“The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast.” ― Chris Fabry, The Promise of Jesse Woods
Drug of Choice-an excerpt from the book Food for Thought by Don Miller
While food is my drug of choice, “Food for Thought” is not a cookbook. There are some recipes, recipes from angels now gone, who with their hands, cast iron pans, dollops of bacon grease or lard, and a lot of love, created so much from so little. There are other recipes from those that still exist and come to you over the cable ways on such channels as the Food Channel or from the internet.
Primarily it is a book of memories and history, a Southern history if you will, chock full of pig parts, home grown ingredients, and possibly roadkill. No not roadkill but there might be a possum or a raccoon story to tell. It is stories of an elusive quest for the perfect biscuit, peanuts poured into an eight-ounce Coca Colas, dope wagons in the cotton mill, and why when we order a Coke we are asked, “What kind of Coke?”
There is diversity, lessons taken from Scot Irish Appalachia fused with Native American and African American food and combined into dishes that have culturally diffused throughout the United States.
There are also too many essays involving pig parts, pulled pork, liver mush, sausage, slow cooked ribs, I need to quit before I go crank up the smoker.
None of the recipes shared are mine. Some are old family recipes, others from Methodist and Baptist cookbooks handed down by previous generations in my family. Lastly, some came from the Food Channel and such and are noted and linked as such.
Really lastly, any beautiful photographs of certain dishes are not mine. My dishes rarely come out looking photograph worthy. To quote an old college chemistry professor I had, “Find your wife’s disasters and you will eat like a king.” Thank you Dr. Setzler. The proof is in the eating not in the looking.
“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” ― Ruth Reichl
As I placed the fork full of what I thought was goodness in my mouth, my thought became “this ain’t chow chow” …or chowchow, chow-chow or any other spelling. Nope, nope, nope.
I was given some Amish chow chow. It was touted as “Best Gourmet Chow Chow is the South’s Most Famous Relish that goes great with your favorite comfort foods!” Nope.
Not that it was bad, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t Aunt Alta’s chow chow. I would like to point out that Amish Pennsylvania is not the South, and that should have been a dead give-a-way like salsa made by a company in New York City.
Looks good but “This ain’t chow chow!”
My bride and I had also been gifted a plate full of salmon patties and I thought anything advertised as the “Best Gourmet Chow Chow” would make a great accoutrement. I even used the French pronunciation, A.ku.tʁǝ.mɑ̃ , in my head. French is so sexy…even when discussing a condiment.
The chow chow wasn’t bad, and it did spur some research, but it wasn’t what I remembered from the best chow chow made by my Aunt Alta Rodgers. First the research.
In my part of the world, chow chow was a way to turn excess green tomatoes into something eatable other than “fried green tomatoes” or “green tomato chocolate cake.” Yes, that is a thing. It is quite good.
Just before the first killing frost, green tomatoes were collected, ground, or chopped, combined with ground or chopped cabbage, onion, peppers, and pickling spices. The relish produced would garnish about anything and is a big deal in the South…or it used to be important in the South, and I have no understanding of how it found its way to Pennsylvania.
Chow chow posssibly came to the southern United States by way of French Acadians fleeing Nova Scotia after The French and Indian War in 1763. Forced to leave their homes by the victorious British, they settled primarily in Louisiana bringing with them the word “chou” which means cabbage.
French words of endearment include “mon petit chou” which translates to “my little cabbage.” See, everything sounds better in French even a vegetable.
The dish’s origins are widely debated, however. According to the magazine Southern Living, Southern food historian John Egerton believed its origins weren’t Acadian, but could be traced to piquant sauces brought over by Chinese railroad workers in the 19th century. I don’t like this story. Piquant doesn’t sound as sexy as the French “chou.”
It is reasonable to make the short leap that the word “chou” became “chow”. Not so reasonable is why it became known as chow chow. Nor is it reasonable to think there is a set recipe…there isn’t.
So, what is it? As in what is chow chow? Chow chow is a pickled relish dish that was used to preserve summer vegetables for later in the year. Recipes for the relish are regional, and tend to be generational recipes, passed down through families. Check any old Methodist or Babtist cookbook and you will be likely to find a recipe. While no one batch is the same, most Southern chow chows use green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions.
Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, my grandmother’s sister, made use of green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions. The Amish version was good, but I don’t remember green beans, lima beans, carrots, cauliflower, and corn. This Amish version was more of a pickled vegetable medley like Giardiniera…without the pearl onions.
Aunt Alta was typical of the Rodgers’ girls. Short and a bit squat in her later years, she had been blessed with a green thumb as her backyard flowers and shrubs attested, and an outstanding “cook’s” gene that might have skipped my grandmother. Like the rest of the Rodgers’ girls, she liked to “put up” her own vegetables. Put up means can, and chow chow was one of her specialties.
Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, Pretty in Pink
According to her daughter, Cousin Cindy, this is close to her mother’s recipe. Enjoy but it is a time and labor-intensive endeavor as are most things worth their salt.
Aunt Alta’s Chow Chow
Ingrediants
½ gallon green tomatoes, Chopped
1 small cabbage, Chopped
½ pint onion, Chopped
1 Red Bell Pepper, chopped (Add Cayenne or Jalapeno if you want heat)
1 Green Bell Pepper, Chopped
All the above can be ground together using a food processor
⅙ cup salt
5 cups vinegar
½ cup water
3 ½ cups sugar
2 tsp mustard seeds
1 ½ tsp celery seed
1 ½ tsp turmeric
1 tsp pickling spices
Directions
Grind the green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers together using a food processor. Aunt Alta used a hand grinder I am sure.
Place the veggies into a stainless steel, glass, or porcelain container and sprinkle with salt. Cover and let them stand overnight.
Using a colander, drain and rinse well.
Using a saucepan, bring the vinegar, water, and spices to a boil in a stainless-steel pan. It needs to be a constant boil and the sugar needs to dissolve. Stir frequently so that the spices are well mixed.
Add green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers and bring back to a boil.
