Chapter XXIX - Home Cooking

Home Cooking

I have had the opportunity to travel much of the world since leaving Wallins Creek after high school. I have tasted the different foods of other cultures, and sampled what many would consider to be gourmet food. But I have never enjoyed any food more than the simple food that I was raised on. I took this all in stride without much thought as a young boy. You know how it is with a young active boy. They usually will eat anything that is placed in front of them without delving into the finer points of the cuisine. That’s how it was with me. I never really had a deep appreciation for the food my mom and others prepared for me while growing up. It was only later that I realized the simple pleasures of the foods that I was raised on.

Let me start by saying that my all-time favorite food was, and is, soup-beans and cornbread. This was the main staple in our diet. I could depend on this meal to be served several times a week. I always joked that if it hadn’t been for soup-beans, I would have starved while growing up. I guess I should qualify the name soup beans. To me the name soup beans means pinto beans, or brown beans if you will. I like other beans too. I love white beans, which are either Great Northern or Navy beans. But my first love is Pinto’s. I guess when I first read William Shakespeare’s play,” Hamlet,” and saw the line “To Bean or not to Bean,” I chose “To Bean.” I am truly sorry for that one. “Old Lightning” sometimes gets carried away when it comes to beans.

After Paula and I were married, I introduced her to this simple meal as a sure fire way to “Old Lightning’s” heart. She still uses it today to get me to do what she wants. She has perfected it on her own, after receiving instructions from my mom on the finer points. It wasn’t easy for her to follow my mom’s instructions, as there were no measured ingredients. The closest mom came was in describing a pinch of this and a handful of that.

As every good mountain cook knows, to make good cornbread, you must start with an iron skillet. Nothing else will do. I have sampled a lot of cornbread in my time, but I have never found any that I liked better than what I was raised on. My cornbread was not sweet. No sugar ever touched this batter. It also was made with white cornmeal. It was the crust that made the cornbread. This was achieved by preheating the iron skillet to the right temperature and using the right amount of grease or shortening. It was also essential to know exactly when to take it out of the oven to insure the natural color. Perfect cornbread was a deep rich brown on top, which was actually the bottom of the skillet. After taking it out, it was flipped onto the plate with the brown side up for presentation. Cornbread is best when it is eaten hot after buttering the slice. Later, my favorite snack would be cornbread and milk. This was cornbread crumbled up in a glass of milk and eaten with a spoon. Yum, Yum. I’m sure that all my friends from home who read this will be able to relate.

This may be the longest dissertation on soup-beans and cornbread ever written, but a few other things must be said. The beans are very much dependent on the meat used for seasoning. Some people use ham hocks and some use salt pork or other bacon. Mom usually used salt pork, which remains my favorite. The other simple but important fact is, don’t clutter this meal up with side dishes. Beans and cornbread are a meal. You may slice an onion or have green onions, but don’t allow other dishes to get in the way of a serious bean eater.

The food that I grew up on was simple with no frills. We didn’t know too much about fancy dining or what some might call exotic fare. There were some foods that I had never eaten until leaving Wallins Creek. Some of these were not exotic by any means, but simply unknown to me. I remember eating homemade spaghetti and meat sauce after leaving Wallins. I thought that was such a treat. I wondered how I had missed that one all my life. The first time that I remember eating that meal was in 1965 when friends visited for the Kentucky Derby. Seafood was another unknown. I think the only seafood I had ever eaten was fish. It wasn’t like you could go to Long John Silver’s and order your food. I didn’t realize there were other things roaming around in the water. I hadn’t been introduced to shrimp or crab. I may not have known their name if you had shown me a picture of them.

It wasn’t like we had a fast food outlet in town. The closest thing we had to fast food was a couple of restaurants in town. Their fast food was probably a hotdog. Slap a hot dog on a bun, add chili and you were set. Anything else required cooking. This all predated fast food outlets. There might have been some of these somewhere, but not in Harlan County. I don’t know if we would have used them anyway. Money was tight, and a shift from traditional home cooking would have been slow to change. Actually, I’m glad that we didn’t have them. I’ve had enough fast food to last a lifetime.

I had never eaten grilled food except for hotdogs at a weenie roast. Oh yeah, we roasted some marshmallows. I had never eaten a t-bone steak. I later came to enjoy grilled food. Today it is a main staple of our meals.

There were usually three meals prepared at my house when I was growing up. Breakfast usually consisted of eggs with bacon or sausage and toast. Many times it also had gravy. Gravy made from scratch using flour and grease left from frying the meat. Unlike the processed gravy we generally eat today, this was rib sticking good. If my mom had one cooking flaw, it was that she did not make homemade biscuits. The only biscuits she ever served were store-bought. As much as I begged her to try, she would never even attempt to make them. She must have had a bad experience in her life regarding them. Oh well, she made up for this with her prize winning cornbread.

