I grew up on Southern country cooking even though I was a town boy. In the early 1950’s, if you didn’t have a cow or chickens, somebody nearby did. Country ham, bacon, and fatback still clogged my young arteries and light bread still ruled the grocery aisle. Tomatoes and cucumbers and squash magically showed up on our doorstep in the summer not because we were poor but because some neighbor grew more than her family could eat.
My parents were raised during the depression and their generation held on many of the make-do foods of that time. There was so much pork. During the lean years, the policy with pigs was “No scrap left behind”. Sausage, bacon, fatback, ham, roast, liver mush, even, although I could never bring myself to try it, pork brains.
In my part of the South, a healthy diet included a big breakfast and I don’t mean the kind used to sell cornflakes. Country ham, grits and red-eye gravy were the light of my Dad’s morning. Not really a gravy, red-eye gravy was made by pouring coffee into the pan of country ham grease and adding a little water. It was a make-do during the Depression but became a must-have for Dad later on.
Another favorite food born of hard times is bread pudding. A near universal favorite, bread pudding had its humble beginnings as a way to save scraps of stale bread when economic times were tough. We cherish the treats that get us through difficult times.
Much of the food I learned to love, along with many Southerners, was brought from Africa by enslaved peoples and adopted into our everyday life. Black-eyed peas have been universally accepted but fried okra is a delight that visitors to the South have struggled with. Maybe if we renamed okra something Italian sounding, they would warm up to it. It worked when chefs started calling grits risotto.
“For an appetizer tonight we have “okaretti” a crunchy delight with a black eyed-pea puree as a dipping sauce.”
Cantaloupe, also an African import along with watermelon, may have fallen out of favor as a breakfast food for some but my Grandmother Hill served a slice of cantaloupe with every summer breakfast and it still makes an occasional appearance at my Mother-in-law’s table.
When I was teaching at Chester, SC, my principal was a young black woman. I looked forward to the end of the year meal when she treated us to a “Soul Food Extravaganza”. Fried chicken, fried fish, collards, fried okra, stewed tomatoes, black-eyed peas, and banana pudding. Several teachers, imports from faraway places like Pennsylvania or Ohio were curious about the curled-up fatback in one bowl. For those in the know, fried fatback is almost rich enough to be called a dessert.
In these temperate climes, we like our food the way we like our tea, a little sweeter. Our locally grown corn, usually some variety of silver queen, is puny compared to that midwestern corn carried in the big stores but it is sweet like a second kiss and tender as a puppy’s nose. Un-initiated visitors to roadside markets often disparage sweet corn thinking it is undeveloped. I almost feel sorry for them. They never tasted my mother’s creamed corn when she scraped a knife down the cob to squeeze out all the sugary goodness into the pot.
I have already written too many odes to my Mother’s depression gravy so I will, with great reluctance, pass on praising that again. Another favorite, a direct hand-me-down from her, is the tomato sandwich. Made only with real summer tomatoes, light bread, Duke’s Mayonnaise and plenty of salt and pepper, tomato sandwiches are as anticipated as the first buds of May. Mother used to like the tomatoes so ripe that she had to eat her sandwich over the sink.
My uncle Harris Case once brought a few of his home-grown tomatoes by our house. One tomato was so huge I had to cut the slices in half to fit them on the bread. We shall never see their like again…neither tomatoes nor uncles.
Elvis was crazy about peanut butter and banana sandwiches and I confess that they are tasty but my Southern sandwich hierarchy is as follows: For the bronze medal: grilled cheese, often paired with Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Taking the silver medal is the perennial favorite, homemade pimento cheese sandwiches on light bread. But for me, standing alone at the top of the podium is the fried bologna sandwich: thick bologna smothered in sauteed onions with a slice of American cheese melted on top. Put that on a hamburger bun with a mayonnaise/ketchup/sweet relish special sauce and you can almost hear a hallelujah from a celestial choir.
I know people can’t help where they live and geography is a harsh mistress, but those greeny-yellow things they sell as peaches in stores “up there” are a hoax. When northbound travelers take the Peach Stand exit off I-77 and see the baskets of real peaches, they ooh and ahh like they’ve discovered gold.
I once spent six weeks in Minnesota learning to read Beowulf in Old English. (I know I struggle to clean a lint filter on a dryer but I am right handy if you ever run up on a document from 1125 A.D.) To get to the point, I came home for a weekend in the middle of the six weeks and decided to take some peaches back. Miller Coggins, a friend who ran Springs Farms took me to a tree that produced the biggest and sweetest peaches around.
As my carry-on luggage, I took two split-wood peck baskets of peaches on the plane back to Minnesota. (It was a time before strict airline regulations.) The peaches were just this side of softball sized and I could have never predicted the reaction I would get when I took them to class on Monday. I went from “That Southern guy” to Mr. Popularity in ten minutes. Many a notebook left class sticky from peach juice and the basket I had kept as holdback was worth its weight in free beers.
For those who have adopted Fort Mill and South Carolina as your new home, be warned. We’re sneaking up on ya’ll. We see you stowing Cheerwine and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts into your luggage and our Bourbon has invaded the whole country in a friendly, “Howdy Folks!” kind of way. You may struggle with grits and liver mush, be reluctant to eat boiled peanuts and pimento cheese, and pretend that your brown tasteless water is tea but we’re patient. After all, we’re from the South and we like to take things slow.
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