Simmer at a low roll for 3-4 minutes
Prep sterile pint jars using Ball lids. Boil lids for at least 10 minutes, jars at least 25 minutes and keep them simmering until you are ready to use them.
Fill pint jars up to the mouth, cover with lid, tighten with band, and process jars using a boiling water bath for at least ten minutes.
“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” ― James Beard
I doubt James Beard grew up with bad cornbread, with or without butter. I did. Come to think of it, rarely have I had good cornbread. Mostly it is too dry. Dry like the Sahara Desert. Did you know the word Sahara means “desert” in Arabic? We’ve been saying the “Desert Desert” in all our geography courses.
Photo of the “Desert Desert” by Greg Gulik on Pexels.com
The Sahara gets between zero to three inches of rain per year with some areas not receiving any moisture for years and years. The Sahara isn’t even the driest desert. That goes to the Atacama in Chile and Argentina. How dry is it? As dry as Nannie’s cornbread.
I have made it a lifelong quest to find good cornbread. I have been thwarted…mostly. Most people would have quit but being a Southern gentleman, I feel compelled to continue eating cornbread or give up my Southern gentleman’s card.
My grandmother, Nannie, made bread for every meal. Biscuits or cornbread. On those nights she made cornbread I cringed. Dry, dry, dry. How dry was her cornbread? If it had been a cow, it would have given evaporated milk. “Ba-dum…BUM” rimshot.
I can remember my grandparents crumbling up their cornbread into Their Looney Tunes jelly glasses filled with buttermilk. Sylvester the Cat did not look impressed. Any liquid, even buttermilk, adds moisture to the driest cornbread. Adding Nannie’s cornbread to buttermilk seemed to be combining two evils to make a greater evil. I like buttermilk in dishes like biscuits but have never developed a taste for it as a libation with or without crumbled cornbread in it. Okay, I’ll be sending my Southern gentleman’s card back ASAP.
With Linda’s malady many friends and family have contributed meals for which we are thankful. Many have featured cornbread to be crumbled into soup. Good thing. Good cornbread by taste but…dry. Dry cornbread goes good in soup…if the soup is good and it has been. Thankfully, no cornbread has included sugar in its recipe.
My wife, by chance, tumbled onto an alternative recipe. She made ‘close’ to good cornbread before the alternative recipe. She will tell you it is because I like my cornbread just underdone and she would take the pone out early and cut a few wedges out just to suit me before returning the cornbread to the oven to finish.
I agree with her. Truth be told, I like my biscuits slightly underdone, too.
I have memories of being allowed to eat raw biscuit dough made with lard and how many times did I lick the spoon from cake batter made with raw eggs, and unpasteurized milk? The horror! Raw lard and yet, I survived. Same with cookie dough.
So, what was the alternative recipe? The same as a regular recipe except for one ingredient…squash.
One summer we had an overabundance of squash. I gave it away to friends, family, and unsuspecting souls who drove by my garden with their car windows down. Still, I ate it every day for a month.
One of those days we had leftovers of boiled squash and onions and had earlier run out of different ways to use squash. With a mess of green beans cooking away on the stove, cornbread was an option. We pondered what we might do with the leftover squash. One of us suggested she use it in her cornbread and my quest for moist cornbread came to an end.
The cornbread was wonderful and so moist I had to eat it with a fork. With cornbread containing squash, and a mess of green beans, we had the “Three Sisters” covered and I was happy to ask for a second helping of cornbread. Summer squash is so mild it really didn’t change the taste of the cornbread.
After doing some research I feel a little akin to that lost explorer, Christopher Colombus. I discovered something that wasn’t lost. Seems like I’m not the only one looking for moist cornbread and recipes abound on various internet sites incorporating squash.
Ok, I’ll be takin’ my Southern gentleman’s card back! Truth be told, I loved Linda’s cornbread before we added squash.
Linda’s Cornbread
Ingredients
Two cups of Aunt Jemima’s self-rising cornmeal
One cup of White Lily self-rising flour (Used Red Band until it was discontinued)
Two Cups of buttermilk…maybe. Add buttermilk until you get the consistency you want along with a squirt of water.
One egg
One large tablespoon of Duke’s Mayonnaise
A dash of salt and pepper
A pinch of sugar (Optional)
Butter, Bacon grease – enough to cover the bottom of a cast iron frying pan
If using Squash, a cup of pre-cooked, drained, and chopped
Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Coat the bottom of frying pan with butter or bacon grease, or both. Yes, you can use vegetable oil if you must.
Place frying pan in the oven but don’t let butter burn.
Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well.
Turn down oven to 350 degrees.
Remove frying pan from oven and carefully pour the mix into the pan. There should be a satisfying sizzle.
Cook for twenty to twenty-five minutes and see if it has browned enough. If not, turn it back up to 425 until it is. A toothpick inserted in the middle should come back clean.
“100% True Fact: Spam means; Sizzle, Pork and Mmmm. Someone tell me I’m wrong…”― Skylar Blue
SPAM actually stands for spiced ham according to its producer Hormel.
A pig trail ran through shredded Spam and scrambled eggs, twisted to lettuce, tomato, and Spam sammies, switched back to Spam and fried potatoes, to a now dead college chum and his recipe for Spambalaya. Johnny Bolt, you little bald-headed demon, I miss you, I do.
Miracle Meat not Mystery Meat
If you are newer to this earth, Spam is tech lingo for unwanted, unsolicited mass communications. While the term is most associated with email, it can also be used to refer to spam comments on blogs and social media, physical junk mail, robocalls, and more.
The newer description is an assault on a once proud delicacy created by Hormel in 1937 to sell more pork shoulder, the weakest selling part of the pig at the time. For those not in the know, pork butts are not butts but pork shoulder. Back in the day, they were shipped in what were known as butts (barrels), after being butchered in New England or Boston. That’s how they got their name, Boston Butts, but more importantly, they are the star ingredient in pulled pork barbeque…and Spam.
According to Wikipedia, Spam is sold in forty-one countries, trademarked in one hundred, and sold on six continents. It tends to freeze too easily in Antarctica I reckon. In the U.S., Hawaii is the state with the highest per capita consumption of Spam, which has become a major ingredient in Hawaiian cuisine.
