Home Cookin' Southern Style

"American by birth, Southern by the grace of God," is certainly true when we're talking about food. After all, where else but the South can plants considered weeds in other parts of the country turn into something so delicious I want to lick my plate and gain 10 pounds from the smell?

Today, I was the lucky recipient of a Southern Sunday dinner complete with black eyed peas, corn bread, fried okra, cauliflower with cheese sauce, and thick slices of fresh tomatoes. It reminds me of the old Hee Haw skit where everyone yells, "Hey Grandpa, what's for supper?" and then treated to a litany of the best food on earth to which they ultimately replied, "Yum! Yum!"

That was my response the moment my son and I stepped through the door to the smell of all that good food cooking this afternoon. (To alleviate the boy's boredom at having to live without his friends for a week, I took him to see Sorcerer's Apprentice in Knoxville.) Walking through the kitchen on the way to put down my purse and take off my shoes, I couldn't help but stop at the plate piled high with hot okra (from the garden) coated in cornmeal and deep fried. I actually stood there popping many of the little golden brown pieces of heaven in my mouth before moving on to complete my tasks. (To tell the truth, the only reason I moved on was because Mom picked up the plate to add more to it.)

Upon returning to the kitchen I watched her deftly pop the corn bread muffins out of the pan with one hand while holding the phone (talking to my brother) with the other. As adept as I am at cooking, I have not mastered the skill of talking to family at the same time. She continued to move through the kitchen, stirring the black eyed peas (also from her garden), adding more okra to the dish, and making a cheese sauce for the cauliflower before hanging up the phone when dinner was ready, which was the green light to fill a plate. Mine was nearly overflowing with all the goodies stacked one beside the other before carrying it to the table where I ate every morsel and the last few bites of my son's. Mmm....mmm

As I ate, I contemplated an article from Garden and Gun magazine that describes flavor as the legacy of poverty. The gist of it is that when people are poor (as they often were in the South), they can't afford to eat a lot of meat, so they use little bits of pork fat and small pieces of cheap (read tough and chewy here) meat enlivened by the plethora of garden vegetables available to them. The beans, peas, okra, greens, etc. become the focus of the meal with the meat as a secondary item thinly distributed among the good stuff. Although the idea of eating this kind of food because you're poor may be our heritage, today Southerners choose this kind of food because it tastes so darn good. Around here leftover okra is eaten at snack time and cornbread becomes breakfast with some homemade blackberry jelly. We will nibble and pick at the leftovers while we're cleaning up the dishes, and then they will go into lunch boxes for a taste of home at work. Nothing goes to waste, which is how I was raised and how I like to operate my own kitchen. It's good to be Southern.