Category Archives: Cooking

Serving Gumbo to Picky Eaters

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Late winter has arrived on our East Tennessee farm with temps to match the season. And with cold weather my thoughts always turn to gumbo — of the chicken and sausage variety, sans okra, because only New Orleanians and Yankees would have it any other way. That I also have a nephew and niece who plop potato salad into their gumbo, as if they were Germans living in Roberts Cove, we will not mention further lest we get into the politics of excommunication.

Yesterday, one of Cindy’s nephews, his wife, and their three children (ages 8, 10, and 13) visited the farm. They had fled the home parishes around New Orleans in advance of the Mardi Gras invaders. Each year, the week of Fat Tuesday, a kind of reverse migration takes place. As tens of thousands head south to catch cheap beads and vomit Hurricanes in the gutters, thousands of natives head north to eat funnel cakes in the Smokies and revel in never-before-seen glimpses of rocks and snow.

After our NOLA crew had made their snow angels and taken in enough alien rock forms to sate even the most deprived swamp dweller, they turned their sights on our farm for an afternoon. Typically, kids on the farm drive me nuts. Five minutes into the visit, they’re already huddled back down in the car and staring at their e-devices. Not these kids.

We started the stopover, as is our wont, by serving food. Although we were warned in advance that the kids were picky eaters, we still fixed what we wanted: gumbo. It was with some relief and much pleasure that we watched each kid scrape the bowl clean and pronounce lunch “delicious.” They exhibited both good manners and, I must say, great judgment.

They then excused themselves and spent the rest of the afternoon tearing around the farm, playing with the three dogs, feeding weanling pigs, collecting eggs, holding lambs, and even helping Cindy feed the bees —behaving in general like kids should and so seldom do. It was all very encouraging.

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Reading this weekend: How to Burn a Goat (Moore), a delightful and funny memoir of short pieces on the farming life, interspersed with longer pieces on academics and agrarianism. I first read some of the essays when they showed up on the Front Porch Republic and was pleased when a review copy appeared in the mailbox.

B&J’s: revisiting an ode to the meat and three

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B&J’s in Darien, GA

This past week I was passing through Darien, Georgia. A hard scrabble fishing village on the coast with plenty of character. A town, in my opinion, that was lucky enough to have been passed by in the scramble to reinvent those Southern coasts into one undistinguished and overdeveloped theme park of high-rise condos and golf courses.

Since it was lunchtime, I pulled off the highway in hopes that B&J’s was still in the meat and three business. It had been ten years since I had last visited. But they were still open, and they were packed.

Once inside the restaurant, I found a chair open at a crowded long communal table and sat down. They had catfish, fried chicken, meatloaf, and chicken livers for the meat choices. I settled on the fried chicken with sides of green beans, collards, mac and cheese, and banana pudding for dessert.

The crowd was local and knew each other with plenty of “hello’s” bouncing around the room. And, although I didn’t know anyone, I still received my honey fix. As in, “Honey, would you like some more sweet tea?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The classic presentation (at B&J’s)

Which all reminded me of this piece I wrote some years back on the topic. I hope you enjoy it and it inspires you to go find a similar spot to have lunch this coming week.

The Ode

Oh, how I yearn for the return of the meat and three. The simple joy of knowing that with a quick turn off the highway, any small town in the South yielded a diner that served up the sacred trifecta — that assurance brought comfort to restless, dark nights.

The daily break for lunch, the communion with one’s people. They have given way to the blight of Hardees and its ilk, the shuffling herd inching forward at the drive-through, devouring at the wheel, afterward pitching leftover hamburger wrappers out the windows. Our collective soul has been starved, even as our collective waistline has expanded.

We were a people of the garden once, the content of our favorite diner’s lunch fare reflecting the abundance of the seasons. Served in modest portions that allowed us to eat healthy, but not to excess or somnolence, the choices were varied and yet consistent: two or three meats, perhaps six or more vegetables. The daily decision was made while waiting for the iced tea to arrive.