Muriel Miura’s Hawaiian Spam Cookbook
Why did it become such a seller? During World War II, the U.S. government sent Spam to the troops because it was easier to deliver than fresh meat. It came precooked in a can, so it didn’t need to be refrigerated or cooked to consume, necessities under battlefield conditions.
By mid-war, Hormel was producing fifteen million cans of Spam for the troops each week. Hormel was buying 1.6 million hogs each year, and 90 percent of the canned goods were going to the military. After the war, soldiers returned home with either a taste or disdain for this odd product, and Spam has adorned grocery store shelves ever since.
We also supplied it to our allies including England and the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his autobiography, “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.” Before she became the English Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, a teen at the time called it, “a war-time delicacy.” “Spam the food that won the war!!!”
Spamville somewhere in the Pacific during WW 2
My father was a World War II vet, and he brought home a taste for the salty processed canned pork made primarily from pork shoulder and ham…with a bunch of nastier ingredients like fat, sodium, and preservatives. People were not deterred by its high fat and sodium content. Austin, Texas even celebrates it with their annual “Spamarama.”
During my childhood, we ate it a lot along with bologna, deviled ham, and Vienna sausages. We considered Spam to be a higher quality meat. Bologna, deviled ham, and Viennas were lunch selections, what we call dinner here in the South. Spam was reserved for a simple supper, the evening meal.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve fried it” was once a catch phrase for Spam. I honestly haven’t seen a Spam commercial since…well…since the last time I ate it which has run into decades ago. I don’t know why.
It is not a healthy meat choice, but I would say I wasn’t eating it well before I turned my lifestyle around after a 2006 heart attack. I’m not inclined to run out and grab a tin, but if I do, I might try Johnny Bolt’s recipe.
Johnny passed over a decade ago. Our lives first tangled in college the fall of 1968. He was a cocky little fellow, mostly bald by age eighteen. By the time his hair fell out, he had quit growing upward, topping off at about five-five.
When it came to playing the saxophone, he had an ego the size of a sperm whale. I was the only member of the saxophone section of our jazz ensemble that wasn’t a music major and played like it. Johnny was at the other end of the spectrum, and I guess I was a bit jealous. What is it they say? “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it?” Johnny could do it.
We both became teachers; he was band director, and I became a science and history teaching football and baseball coach. It was inevitable we would run across each other when our schools faced off, but in the early Nineties, we found ourselves teaching at the same school.
It was at Riverside High School that the powers that were decided we should publish a “Cookbook” as a fund raiser. Johnny’s submission was “Spambalya so good it will make you want to slap your momma.” Before you ask, I did “Chicken Cooked in theGround,” one of the only things I learned in the Boy Scouts.
As it turns out Johnny’s recipe for Spambalaya came directly from a Spam cookbook from the Fifties. Teachers are adept at stealing good lesson plans, why not a recipe? I did add some spices to “kick” it up a bit.
“Spambalya so Good it Will Make You Want to Slap Your Momma!”
Ingredients
1 (12 ounce) can spam luncheon meat, cubed (It called for lite, but I’d use regular. Why bother.)
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 cup chopped onion.
2⁄3 cup chopped green bell pepper.
1⁄2 cup chopped celery.
A tablespoon of chopped garlic
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes (use liquid from tomatoes)
1 (10 3/4 ounce) low sodium chicken broth (I use regular)
1⁄2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 1⁄2 – 2 teaspoons hot sauce (recipe read 6 to 8 drops)
1 bay leaf
1 cup long grain rice
1 tablespoon chopped parsley.
If you wish to add shrimp or chicken, please do.
Cajun spice mix, if you desire, and I would.
Directions
In a large non-stick skillet over medium heat, sauté spam until browned.
Add vegetable oil, onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic. Cook until all vegetables are tender.
Except for rice and parsley, add remaining ingredients.
Bring to a boil and add rice.
Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until rice is done.
Remove bay leaf, and sprinkle with parsley.
Best served with an ice-cold pilsner beer. Put on some Zydeco and laissez les bons temps rouler.
***
I could not find a live version of Jambalaya On the Bayou. This will have to do.
“Everybody says, ‘I have problems overcooking steak on the grill. Just take it off earlier!” – Bobby Flay
I know Bobby. Grilling isn’t rocket science but there seems to be a fine line between slightly under cooked and incinerated.
Not to belabor a point that I have made before, and despite what your favorite dictionary might tell you, barbeque is a noun not a verb…or an adverb…or adjective…maybe. My English teachers are looking down from heaven shaking their heads.
Okay, after much thought, it is okay to say you ate barbequed pork or chicken. That denotes it is a type of chicken or barbeque, not an action. I am belaboring a point, but one prepares barbeque. One eats barbeque. One does not say “I’m going to a barbeque for chicken or steaks in the backyard.” That is grillin’.
Moving along, my subject is grillin’. My subject is not serving succulent meat slowly cooked over wood coals for most of the day before the meat succumbs to gravity and falls off the bones. That is barbeque, usually pork in my part of the world. I didn’t move along far, did I?
My subject matter today is the rapid roasting of meat, hamburgers, or hotdogs…or in my case chicken. I do try to feed my obsession with food in a healthy manner…not really. I also like to prepare it slowly over indirect heat out of regard for my Southern, slow-cookin’ roots. Indirect heat allows me a margin of error.
I rarely grill beef. A man must know his limitations. I can’t seem to get it right. Goldilocks I could never be because nothing is “just right.” Beef requires perfect grill marks on the outside and a pink juicy middle. I blame my grandmother and mother. To them steak wasn’t done until it was crisp. Honestly, I never ate steak anyway other than crisp until I was out of college.
To defend my mother and grandmother, I grew up in an age when round worms could still be found in beef and pork. Yuck. Round worms cause trichinellosis, a parasitic disease that is muy malo. Don’t hear of it much in the United States because we have standards…FDA standards. We also didn’t cook many “premium” cuts of meat. Cubed steak, Chicken fried steak, or hamburgers were about the best we could expect.
