Healthy

It has recently come to my attention that I've gotten entirely too serious. Serious is just not healthy. I try to be healthy when I can. (Already those that know me are laughing.)

Trust me, I know what is healthy and what is not healthy. While I know that broccoli, bean sprouts and tofu are healthy. I also know that chicken fried steak, biscuits & gravy, and bacon are not healthy. Unfortunately when it comes to food, I almost always pick unhealthy. Sorry Yaya, but it's just the way I was raised.

My mama, my memee, my other momma Shirley, and my grandmommy are all good southern women. They taught me how to cook and I learned well! (Just ask Brett & Dale!) You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again. It's all about the pork fat for us southern cooks. Who could eat turnip greens without some bacon or ham in them? Seriously?

Of course, my memee was the best cook of them all. Chicken 'n dumplins, coconut cream pie and homemade mashed potatoes. That's what I got every year on my birthday, what I wouldn't give to have her cook me another meal. Oh wait, that sounded serious, and I'm not being serious today. I'll tell a little story about memee, that would probably make her mad, but then again, I know she would forgive me. (Don't tell my cousins, but I was always her favorite.) Memee had altzheimers which is a horrific disease, so all you can do to survive is learn to laugh. Her last two years, my uncle and I had to laugh a lot (it kept us from crying).

Here's the picture, it's Thanksgiving, and memee has always made the dressing. The year before, she had decided that I needed to help because she recognized that her health was fading. So I was all set to make the dressing again. She had forgotten about my new dressing skills, and all but ran me out of the kitchen. I came back through and realized that she was very methodically cutting up all the chicken fat into the dressing. (This is a whole other story but my papa never liked Turkey, so we had to have a hen on Thanksgiving.) Anyway, she had one eye that bothered her so she had it closed, just chopping away on that fat into what I considered "my" dressing with only one eye open. I lost it, (this was before I had learned to tactfully distract her with another project, and "fix" whatever she was doing wrong") and screamed "What are you doing?" Well, I instantly felt bad, and she instantly got defensive. Deep down, I know she knew she was wrong but she wasn't about to admit it to me. I got the "Fine, then do it yourself", and she turned her attention to the strawberry cake (another one of her specialities).

She baked the fluffiest best Angel food cakes I've ever tasted. In the summer she would put up strawberries so that we could have them for this special cake. She would cut the Angel cake into three or four layers. Gently poke a few holes in the bottom layer, pour on the strawberries with all that good juice, layer on some "homemade" dream whip, then put on the next layer and do the same, and again. When finished it was just a oozing with strawberries and dream whip, I can almost taste it now.

Back to the story. She got her cake and slung it out on the bar. Grabbed a HUGE butcher knife. (At this point I was a little worried because she looked like she wanted to use it on me). She cut that cake into it's layers. Notice earlier I talked about her gently poking a few holes. That didn't happen with this cake, she had both hands on the hilt of that knife and started to massacre that cake (again with one eye closed). About that time Dale came in, and he about lost it. He feared she was going to miss the cake and stab herself. He looked at me, I shook my head and he quietly left the kitchen. (He is after all a pretty smart guy, he married me.) To this day, he still calls it her "One eyed ginsu" technique for strawberry cake. Needless to say the meal turned out fine, and the cake tasted good even if it did look pretty mutiliated. That was one of the last Thanksgivings that we celebrated with the whole family.

I know that it's not gonna be long until I'll have a grand-daughter that will roll her eyes at the crazy things I do in the kitchen. (My son, is already pretty good with the eye-rolling.) Brett loved to help his grandma's and great-grandma's when he was little. He's already a great cook. He's even won the church chili cook-off 2 years and finished as the "favorite" this past year. I can't wait to train the next generation of good southern cooks. We won't use "lard" and we'll probably have to cut down on some of the bacon fat. Might even serve a fresh green salad with something besides iceburg lettuce. The most important thing I hope to instill is the love with which it takes to prepare a good family meal. After all we're good Methodists and we know the importance of Love. In our meals and in our lives.