The chicken was a smaller bird, the cuts done to maximize the number of servings. Each breast was cut in half, and when it was served on a small plate, it did not dwarf the other choices. The meatloaf was divvied into small squares, the country ham shaved in modest slices, the vegetables simply prepared with minimal seasoning.

“Yes, ma’am, we are ready to order. Hmm, I will get the chicken today, dark meat, please. And let me have the okra and stewed tomatoes (which still counted as one side), turnip greens, and the crowder peas. Roll or cornbread? Cornbread, of course. Yes, ma’am, that is all today, no dessert for me. Peanut butter pie? Oh, that’s tempting, but, no.”

Y’all have a good day. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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Reading this weekend: Wide as the Waters, the story of the English Bible and the revolution it inspired (Bobrick)

Fall: A Season of Salvage

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I spent Saturday off the farm attending to personal business. So I leave you with this seasonal post from 2015. Enjoy!

There is a day each year. A day when you find yourself in the kitchen slicing the last of the season’s ripe tomatoes, a moment you have lived before, knew was in the cards. A day when the vines are still heavy with green tomatoes. A shortened day in which those green tomatoes will never fully ripen, destined instead for frying or making chowchow. How did that unstoppable summer deluge become a trickle and then a drought?

So begins fall, a chance to cherish what is passing before the weather turns to ice and snow — both too soon to dream of the fallow winter, when the cold months spoon next to the season of rebirth, that bare season, stark in its absence of greenery, when our native imagination colors in the palette of the riches to come, and too late to partake of the fresh bounty of the summer season just passed. The in-between season.

Fall is the season of salvage, of scouring the fields and paddocks for useful leftovers. In modern parlance, it is the sustainable season. A rush to harvest the last of the fruit to preserve in jams, jellies, chutneys, and wines. A time to take stock with some soul searching of Aesop’s Fables significance: Do we have enough firewood? Did we use our time well last winter, spring, summer in preparation for the next year? It is a time of movement, cattle to new pastures and forage to shelter. A time to glean the excess hens and roosters, butchering for hours to stock the larder for the gumbo and chicken and dumplings that will get us through the cold months to come.

Fall is a time of hog fattening. The cruel reward for an ability to gain 300 pounds in nine months comes with a knife wielded the week after Halloween. The bounty is delivered to us in sides of bacon, salted hams, corned shoulders, butcher’s wife pork chops, hand-seasoned breakfast sausages, headcheese, pates, and bowls of beans with ham hocks.

Fall is also sheep-breeding time. As the days and nights cool, the ram has his pleasurable work cut out for him, making sure all ewes are bred. We, servant-like, make sure the ewes are conditioned for lambing, in good health, hooves trimmed, attending to their every need. Meanwhile, last winter’s lambs are grazing in their own pasture, fattening before they fall under the butcher’s sword in the remaining months of the year.

Fall is the season of coming face to face with imminent and unavoidable death. It is the fever of the dying year, the mumbled words from the patient in the bed trying to get his affairs in order, to make amends. So much to do and so little time.

It is a season of contrasts, when we eat a ripe tomato while composting the vine it grew on, feed a pregnant ewe while fattening for slaughter her year-old offspring, crush grapes and pears while sipping the wine made last year. Past, present, and future are jumbled in this most hopeful season, when we weigh the year to come to see what is left in the balance.

Like a culture that prepares for a future generation, this work is undertaken for a year not yet born.

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Reading this weekend: On Homesickness: A Plea (Donaldson), an odd little beautiful book.