Hamburgers on a griddle I can do but the grilled ones end up over cooked and dry, hotdogs that are exactly right suddenly become crispy critters as I look for my misplaced tongs to remove them from the grill. Do I have to give up my “man card?” Laud help me if I decide to grill expensive cuts of beef. Have you eaten filet de ash covered splinter?
For some reason, chicken seems to be more forgiving. Maybe because I didn’t ring the poor creature’s neck myself. Fact is, chicken should be served over done rather than underdone…that is a salmonella fact. So how do you keep it from drying out and becoming tough? Brine it, marinade it, pound it with a mallet, use dry rubs, or cook it over indirect heat…or all.
I find the perfect way to prepare grilled chicken is whole, roasted over the indirect heat provided by my thirty-year-old Weber Kettle grill. The grill is really that old. The legs rusted off a decade ago and I built a stand for it. I’ve contemplated a new one but decided to wait until the bottom rusts out of the old one.
Here is my favorite recipe for whole chicken. Note, you may brine it, use your favorite marinade, or dry rub. You can’t pound it. You must use indirect heat.
Don’s Beer Butt Chicken- File under grillin’ and I didn’t create the recipe, I just perfected it.
Ingredients
1 cup butter, divided (I guess you could use vegetable oil, but I’ve never tried.)
2 tablespoons of your favorite rubbing spices, divided
2 tablespoons of paprika, divided
salt and pepper to taste
1 (12 fluid ounce) can of beer
1 (4 pound) whole, washed and patted dry chicken
Put on your favorite grillin’ apron. Mine says “I like my butt rubbed and my pork pulled” but then this is about chicken not pork.
I am a traditionalist or a “charcoalist” I use charcoal. I don’t use starter fluid and start it with a tower. There are no unwanted chemicals affecting the taste of the chicken. I set the heat vents on both the top and bottom to barely open. You may use a propane grill, just heat on one side, and cook on the other. You may have to adjust the time.
While my charcoal is catching fire, I combine half of my spices, salt and pepper, and paprika while drinking half a can of my favorite beer in a can. Set the remaining beer aside for later.
I rub down my washed and dried chicken with half of the butter and then sprinkle half of my spices over the chicken, on all sides and inside, and pat them down into the butter.
By now the coals should be caught and I divide the coals leaving the middle of the grill clear of charcoal. If you want to add wood chips, now is the time. I would suggest pecan or apple wood.
In a small sauce pan I melt the remaining butter and when melted mix in the remaining spices. When combined, I CAREFULLY add it to the beer can with the remaining beer. BE CAREFUL, the beer will foam.
On a grill pan, I place the chicken with the beer can stuffed up its butt forming a tripod with the chicken’s legs. Carefully place the chicken on the grill pan, in the middle of the grill and cover with the grill lid. Note, there is a stand that you can purchase to hold the chicken and beer can in place but as I said, I’m a traditionalist.
I cover the grill and then walk away for forty-five minutes, about two to three beers in time. Don’t peek, that just allows the heat to escape.
After forty-five minutes, using a meat thermometer, I check the breast, which should be 165 degrees F. and the thigh which should be 170 degrees F. If not at the correct temperature, drink another beer and check again. If chicken has reached the correct temperature, remove it from grill and wrap in aluminum foil and let rest for ten minutes. Drink another beer if you want but remember you might not want to pass out before eating your chicken.
“Good food should be joyful. There should be laughter and chatter, not people sitting there like they’re in a funeral-parlor waiting room.”- Jim Harrison
I’m having a moment. My wife brought me a meal from a local meat and three. Bless her heart. I applaud her efforts but the BBQed chicken gave its life for naught it would seem. The cabbage slaw, way too sweet. The hush puppies were awful, hard on the inside and even harder on the outside, but they triggered a memory which led to a pig trail. I’m sure there is a rabbit hole to fall into at the end.
Hush puppies are fried balls of seasoned cornbread batter. I like mine sans sugar with finely chopped onion and garlic mixed into the batter. A Southern staple served alongside anything fried or BBQ, they should be a golden, crispy brown on the outside and a creamy, moist yellow or white on the inside.
Supposedly hush puppies were fried up and fed to dogs to keep them quiet while fish were fried on the riverbanks where they had been caught as friends and family fellowshipped with each other. Thus, the name, “Hush puppies.” (According to Wikipedia, the name “hush puppy” or “hushpuppy” first appeared in print in 1899)
An alternative theory, a theory that is just as likely to be true, is that escaping slaves used fried cornbread to silence pursuing hounds and to throw them off their scent. Both work for me but the first theory follows better with my pig trail.
At some point hush puppies became a fish camp side dish, and my rabbit hole led me to a seafood platter featuring deep fried flounder or catfish fillets and Calabash shrimp along with mayonnaise slaw and hush puppies.
Fish camps gained popularity before World War Two and owe their beginnings to gatherings on the side of rivers or coastal shores, “creek camps” if you will. Everyone chipping in with fish caught that day, deep fried in seasoned batter, or pan fried after dredging in a seasoned cornbread and flour mix. The main course was served alongside cabbage slaw and hushpuppies. Simple food prepared cheaply, and might I say majestically, with a good dose of fellowship to go with it.
Enterprising souls saw a business opportunity, threw up rough structures, and served up deep fried fish on Friday and Saturday nights. As roads and transportation improved local catfish, carp, and crappy were replaced by flounder, shrimp, and oysters. The ocean’s bounty was transported to the upstate and served on Fridays and Saturdays.
Fish camps once were numerous on both banks of the Catawba River where I grew up. Cute names like “Catfish Cove” or simple ones like the Riverview Inn were prolific. The Riverview Inn featured its own pirate, Captain Windy, complete with a real peg leg but missing the eyepatch and parrot on his shoulder. I really don’t remember it as an Inn and my family was not there for the view. They once served a ton of flounder over one weekend.
In the Carolinas, upstate fish camps were tied to textiles and families. Many were family-run businesses that opened on weekends after the shiftwork of the week was completed. Textile workers flocked to the fish camps and visits to the fish camp became as routine as church on Sunday.