Breakfast at other times, consisted of cereal or oatmeal. Pancakes were something to be dreamed about, since they were rarely made. I remember that my cousin, Ethel Osborne, would sometimes fix pancakes for me when she visited. She made the most divine ones that I ever tasted. Her secret was in mixing liquefied butter into the batter. Even though I watched her make them many times, I could never duplicate her recipe. Syrup for the pancakes was usually hot melted brown sugar syrup. Sometimes we would have store bought syrup. This was usually Log Cabin brand.

Lunch, or Dinner as we called it, was usually a hot cooked meal. In the summer time, it was from our garden. It would consist of green beans with potatoes cooked in them. We also had green onions, tomatoes and cucumbers. Top this off with fresh baked cornbread and you had a rare treat. In the spring and summer, we usually ate our meals on our back porch, which was screened in. Add to the good food the additional experience of fresh air and sunshine, and it made for a memorable experience.

Dinner, or supper as we called it, was more of the same. Most of the meals were meatless unless it was Sunday. On Sunday we usually had meat for the main course. It might be a frying chicken or maybe a hen with dumplings. It may even be pork chops or ham, but it was rarely beef. We sometimes had a pot roast, but mostly our meat consisted of chicken or pork.

Some other dishes or desserts that I enjoyed were made on special occasions. I remember the apples that we would gather later on in the summer and fall. These would be peeled and quartered. Then they were dried. These we eventually used to make the fried apple pies. These were homemade turnover dried apple pies. What a treat. I can almost taste them even though I haven’t had one in years. I remember the homemade Gingerbread that my Aunt Diddle would make when she visited us. This was made from sorghum molasses. It was eaten while hot with butter. It would make you smack your mama, or at least make you think about it. Rhubarb pie was another treat. We grew the rhubarb in our garden. I don’t know what else it was used for. I mostly liked the flavor and the crust, but usually avoided the actual rhubarb. I heard that raw rhubarb was poison. So maybe this also was self-defense on my part. We ate a lot of cobbler pies, usually apple or blackberry. My mom could whip one up in short order. These were eaten hot out of the oven.

Between meal snacks usually consisted of something left over from the previous meal. In the summertime, one of my favorite snacks was a sliced tomato and mayonnaise sandwich. When tomatoes weren't in season, I just had mayonnaise sandwiches. Sometimes I would have popcorn in the evening. This was a little labor intensive, as there was no microwave popcorn. Actually there also was no microwave. I’m sure that a lot of you remember the old fashioned way. This was corn and shortening or oil in a pan with a lid to cover. You then shook the pan over the fire to keep the kernels from sticking. When all the popping had subsided, you salted and partook. You always wound up with a lot of un-popped kernels. One of my favorite things to do was to crunch on these. Otherwise, snacks consisted of apples or other fruit in season. If you were really in a bad way you could eat cinnamon toast. All you needed was bread, butter, sugar and cinnamon.

Holidays held a special place for my food fantasies. This was a time that usually was spent with family around special foods. The 4th of July was usually, weather permitting, an outdoor fun in the sun activity that meant things that I never seemed to get enough of. We always seemed to have watermelon, ice cream and all the pop that I cared to drink. Since I may not get these again for quite awhile, I made the best of it. Thanksgiving and Christmas were times for the large meals and lots of family. At least it was that way as long as my Grandma and Grandpa were alive. After they passed away, holidays were not the same.

One other thing that I forgot to mention was wild game. We were not bashful about accepting this when offered, even though no one in my family hunted. My mom really knew how to cook this. Maybe it was because she wasn’t afraid to try it. I especially remember the squirrel stew. When this dish was served, nothing was spared including the brains. Most people today would probably get sick at the thought. I also liked rabbit. I tried raccoon, but didn’t like it very much. This was a very dark red meat. I guess you could almost liken it to eating a dog. This thought is not very appetizing.

One other dish that needs special recognition was my mom’s macaroni and tomatoes. I especially liked this dish. I could make a meal with this and cornbread. I haven’t seen this dish prepared by others. I’m sure that others make it, however I have never seen it outside of my house.

Finally, I must confess that my Aunt Ruby Morgan was an equal to my mom in the kitchen. When I left Wallins, I lived with Aunt Ruby for a while. I didn’t skip a beat though. You could have put a blindfold on me and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Maybe it was that they both had the same early training in my grandma’s house. When I got married there was a small learning curve for Paula to overcome. She was in over her head at first. But she was a quick learner. Soon she had advanced to the head of the class. She advanced well beyond that and soon made me forget my mama’s cooking. Please don’t tell her I said that. Just kidding. She helped her daughter–in-law to become an outstanding cook in her own right. “Old Lightning” truly has been blessed to be surrounded by people who enjoyed cooking. So if they enjoyed it that much, it was my solemn duty to bring my appetite with me when I came to the table.

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Jim Phillips