Just give me something simple
This past Sunday, I had a hankering for some simple country food. It all started when I had some leftover mashed potatoes from a previous meal.
Our middle son, Hayden, loves potato cakes. Not wanting these mashed potatoes to go to waste, I invited him, his wife, Carrie, and our grandchildren Alex and Hatcher over for a country meal. He doesn’t eat meat, so I decided to fix pinto beans, creamed style corn ( frozen, not canned … yuck), fried okra ( pan fried, not the deep fried covered in meal so the taste of the okra is lost kind), mac & cheese ( blue box doctored with extra cheese), the potato cakes and corn bread.
Let me tell y’all. I know I did the cooking, but it was so good. Oh, we had some sliced raw purple onion also to top off the meal. In a bowl, I crumbled some cornbread and poured the juicy bean over it. Then I topped this with some raw purple onion. I had been wanting this very thing for so long. It’s simple food, not fancy. It’s slow cooking beans with lots of juice, salt, a little butter. To me, this is the food of the gods.
A friend originally from the Soviet Union whose family escaped when the walls started crumbling declared the potato cakes delicious. These things are another example of simple food. Take the leftover mashed potatoes, add flour ( self- rising), one egg, a little milk to make it soupy and drop the mixture by spoonfuls on a hot, greased griddle. Brown on both sides and you have as my late great father, retired Air Force Maj. Stanley Emert would say, “That’s good eatin’.”
Here’s the thing, for the most part I like simple food, food that is uncomplicated and easy. I don’t like a lot of pepper, hot spicy additives or anything else that makes my mouth burn. I’m not a Texas Pete, Tabasco sauce kind of person. Give me a little salt and I’m good to go. I want to taste the food, not the spices that make it hot.
I have a friend who is my exact opposite. She likes fiery food, food that makes her eyes water when she eats it. One time we attended a friend’s daughter’s wedding who happened to be from Pakistan. I tried to eat the food. It was quite an elaborate occasion, but I could not. My friend, however, was in hog heaven noshing on food so hot her eyes were streaming and her nose was running. She absolutely loved it.
I don’t know when it started, but sometime back in the 90s, it seemed like everything had hot spices added to it. I don’t like all my food to have a bite to it. I don’t like to choke on the too- much- pepper element. Fried green tomatoes are one of my favorite foods. Imagine my disappointment when I bit into one only to find it peppery hot enough to almost choke me. Someone had told me the fried green tomatoes were to die for at this new restaurant in town. No, they weren’t. A fried green tomato should not leave an aftermath of burning in my mouth.
I think I know when all this started. When I was a little bitty girl, I got the notion that I wanted to eat a sausage biscuit just like what my daddy was eating. He warned me that the sausage was hot, but even if I didn’t like it, I’d have to finish it. At 4, I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I found out. Biting into my Mama’s biscuit with the meat inside, I commenced to chew it. Realizing it was not what I thought it was, I grabbed my cup of milk and quenched the fire.
Daddy had warned that I had to eat it. He really wasn’t paying much attention to me and gave me milk every time I asked for it. I drank a whole cup with every bite. This was not good.
I got sick and my father got scolded by my mother for forcing me to eat that hot sausage biscuit. He really didn’t force me to eat it. He just didn’t pay attention to what I was doing. Needless to say, I don’t like hot sausage to this day and Daddy never made me eat like that again.
My mother did, though. She used to fix something called Harvard beets. They weren’t hot, but lordy, I hated them. Sometimes, I’d sit at the table for what seemed like hours trying to eat those things. Thank goodness our dog, Blackie sat under my chair. He didn’t have a problem with Harvard beets.
Give me simple food. Vegetables flavored with butter. Baked fish with lemon, butter and a little dill weed, pan fried chicken. Leave the pepper and hot sauce in the bottle. Just make it simple.