Unfortunately, fish camps are as scarce as hen’s teeth in my part of the world in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Coastal Carolinas and Georgia have the fish camps, I’m sure Florida does too, but inland fish camps have dwindled into obscurity or become the pricier seafood restaurants.
I’ve been to some of the local ones claiming to be fish camps and if there are good ones, they remain hidden to me…nothing cheap or majestic about their offerings. My taste has changed or I’m still looking for the one perfect fish camp that existed in the late Sixties or early Seventies.
My fondest memory was a wreck of a building at the end of a hard-packed dirt road. A graying whitewash lapboard building covered by a rusty metal roof. Picnic tables with holes in the middle over a trash can to throw shrimp tails or oyster shells. The choices were simple; shrimp, fried or boiled, oysters fried or roasted, and the catch of the day which this day was deep fried flounder fillets. Sides were cabbage slaw, fries, and hush puppies with a hint of onion fried into them.
Squeeze bottles of tartar sauce and spicy cocktail were spaced conveniently around the table along with cheap paper towels to wipe your hands. Sweet tea or iced down PBRs washed it all down. Boiled shrimp and roasted oysters were served on newspaper, the rest in paper “boats.”
I remember a couple of “church” fish fries as a child. My humble Methodist church was a bit more “hellfire and brimstone” and had taken a page from our Baptist brothers. The best way to gather new members was through their stomachs. We just drew the line at requiring a casserole dish to enter Heaven’s Pearly Gates.
From down the road from my home, if the winds were right, late summer would bring the smell of fish frying during the annual camp meeting at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church that sat just off the Catawba on one of the creeks that fed it. Later, snatches of them making a joyful noise unto the Lord would be carried by the same breeze. Judging from the smell and the sound, they knew the way to heaven, even if it might have been heaven on earth, deep fried and seasoned by angels from generations past.
Fish camps and their predecessor, “creek camps” bode to a simpler time. Life revolved around work, family, and friends. Fishing was a form of recreation in addition to adding protein to the table. It was also a form of creation as many stories were told on the riverbank about the one that got away.
Combining necessity, recreation, and fellowship can’t be bad. Throw in a “jug band” and a bit of amber liquid and you might have hit on something.
“I’m always sketchy of people who don’t like grits.” – Author: Jaycee Ford
I have many Yankee friends along with those from other parts of the country. Good folks are good folks no matter where they come from…except when it comes to food…or harping on perceived Southern backwardness which, unfortunately includes our Confederate past and the original sin of slavery and the Jim Crow that came after it. Don’t pontificate because Southerners authored the book on pontification and when you speak to me about fried food or our original sin you are preachin’ to the choir.
If it is backward to revere the callused hands of our forefathers then, yes, we are backward, but most of us are not the repressive, inbred, missing more teeth than we have, morons we are portrayed to be.
We have a gracious plenty of those repressive, inbred morons and I’m missing a few teeth myself, but for most of us, Southern identity has more to do with food, accents, manners, and music than our Confederate flag flyin’ past. I did date a distant cousin once upon a time but only because pickins’ were slim… The emphasis should be on distant and not on cousin. We did not inbreed, nor did we breed in the backseat of my ’63 Ford.
In my circle of friends, Southern identity is open to all races, a variety of ethnic groups, and people who moved here from above the Mason-Dixon. It incorporates more than “South” Alabama or Texas but includes Southern France, Southern Italy, Southern Asia, and any other country you can describe as “South” of anywhere. West Africa, which is south of the South, made an even greater contribution I should add especially when talking about food and music…or our original sin.
In all honesty, the repressive morons are just the most vocal as they watch their way transition to the chamber pot of life. They are not the most numerous. It’s just the rest of us are silent, sitting quietly thinking, “Well, bless your heart.” We should be more vocal and drown them out and the “bless your heart” in this case is a negative comment.
Still, my Yankee friends, there are limits to my Southern sensibilities, mostly those limits involve food…especially this time of year.
I am a day from the first of my three annual physicals and food is on my mind. October, the fright month, and I’m not speaking of the horror of Halloween and candy corn. I’m speaking about the blood work that will be done, the weigh-in, the blood pressure check, the electro-cardiogram with its ice-cold electrodes applied with Gorilla Glue, the body scan to see if any more skin cancer is eating me alive. It will be the yearly reckoning and one that has me tighter than a tick on a fat dog.
I’m a week away from “paying the piper” for a lifetime of excess. Platters of “Southern” fried chicken and catfish, oversized cathead biscuits smothered in creamy sawmill gravy, salty pork rinds, cigars, and brown liquor. Since my heart attack in 2006, my diet has been limited to mostly leaves and cardboard, the seasonings removed from the angelic hands of my ancestors and replaced with a bit of shaken Mrs. Dash.
Little fried, little creamy, little salty, limited cigars and little brown liquor…well, brown liquor can be used for medicinal purposes, and I light the cigar to smell it more than I smoke it. The keyword is little as in much less than I might wish, so, my sensibilities are affronted when my Yankee friends try to school me on “good” food.
It could be I’m just amid a bacon grease withdrawal. For instance, and in no order:
Throwing away the bacon grease instead of using it as a “flavorin’.” Blasphemy! Bacon grease should be stored in a coffee can right on the stovetop for easy access. Bacon grease is culinary “gold.” Eggs fried or scrambled in bacon grease, greens or beans sautéed in bacon grease and then cooked to death. Bacon grease cooked in bacon grease.
Biscuits and creamy sawmill gravy are most certainly a main course and biscuits running in butter and honey are a dessert. To say otherwise could end a friendship.
It is Duke’s Mayonnaise, or it is nothing. If I have a choice between Hellman’s or Miracle Whip, I’ll look for mustard to put on my tomato sandwich. Yuck. Sidenote, tomato sandwiches should be served on soft, white bread. Save your multigrain for Reubens and such.
Also, I am well-read. I know a tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable in every state of the union save one. It is a vegetable in South Carolina by legislative decree. As if my legislators have no better use of their time.
