Made with love and lard
While eating at Cracker Barrel recently, the conversation turned to country cooking. It isn’t always the best for our health. But it sure does taste good. Fried food is what I was raised on and will probably be eating until the day I die. Since I can now gain weight simply by looking at food, I try to limit my intake.
Once upon a time, when people died, the women of the church would cook enough food to feed an army. They would all bring a plate to the funeral home with their name taped to the bottom of the dish. The dish would be returned shortly after the service. Grief is a tough emotion. Maybe it’s easier to grieve on a full stomach. If it’s not, we old time Baptists have missed the mark. I’m not sure I even consider myself a Baptist anymore. All I know is I’m a sinner saved by grace. The connection to a particular denomination seems less important to me as I get older. Nevertheless, no denomination lays out a spread of food any better than the Baptists.
Mama cooked seven nights a week when I was growing up. We had fried potatoes almost every night for my entire childhood. For whatever reason, and I do not know what it was, Daddy seemed to get a kick out of frying bologna on Sunday morning. I can still see him standing over the stove in a T-shirt and shorts cooking the bologna until it was a little burned. If you like fried bologna and take it off the stove without it being a little burned, you ain’t doing it right. Bologna was meant to be eaten burned. If there was a downside to Daddy cooking, it was having to listen to him talk about how fortunate we were to be eating fried bologna. Looking back, I guess he was right.
If you have never heard the term, “All day singing and dinner on the ground,” you might not have been associated with the Baptist church. We would have those from time to time at Chalcedonia Baptist. Try imagining dozens of country Baptist women bringing plates and bowls of country cooking to the church. The food would be placed outside on the concrete picnic table beside the church, before the days of fellowship halls. The entire length of the table would be covered with country cooked food. None of which would be on my current diet. But the food was better than anything you can get at a five-star restaurant.
You may not be country if you have never made a meal from nothing but soup beans, corn bread, and Vidalia onions. When you had these three foods, there was no need for meat. It was the perfect summer-time meal. Some people like to top off this meal with a tall glass of milk. Daddy preferred it with buttermilk. I’m not a fan of milk. Maybe that’s why my bones are so weak. As for buttermilk, the thought of it makes me want to puke.
If my memory serves me correctly, I didn’t know what a casserole was until my teen years. While still not a fan, I have adapted to the times. I still prefer my food fried in an iron skillet. Being on a necessary diet has put a damper on being able to continue eating those foods I love. Every now and then, I say the heck with it and gorge out on a plate of my favorite delicacies.
Every southern cook, mostly women and I mean this with the upmost respect, has a dish they are locally famous for. For instance, no one in the world can cook fried taters better than my Mama. When it comes to soup beans, Granny Collett and Mae Ghorley made the best I’ve ever had. The award for fried apple pies goes to Granny Alma Cain. I would salivate before I could even get it to my mouth. Leland Green grilled the best steak I’ve ever put in my mouth. Harrison Collett was the king of cooking country fried ham. And one of my favorites, turtle stew, was never better than when Jerry Dobson cooked it. It’s the little things I miss.
We are taught in the Bible that we cannot live by bread alone. But by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I know this is true because the Bible tells me so. This in no way lessens the importance of good country cooking. Most every meal was made with love, and lard. Of all the foods I’ve mentioned, and all the ones I didn’t, I’d like to have Daddy’s fried bologna one more time. But we don’t get do overs in life.
Some people say we should make every day count. I say we should make every little moment count. It could be our last.