Mamaw's Home Cooking
2001-11-07 @ 1:01 p.m.
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There have been many influences on my cooking style, from my wife (who knows what she likes and doesn't like) to James Beard (the best bread-baking guide I've found). But the earliest and most important was my grandmother.
Mamaw (that's was we called her) was a country farm wife. I won't say simple, because she was not a simple woman. She graduated from high school and raised four children. She was loving and nurturing, but she was also manipulative and self-serving at times. She was a God-fearing Christian woman, but she wasn't above lying if she thought it would get her children and grand-children to do what she thought was right. I loved her, learned from her and was intimidated by her.
The first time I saw her open a can of vegetables, I was appalled. I was a teenager, and all my life my grandmother had cooked only the fresh, frozen or canned (in Mason jars) vegetables that had come out of her garden. I guess in her fifties she decided convenience was a good thing.
I have helped her make jams and jellies, pies and cakes, biscuits and cornbread. I've stood beside her to preserve pig parts in various ways. My grandparents raised cows, pigs and tobacco in addition to their own vegetables. The cows and tobacco were money products, although they did send out at least one cow or steer a year to be butchered and stored in the freezer. (My grandfather smoked a pipe, but not his own tobacco.) The pigs were raised as a family food supply.
Every year the adult pigs were slaughtered (the same animals we giggled over when they were just piglets) by my grandfather and his sons (my father and uncle). They shot them pointblank in the head and then immediately cut their throats to drain the blood. I used to think that my cousins who couldn't watch this part were sissies (ironic considering how squeamish I am now about blood and gore).
The carcasses were hauled to a prepared area and dumped into a vat of boiling lye water propped over a fire that had been burning for hours. The hot water loosened the hair so we could pull and scrape it off the skin. This is done in winter so the warmth above the water felt good on our hands as long as we didn't actually immerse them in it. The denuded pig body was hauled out of the water with a winch and pulley system to hang by hooks through its back ankle tendons on a huge frame. Then it was carefully butchered by men who had been doing this for many years. I distinctly remember my father with an old, sharp butcher knife making a long cut down the pigs belly as one or two others stood by to catch the intestines so they wouldn't hit the ground. A big piece of wood was laid over the now empty vat (the water was used to put out the fire) to hold each set of parts as it was cut away from the carcass.
As a kid I always preferred to do the outside stuff with the men, even when the outside stuff was bloody and messy. But at some point in this process I was sent inside, probably with pig parts in hand to help the women. My grandmother was adept at deciding how each sections of pork was to be prepared and preserved. Some parts were frozen, some turned into sausage and then frozen. But my favorite part was the cubed, fatty pork pieces that were canned in the juices they were boiled in and stored on the shelves in the basement for future meals. The meal I remember most longingly from my childhood was uncomplicated and common, but one of the most delicious combinations I can imagine: pinto beans, buttered cornbread, boiled pork, and garden fresh green beans boiled in pork fat with a long, fat green onion pulled out of the garden that morning balanced on the side of the plate. Maybe this explains why I have such a hard time cooking low fat meals.
I am grateful that my cooking history includes a healthy respect for where my food comes from, whether it comes from the ground, a climbing vine, or a fat, mud-caked sow. I can't think of a better way to learn to cook than from the ground up. My grandparents tried to teach me a lot of things. They tried to teach me that some people (white people) are better than others (non-white people). Luckily that didn't get through. They tried to teach me not to drink alcohol or curse. They tried to teach me to respect my elders (not knowing that my father was my abuser). Fortunately I was apparently smart enough to learn the things that were truly important, like respect for the land and what she has to give (and how to treat her in return).
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