Don’t serve grits from those little brown packets that you microwave with water and then gripe about how bland they are. Grits are a blank canvas. They should be stone ground, cooked with cream, and at the minimum contain cheddar cheese and butter. And please, just serve me the box that the packets of “flavored” grits come in. Addendum: Grits should never be served with sugar.
I’ll drink water from a stagnant, primordial swamp before I drink unsweetened tea. It should be served sweet with lemon slices to sour it up. One more Southern paradox?
Instant tea? Just shoot me.
Chicken fried steak and country fried steak are not the same. Chicken fried involves egg batter, country fried a dusting of flour only. Note to prospective cooks, I’ll eat either and smile.
Don’t ask me to come for the barbecue and then serve hot dogs and hamburgers. That’s grillin’. A barbecue is not a place. Barbecue is slow-cooked pig parts over wood coals. Barbecue is a noun, not a verb. Note: If you want to serve some of those German sausages in addition to the slow-cooked pig parts that will be fine with me. Put it in a bun and you can pretend it is a hot dog and I’ll be okay. I’ll even eat one.
Mac and cheese should not come from a little box that contains everything you need to make it taste like noodles and Velveeta and nothing else. Good mac and cheese is not orange in color. It is a cheesy crisp brown on the outside and at the corners and creamy and pale on the inside. It contains more than just mac and cheese. Addendum: It is also perfectly acceptable to list good mac and cheese on the vegetable menu of your local ‘meat and three.’
Side note: good cornbread doesn’t come from a package or a box and “nanner puddin'” should not be made with instant pudding.
Finally, viewing Southern food as only fried chicken, pork, or fish and biscuits is a great over-simplification. The Southern food of our forefathers was plant-based. Granted, many of those plants were fried or flavored with bacon grease or fatback and very well-seasoned. Staples included stewed okra and tomatoes, whole-grain cornbread, winter greens, corn, butterbeans, sweet potatoes, and both winter and summer squash. Fried meat, poultry, or fish served daily is a modern contrivance. Certainly, there are Southern dishes that are indulgent, but indulgent food is found in any cuisine. Beef Stroganoff anyone?
Postscript: My first battery of test came back great. My cholesterol was 121. Biscuits and gravy here I come. I’ve got a year to work it off.
“Forget baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet. For a Southerner, it is barbeque.”
Let’s clarify immediately and with great fervor, barbeque is not an event; it is a dish. I don’t care what our Northern neighbors say. It is not a backyard gathering. You don’t go to a backyard “barbeque.” You go to the backyard to eat barbeque. Barbeque is a dish created by the soft whispers of the angels who trod before us and is as close to heaven as I wish to get until death. Good barbeque is a gift from heaven…it is not a place. Be reverent my children.
It is the morning of July 5th and as I write this, I’m in a barbeque coma courtesy of Carolus’ ribs and Jamie’s pulled pork…and potato salad courtesy of Carol Ann. Other significant coma contributors included blueberry cobbler and brown liquor. There were many other contributors and only contributions I would have added would have been mayonnaise and vinegar slaw and hash over white rice but that is a personal choice and not a coma breaker. It is a tip of the hat to my roots where barbeque came with mustard sauce and helpings of hash over rice.
It was the first Bennett family Fourth of July backyard cookout in two years. The Bennetts are our adopted family and I’m not sure who adopted whom. It was good to see folk we hadn’t seen in two years even though there was a bit of “post-Covid” trepidation. Sitting outside under shade trees and swapping stories soon reduced my anxieties…or maybe it was the brown liquor.
Backyard cookout. See how I said that? A backyard cookout. You go to a cookout…not to a barbeque. You don’t even have to serve barbeque at a cookout, you can grill things like pork, chicken, beef, roadkill, or tofu. But grillin’ ain’t barbequin’. Barbeque is slowly cooked animal parts, pork in my part of the world, over wood coals. Slow cooked until the meat just gives up and shreds easily with two forks or falls off of the bone without any help from anything other than gravity. Sometimes eating high on the hog involves parts found low on the hog.
There is a certain barbeque etiquette. None etched in stone, and it varies from place to place but it would behoove you to learn the area’s rules before attending a cookout serving barbeque. See how I said that?
Generally, the rules involve sauces, rubs, or sides. It can involve the meat, Texas is mainly beef, for instance, other areas might be a goat or lamb, yuck, but here in South Carolina, it is pork. I reckon we all eat chicken and you can slow cook yard bird.
There are sauces and then there are sauces. Nothing to argue over. Pick one or experiment. Sauce varies here in South Carolina. Vinegar base, pepper base, both together. Mustard base, light tomato base, heavy tomato base, depending on the area. In the home of my mother, the general rule was a mustard sauce with pork, tomato sauce with chicken.
The mustard base is considered by many to be truly South Carolina’s sauce…may be. German immigrants brought it from the Fatherland to the midlands. Our new visitors told the older inhabitants they were from Deutschland, which was mistaken as Dutchland, and the reason the fork between the Broad and Saluda Rivers became known as the Dutch Fork. Dutch Fork…Deutsch Fork…”You say toe-may-toe, I say toe-mah-toe.”
The mustard sauce changes to vinegar and pepper sauces on the coast, light tomato, which is vinegar and pepper with tomato added, in the Pee Dee area, heavy tomato in the West and Northwest portions of the state…with a bit of brown sugar, root beer, or brown liquor added…sometimes. People are mostly steadfast in their allegiance to one sauce although I admit to experimentation on occasion. If a person serves you an exotic barbeque sauce like that Alabama White Sauce, thank them even if you don’t like it. It is the Southern way and good etiquette.
Steadfast allegiance but I’m not willin’ to fight a Civil War over it. No one should argue over sauces. It is almost like arguing about politics except with politics no one wins. With barbeque, everybody wins. Just don’t drown the meat in the sauce. It is meant to enhance the flavor, not cover it up…unless it is bad barbeque. One rule etched in stone: Never pre-sauce a sandwich. The amount of sauce is a personal choice.
