Food marks all kind of milestones in my life. My great-grandmother lived in a tiny cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. She created the most incredible country cooked meals I’ve ever eaten. Fried chicken with cream gravy, biscuits that would melt in your mouth, fried corn and potatoes that she grew herself, raspberry pie made from the fruit she picked on her little patch of mountain land – all washed down with sweet tea drunk from mason jars. This kind of feast was regularly consumed around her battered Formica kitchen table with the six chairs that didn’t match.
As I got a little older my vocabulary evolved from just “bite” when I wanted some good food. When we visited Mamaw when I was a toddler I would run to her, grab her long skirts* and say “Kitch Mamaw! Kitch!” Loosely translated this meant, “Mamaw honey, would you go to the kitchen and make me something good to eat? Please??”
My mother began teaching me to cook as soon as I was big enough to stand on a chair at the counter and hold a spoon. My mother was a mean cook in her own right. I never remember eating any food other than Jello that came in a box and that included every cake I ever consumed up until she got a job when I was in high school. Every morning before school we had a hot breakfast with homemade biscuits.
As I began to get older and more responsible in the kitchen, Sunday afternoons after church became my baking time. When I was about eight years old I made my first unsupervised baked good. The recipe is called “Tea Time Tassies.”
CRUST:
1 (3 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 c. butter, room temperature
1 c. flour
FILLING:
1 egg
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
Dash of salt
2/3 c. nuts
Grease small cupcake pans. To make crust, blend cream cheese, butter and flour. Chill for a few minutes. Shape into balls. Press dough on bottom and sides of each cup. Blend all ingredients of filling until smooth. Fill each dough-lined cup 2/3 full of filling. Bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes or until filling is set. Makes 2 dozen.
Although I’m a good cook now, baking is still my forte.
Food is still influential in my life. I’m the only person I know who reads cookbooks for pleasure. I have more than 150 cookbooks. I particularly like older books that describe cooking in the American South.
The only real collection of things, besides cookbooks, that I have is metal lunch boxes. They have been stored in the attic for the last 4 or 5 years because there hasn’t been space to have them out. Until now.
Sunday morning I unpacked my lunchboxes. As I held each one in my hands in the stillness of the morning and washed and dried it before putting it on top of the kitchen cabinets, I thought about how cooking has been a connection with my family. It has taught me that people show love by creating meals – from the simple to the elaborate. As I learned to cook in the kitchen alone, it taught me self confidence and how to learn from my mistakes.** Cooking has taught me to think on my feet as not everything goes as expected.
But, more than anything else, cooking has taught me that food has been such a nourishment in my life. And not just in the physical sense.
My lunchboxes are just another reminder.
* When Mamaw Lily died at 98 she had two distinctions I’m sure I will never encounter again – she never had a pair of pants on in her life and never cut her hair. Most of the time she wore her long hair in a bun, underneath her bonnet. Yes, the kind of bonnet they wore on “Little House on the Prairie.” I wish I had one of hers now.
** I once made a grilled cheese sandwiches for my Dad and his friend Jeff Hensley. They were outside playing basketball when I decided to surprise them with lunch. I cut Velveeta cheese into about 4” thick slices and grilled them in the skillet. When the bread was done I took them outside. . .Jeff was a good sport and ate the whole thing without complaint. My dad on the other hand. . .let’s just say I never lived it down and rarely make grilled cheese anymore. . .
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