouncy music from the '50s and '60s piped though out the place. It could have been that people used it during other feasting times but never once in the years that we went there do I ever remember it having been used by a patron. Maybe it's because listening to bubble gum pop (or cross-over country rock) at 7:15 in on a Sunday morning simply isn't all that appetizing.
The walls were decorated with photos of classic cars and long time patrons; many of whom used to own the cars in the pictures that adorn the walls. The waitresses, who refered to my mother as Miss Lavinia, all wore handmade name tags that they embellished with smiley faces, flowers, and pastel swirly lines. But I must say that one of the best part of going there was that we'd we were such loyal patrons we had a booth that was ‘our’ booth. And thos the staff there knew us so well they'd even have our usual drinks in hand as we make our way to the booth. Being such die-hard fans of the place, I always wondered if maybe one day our picture would wind up on one of the walls at Carolina's Diner.
Ambiance and a courteous staff are nice, for sure. But more important than that was the real reason why we frequented the place so often . . . the food. It was terrifically good. And there was so much variety.
Bacon (Thick or thin cut? Traditional or maple seasoned?) Sausage (Links or patties? Mild or spicy?) Livermush (Okay so I'm not a fan of livermush in the least little bit but my mother swore up and down it was some of the best she'd ever had) Corned beef hash (Crispy of soft? Want the egg mixed with it or to the side?) Pork chop, steak, country ham, city ham, or maybe some chicken-n-waffles?
Once we decided on our meat because remember, if it doesn't have 'meat' it isn't a Southern meal, we had to pick our bread because bread came with every breakfast meal. White toast was the standard that would come with every meal and is buttered for you, unless we told them otherwise. And yes, they did have bagels there. (Good grief, we might have been in the South but contrary to popular belief, we southrons do enjoy a tasty rye bread or bagel on occasion!)
But bread wasn't our only carbohydrate because we always got prebuttered grits* too. And by always I mean even if we ordered hash browns we also go grits. Essentially, I would not recommend Carolina's Diner to anybody trying to cut down on carbs. Nope.
Then, topping it all off were . . . the eggs.
No. One cannot forget about the eggs after all eggs are the axis around which a good, hearty breakfast rotates. And at our favorite little breakfast spot the eggs were cooked to 100% perfection no matter what your point of perfection may be. For myself, the perfect egg is fried with the whites cooked (as in not one spot of clear, gelatanous looking goo anywhere on the plate) and the yellow is firm on the outside and runny on the inside. Sounds easy, I know but you’d be surprised how difficult that is for some cooks to accomplish.
Oh, how my mother and I would talk and laugh during that two or three hours every Sunday. And when my mother and I would leave, our bellies were always full and our hearts were so light. Yes, it’s true we probably ingested more fat, calories and carbs than a grizzly bear downs before it goes into hibernation. But hey, it was just once a week. And sometimes, you just have to let your hair down so you can enjoy an indulgence!
Those Sundays were the absolute best. It's been a few years since we've been able to enjoy them that way. Now, we still have Sunday breakfast but it's usually a quiet, late morning affair. And we don't chat like we used to because it hasn't been easy to have long, fluid conversations with my mother since her stroke. But I have all those wonderful memories and she has them, too.
Breakfast. They used to say it’s the most important meal of the day. But I seem to remember reading recently that now they say it's not any more or less important than the other meals during the day. Well, I don’t know who they are but I think I would have to argue the point if I ever met them.
Imprint
Text: L. Avery Brown
Images: L. Avery Brown
Editing: So far it's just me, myself and I!
Publication Date: 08-09-2013
All Rights Reserved
Dedication:
No matter how you define 'family'...this book is dedicated to eating meals with the family.
It doesn't matter if you gather around a formal table or us TV trays to watch an evening show or two...so long as you're with the ones you love when you break bread - there can be no finer way to savor one's victuals.