Sides? I’m guessing we could argue all day. In the South, potato salad is a must. Corn on the cob, fried okra, baked beans, and dill pickles are quite acceptable. I fancy the pickled medley that includes pickled cauliflower and pearl onions. Just don’t call it giardiniera. Sounds too fancy for barbeque and you can leave the pickled carrots out of mine.
To slaw or not to slaw, that might be the question? I think slaw is a genetic thing. You are born to put slaw on your pulled pork sandwich, or you are not. Kind of like sugar or vinegar or mayonnaise in your slaw. Me…vinegar and mayonnaise and yes, I want it on my sandwich.
Hash or Brunswick stew? It is pretty much Brunswick stew everywhere other than the Carolinas. Once again, everywhere else is wrong. It’s hash always. Unrecognizable pig products cooked with potatoes and onions until they meld together with certain spices passed down by the ghostly hands of our past. Served over rice…white rice of course.
What is not up for debate, fellowship. You shouldn’t eat barbeque with someone you don’t like which brings me back to the Bennett clan. I like the Bennett clan. I taught with the patriarch, Carol Ann, and coached and taught her two sons Jamie and Carolus. Through them, my bride and I have become members of their extended family. I’m honored to have been invited to their July 4th celebration. Barbeque reminds me of home and the Bennett clan reminds me of family. It just doesn’t get much better than that.
I need to take a nap. My barbeque coma is about to win out.
Barbecue or Barbeque. I spelled it barbeque because it is a bit archaic, like me, and because it was spelled that way where I grew up.
“Ours is a region whose food carries with it the burdens of our past — a history of slavery and racism, long-lasting, outdated stereotypes of our people, and a tenuous political landscape.” -www.thrilist.com The New Southern Cuisine: Don’t Call It Fusion
Our past IS fraught with burdens when it comes to race…even our present. Somehow our food rises above it all. Don’t believe me? Go to a Baptist Church covered dish dinner or a hole in the wall diner named “Momma Ester’s Café”. European, West African, and Native American foodways merge into a superhighway that became known in the Seventies as soul food…one of the few positives of the Columbian Exchange. It was Southern fusion before the word was cool.
Over a year ago, before our lives changed with the “corona”, my bride and I sat down at a restaurant for a Sunday brunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary and contemplated our dish selections. This was before the need for masks, social distancing or arguments over rights and vaccines.
At the urging of my bride, we decided to sit outside in the shade and enjoy the warm breezes along with a Bloody Mary or two. It was late June. Even mountain breezes in late June sometimes feel like the blast from a Bessemer furnace.
This was one of those “sometimes”. Winter had gone straight to full on summer. The “bacon infused” Bloody Mary with the okra pod garnish had just enough bite to increase the perspiration forming across my nose and to a greater extent, settling into my underwear. For some reason, the hot wind reminded me of the past before air conditioning was cool, when a window fan was an ineffective defense against the hot and humid air.
The restaurant was one of those neo-Southern cookin’ places boasting traditional Southern dishes with a “twist.” Judging from the prices I worried it might be a nouveau-riche Southern cookin’ place although no one would accuse me of being a member of the nouveau-riche…not near Beverly Hillbillies nouveau-riche but it was my anniversary, and my bride was worth any price.
I was hopeful as I perused their menu. There were plenty of selections featuring biscuits and deeply fried anything. There were collards cooked to death with ham and bacon grease, cornbread battered fried green tomatoes, and dishes featuring cracklins’…bacon bits…not the real ones, pig skin fried crisp.
Fried chicken with an acceptable twist, waffles. Sounded tasty with maple syrup drizzled over it. What worried me were dishes including fried cauliflower bites or smashed avocado on toast points. I don’t remember many dishes from the past including cauliflower in any form but right there on the menu was a picture of a vegan taco with both fried cauliflower and avocado wedges. I figured it looked better than it might taste. I like cauliflower and avocado, but I had decided today was not a day to eat healthy.
I saw one immediate positive. No dishes involving kale.
One appetizer piqued my interest. Deep fried BBQ stuffed egg rolls. Recipe must be from Southern China. Didn’t matter where it came from, it was good, but didn’t speak to the ghosts of my past. Not sure I ate an egg roll until I was out of college. Now BBQ? That is something else entirely.
Some of this neo-Southern cuisine is described as fusion cookin’ but it seems to me, the food I consumed as a child was fusion. We ate what became known as soul food. Food heavily seasoned with salt pork and bacon grease, the heavy use of starches and cornmeal. We ate soul food before it was cool and before we could be accused of racial appropriation. We ate soul food until our arteries seized up.
I grew up in an area where no one of any race really ate “high on the hog.” We didn’t know we were poor, and in most ways that counted, we weren’t. Money was not one of the ways that counted. Even the “landed rich” didn’t have an extra two nickels to rub together until after harvest season, so most of us ate like we were poor. Sometimes the poor knew better how to eat than the rich.
Chicken, pork, and fresh caught fish were staples. Not much expensive beef unless it was from the “butt end of the cow”, cubed round steak dusted with flour and fried crisp or chicken fried and smothered in milk gravy. I didn’t know you could order steak anyway but done to death until I graduated from college. That doesn’t mean we didn’t eat well; we just didn’t eat a lot of steak. Catfish fried with a cornbread batter heavy with black pepper, chicken battered and fried in lard. The skin crisp and the inside moist and tender. Pork chops fried and smothered with milk gravy, the renderings spooned over biscuits.
Green beans, butter beans, peas, and collard greens cooked forever plus one day, cooked with fat back or bacon. Maybe some unrecognizable pork bits in and amongst it. Seasoned with a bit of salt and sugar, a finely chopped hot pepper to add a bit of heat and cider vinegar for a little tartness. Pinto beans simmered all day with hog jowls, ham hocks or neck bones until the meat fell off the bone. Chopped onion and a pone of cornbread to go with it. Sweet potatoes made sweeter with butter and sugar or syrup. All seasoning guided by the hands of the ghosts of women long dead.
Simple food seasoned well and prepared in cast iron pots and pans dating from before the First World War and cut up with a knife that had to be seventy years old. Soul food can’t help but taste of the past.
