Words and Pictures :: Cozy

Another writing prompt from Meet Me at Mikes!

My great-frandmother Lilly was poor. Being born, living and dying in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest Virginia, she never had much in the way of creature comforts. She spent her life in Possum Hollow, widowed early, raising five kids alone. She was born in May of 1888 and died in May of 1982. A good long life.

Mamaw never made a lot of the kinds of concessions that we tend to make as times and trends change. She never wore pants. Not once. She wore long skirts that almost reached the floor. Mamaw never cut her hair. She wore it in a bun on the back of her head, covered in the kind of bonnet Ma Ingalls wore on Little House on the Prairie. My mamaw lived in a tiny five room house that most people would call probably call a shack. For most of her life she had no electricity or running water.

But none of those things ever mattered to me.

Mamaw's house was home.

The most prominent memories I have are smells - Mamaw making magic in the kitchen on her wood fired stove. I remember breakfasts of country ham, red-eye gravy, homemade buttermilk biscuits and eggs. The biscuits were topped with freshly churned butter and crowned with homemade jellies, jams and preserves that she had put up herself the previous fall.

I remember that Mamaw loved coffee. It amazed me that she would bring a strong, hot cup to the table and then proceed to pour it from her cup into her saucer before noisily drinking. She said it was too hot from the cup.

While sitting with her at the breakfast table I would hide an extra biscuit away, stashing it under my shirt to save for later. I'm sure she would have given me one. It was just fun to try and pull something over on her.

The days were lazy at Mamaw's house. Catching butterflies, reading books on the creaky old porch swing and taking walks by the river were our activities. Once in a while we would have the gift of an afternoon rain. On these special days I would take my stolen biscuit and curl up on the lumpy mattress that was filled with feathers. It took a little doing, but with some determination you could hollow out the perfect size nest for an 8 year old body on a rainy summer afternoon. A feather mattress, a secretly hidden biscuit, a good book and the sound of rain on a tin roof will always mean cozy to me.

Mamaw Lilly on her 82nd birthday, May 4, 1976 in Possum Hollow, Virginia

Mamaw's Buttermilk Biscuits
2 cups self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk

Pour flour into a mound on the kitchen counter. Using your fingers, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk and quickly blend in, making sure to not overwork the dough.  Scoop up the dough and lightly flour the counter again. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of  1/2-inch. Use a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, press out as many biscuits as possible. Gather up scraps and quickly knead back together, then cut out as many additional biscuits as possible. Place biscuits in a cast iron skillet and bake until golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Red-Eye Gravy
country ham steaks
bacon grease
1 C. strong, hot coffee
3 T. flour
2 T. butter

Heat up a cast iron skillet until hot. Melt some bacon grease in the pan and fry the ham steaks for about 3 minutes per side, until browned. Remove ham and stir flour into the grease. Cook a minute or two. Slowly stir in the coffee. If it's too thick, add some water. When thickened stir in butter.

Serve over the ham steaks or over the biscuits.