It Ain’t the Heat, It’s the Tomatoes

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“When your first tomato is ripe, take salt and pepper to the garden. Pluck the fruit from the vine. Cut into quarters, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and pop it, a quarter at a time into your mouth. I shall be listening to your sigh of contentment.” Angelo M. Pellegrini

During a casual walk by the potting shed, I lean over and gather a cluster of Sweet 100’s and pop them, as instructed by Mr. Pellegrini, into my mouth. Later, that evening, Cindy makes a B.E.L.T. for dinner. That necessitates a quick trot out to the garden for a Cherokee Purple or perhaps a Sudduth Brandywine: constructed with two slices of thick homemade bread, Bacon, fried Egg, Lettuce and Tomato (B.E.L.T.). On another night it is a few Mr. Stripey’s, some wine, green pepper, onion, a handful of oregano and garlic, all in a slow simmer for a couple of hours, resulting in a terrific silky sauce for meatballs and pasta.

Yesterday, five gallons of Rutger’s thickly sliced, placed in the dehydrator yielded ten baggies of sun-dried tomatoes for the coming winter (with temps consistently over 90, I did so want to remember Mr. Winter). Over the past two weekends we have put up 20 pints of tomatoes, the aforementioned Rutger working best, with just the right ratio of pulp to juice. We have learned over the years that two people need about 40 pints to get from December to May, so we are half-way there!

Tonight, should it be cold tomatoes, basil, and garlic, tossed with olive oil and hot pasta… or, should we consider thinly sliced Early Girl with chunks of mozzarella, basil, and lots of crushed garlic on our pizza? Maybe, just a simple salad of thick slices dressed with salt and cracked pepper, with bread to sop up the juice? Then again, perhaps Cindy will make her gazpacho soup, served cold, composed of tomato, cucumber, green pepper, garlic and onions?

God, we do love the tomato and the season that brings them fresh to the plate.

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Reading this weekend: Another work by A. Pellegrini, Wine and the Good Life.

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(The above is a reworked version of an older post)

Saying Grace

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The man was the last one on board the plane. With everyone else seated, he walked almost to the rear to stow his bag before taking his seat back at the front. Once the plane landed, the man fought the current of impatient passengers like a salmon swimming upstream to retrieve his bag. For whatever reason, it popped into my head as I watched him that pausing before a meal, whether to say thanks or wait for all to be seated, has become an act that goes against the course of our culture.

Like many, I grew up saying grace before the meal. In my house, we sat down together for dinner or supper, then paused. A prayer was offered by a member of the family before all began to eat, the words always including a thanks for the food that was before us. No one ate before everyone was served and the blessing was said. Of course, a nibble from the plate was fine. But it was not only a household offense but also a violation of cultural mores to grab a fork and dig in before each member was ready and grace had been said.

Blessing the food, saying a few words, is a ritual as old as our race. It crosses all religions and backgrounds; it is one of the most elemental of our sacraments. Acknowledgment to whatever creator or force one believes in seems one of our more beautiful and beneficial rites. An exercise of thanks for what is before us, of gratefulness for the bounty; patience in waiting until all have been served; humility in recognition that others may be doing without; and pleasure that there are guests, a community, with whom to share the food — all are rolled up in those few words said at the start of a meal.

Today, unless I am sitting down with people who share a common cultural or religious background, I find that offering thanks has become an awkward rite in both its recognition and its execution. To sit still and refrain from eating till all are served — it is a custom increasingly ignored. Witness adult men and women, greedily shoveling food in their faces, plates already half empty, who then look up at a waiting table and say defensively, “Well, I’m not waiting!” It’s a statement that neatly sums up the narcissistic spirit of our times.

Among a certain group of moderns, the actual offering of a blessing or thanks now seems artificial, like passing around an artifact of carefully chipped flint, a relic of another age. Yet the sentiment lingers, even if manifested in a simple raising of glasses.

My religious friends and family can still roll out a beautiful and meaningful prayer at the drop of a hat, one that includes each of the four points of the ritual: thanks, patience, humility, and community. The words offered are still unencumbered by loss of faith or tradition. My own utterances, meanwhile, seem stilted, unpoetic, and rusted from ill use and the lack of expectation from listening ears. Those spoken words of mine float about, against the crosscurrent, searching for a cadence and rhythm, searching for a home, trying to express humble gratitude for our rich existence on this planet.