My grandmother and mother were not known for their culinary abilities. They did okay, I didn’t starve. My grandmother was more concerned about the great outdoors and growing the food although there were memorable dishes. Her creamed corn, chicken pot pie, “cooter” soup and peanut butter cookies.
My mother was a textile shift worker and I remember dining on Birdseye TV Dinners and fried bologna sandwiches often. Mom did cook on weekends, spaghetti on Saturday nights and her own trinity, BBQ chicken, pot roast, or fried chicken on Sunday.
My grandmother’s sisters and my mother’s sister can put on a spread. So could their in-laws.
I am reminded of a late summer feast put on by my Uncle James’ wife, Aunt Mary Hannah and their two daughters. She was a slight woman crippled by polio. Braces and crutches did not affect her abilities in her kitchen. It always amazed me how happy she could be. Her freckled face always had a smile.
The summer season was drawing to an end, the hayin’ was done and in the barn, corn pulled and stored in the cribs, the tomatoes, squash, and beans almost played out. Those huge John Deere tractors safely tucked and serviced in their garage. I was headed back to school and football practice as were my cousins who, with me, provided the summer labor. We sat under a shade tree in slat backed chairs we moved from her dining room and ate off rough boards set on sawhorses covered with linen tablecloths.
Part of my daily pay was a midday meal which usually consisted of Vienna sausages or deviled ham, maybe sardines and saltine crackers, a “dope”, and a Moon Pie. But one late summer day, the midday meal was worth the hell of those hay and corn fields.
Pan fried chicken, butter beans cooked with chopped up ham, creamed corn running with home churned butter, corn bread battered okra fried crisp, squash casserole, deviled eggs to die for, potato salad, and biscuits. All seasoned well, with a smidge of this, a pinch of that, a tad of something else, until it tasted right and the voices from our past whispered, “That will do.”
Every vegetable or starch grown in their garden. The chicken, ham, and eggs from their coop or sty. The only dishes or ingredients foreign were the sweet tea we washed it down with and the bananas and vanilla wafers in the banana pudding we finished it with. We could have stayed local and washed it down with buttermilk from their cow and eaten watermelon from their field. It was food fit for fieldworkers or a king. That one meal encompassing all of the different foodways.
Soul food…food with a soul. Food with a past going back centuries brought from lands far away and land close by, somehow merged in a way the people who brought them should fuse.
Food should unite us all. Food prepared by hands who were taught by ghostly hands from the past in implements passed down by generations. Food should taste like the past.
I’m sure my grandmother is looking down from the great beyond and shaking her head. I’m guessing what is left of her earthly body is spinnin’ in her grave. As soon as she heard that can opener, I visualize a side eyed look below her furrowed brow. Not only am I cooking canned black-eyed peas I’m serving canned collards to go with them. If she were still alive, I’m sure I would be disenfranchised.
My grandmother, Nannie, was not known for her cooking. She wasn’t into exotic food…I don’t think I ate a pizza until I went off to college. Pizza…exotic? Cooter Stew was about as exotic as she got. But there were lines she would never cross and peas with collards from a can was a line in concrete.
Peas and collards fit right in with her idea of utilitarian food, with cornbread and a raw onion of course. Oh, and some of Aunt Alta’s chow chow. Bless my soul, I had forgotten that. Nannie’s meals were made to fortify you for a long day in the field. Exotic foods weren’t known to stick to your ribs.
In her small kitchen dried black-eyed peas from her fields would have been put in the Dutch oven to soak the night before, picked over to remove shells or gravel that might have “snuck” in. Drained and rinsed, they would have returned to the Dutch oven along with onions, ham hocks, and seasonings and allowed to slow simmer in water and get to know each other for the next four or five hours. When the ham hocks were tender, they would be removed, and the meat picked from the bone and fat and returned to the peas.
Well before the pickin’, fresh collards from her garden would have been washed and rinsed repeatedly, chopped awaiting placement into another Dutch oven. There they would join up with sauteed, in bacon grease, onion and chopped ham, some broth, apple cider vinegar, and red pepper flakes. These would hang together until cooked to death.
An hour before the meal was ready, a cast iron frying pan with a dollop of Crisco would be placed in the old stove to become screaming hot before corn bread batter was poured into it and put back in the oven to cook and brown. I can remember the sizzle the batter made when it hit the grease and have a mental vision of a tanned and creased, flour-streaked cheek. I also remember the corn bread to be a tad dry but something to mop the pot likker from my bowl with.
Tea so sweet it made your teeth ache or fresh buttermilk would wash down the meal.
All told, she spent the better part of half a day to get the meal on the table…which is why I will open a can. My bride will cook her special brand of cornbread, better than my grandmothers, moister at least…and I’ll mop up my pot likker with it. I’ll keep the collards and peas a bit healthier and a lot less tasty, all-in hopes of seeing another New Year’s Day or two. We may oven fry some pork chops…the other white meat.
It is about traditions, I reckon Southern traditions in this case. It is about honoring the past. As I have quoted before, William Faulkner’s line, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Peas swelling as they cook for luck, greens for money, pork because hogs are always moving forward as they forage, and cornbread for gold is a long running tradition…as is cornbread running in butter.
In the South, how the tradition began involves two stories of note. Not sure either is true. According to one, during Sherman’s March to the Sea during the Civil War, “bummers” left behind peas and salt pork thinking it was nothing more than animal feed. Southerners gave thanks for having even that gracious little to get through the winter. I have my doubts about the story. It makes no sense to leave even animal feed behind. It does make for a good story and a reason to celebrate.
According to the second, and I find this more likely, black-eyed peas were a symbol of emancipation for African Americans who were officially freed on New Year’s Day, 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation. As the story goes peas were all they had to eat, and it became a symbol. Again, I am unsure of the story but know former slaves initiated the idea for adding rice to the peas along with bacon, onion, and spices, giving us Hoppin’ John. That is a good thing whether the story is true or not and has become a favorite Southern tradition of mine.
Yes, the South does have traditions we are not likely to allow to die. Some I wish would. Peas and collards isn’t one of them even from a can. Be sure and eat your peas and collards.
I hope you have a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Ravings of a Mad Southerner 