Cooking With Jesus

“Midnight at the Waffle House,
Jesus eatin’ eggs with y'all…”
“If Jesus Drove A Motor Home” – Jim White

I’m a fool for cookbooks. I read them like some people read novels, except they don’t even have to be particularly good to hold my interest. In fact some of my favorite cookbook reads don’t contain a single recipe I’d ever make, but all the same provide untold entertainment value.

I’m particularly fond of regional, community cookbooks, (favoring the southeastern United States), and the sub-genre I call church lady cookbooks, published by a church or religious organization for fund raising, with recipes contributed by the members.

Over the years I’ve more or less worked out an informal rating system for including them in my collection. The gold standard: there must be at least one recipe each for squash casserole and broccoli casserole, one of which must contain either Cheez Whiz, Velveeta, (two processed ‘cheese foods’ greatly regarded in the south), cream of mushroom soup or mayonnaise. (The last two comprise two of the Holy Trinity of church lady cooking, the third being Cool Whip.) Ideally, the cookbook should also contain at least one reference to margarine as “oleo,” feature several recipes using regionally popular name brands, and use Cool Whip and Jello together in a single recipe somewhere, preferably in desserts, (for what I hope are obvious reasons). Bonus points are given for the inclusion of such church lady staples as Tater Tot Casserole, Ritz Cracker Pie, Strawberry Pretzel Salad, and the ubiquitous Red Velvet Cake.

Then there are those things that can elevate a church lady cookbook from ho-hum to, dare I say it, heavenly. Take Scripture Cake, (sometimes called Bible Cake), where one is supposed to divine the ingredients by scripture as in, “1 cup Judges 5:25.” That would be butter, but I didn’t look it up, rather a former owner of Favorite Recipes, compiled by the members of the Women’s Society of Christian Service of White’s United Methodist Church, (1977, Lynchburg, Virginia - 2 squash casseroles, 0 broccoli casseroles), did and thoughtfully made notations. She also pronounced the “Fruit Cocktail Cake” as “Good!” although I’ll probably never know for sure.

In fact, Favorite Recipes, might not have made the bookshelf at all, having no recipe for broccoli casserole, had it not been so. Although, it would’ve been hard to pass up Mrs. Flora Bryant’s one ingredient recipe for “Fried Squirrel -- 1 squirrel, dressed." Flora goes on to say her frying method can also be applied to rabbit or “other small game meats.” I don’t want to speculate. Also, the book contains color photos of food, never a good idea unless you’re using glossy paper stock or have a grudge against the cook, and offers up a plethora of prune favorites – “Prune Bread,” “Prune Turnovers,” “Prunella Cake,” and, my personal pick, “Prune Pancakes.” Again, I don’t want to speculate.

I would, however, like to speculate as to what happens if I don’t like Alania Rakestraw’s “You Better Like It French Toast,” from the From Our Oven To Yours cookbook, published by the Burnt Hickory United Methodist Church of Dallas, Georgia (1 squash casserole, 3 broccoli casseroles). Will I be force fed “Mrs. Tooler Doolen’s Chicken Stuff,” and “Betty’s Popcorn Cake” (a sickly sounding concoction made with popcorn, marshmallows, peanuts, gumdrops, M & M candies, and, yes, oleo), and made to wash it down with a “Nancy’s Muscadine Mimosa,” (non-alcoholic, of course)?

And why are these women so ready to brand such noxious sounding potions with their names? I, frankly, would prefer the anonymity of a nickname. I’m almost ready to try “Jug’s Homemade Chili” on name value alone. It comes from Treasures from Heaven, a Collection of Recipes from Hopewell United Methodist Church (2001, Milledgeville, Georgia - 6 squash, 4 broccoli casseroles). The high squash/broccoli casserole count alone would put this cookbook in the upper crust, even it if weren’t for such gems as “Gaga’s Cranberry Salad,” “Ma Ma’s Meat Loaf,” and “Pastor Dan’s Taco Pizza.” And if you don’t like “Jug’s Homemade Chili,” you can opt for “Landon Carey’s Methodist Chili,” an unsurprisingly bland recipe, which concludes with instructions to “serve with saltines, dill pickles and cold drink.” Wow, I would’ve never thought to pair a dill pickle with chili.

Nor would I have thought to combine the aforementioned cheese food with chocolate. The prize for originality really should go to Mrs. Shelby Selvey, who shares her recipe for “Velveeta Cheese Fudge” in Variety Pack, Favorite Recipes from Dresden Pentecostal Church (1998, Dresden, Tennessee – 3 squash, 6 broccoli casseroles). Truly a dish to savor, it’d probably be really good after polishing off a batch of “Mom’s Magic Puffs,” proffered by Mickie Jennings, who also contributed a sumptuous sounding recipe for “Twinkie Cake,” Twinkies, crushed pineapple, instant pudding and Cool Whip, layered and garnished with nuts and cherries. Yum.

While the necessities of modern living have made convenience foods, like cake mix, instant puddings, Cool Whip, etc. the backbone of today’s church lady recipe repertoire, back in 1958 when the Christian Women’s Fellowship of Central Christian Church in Austin, Texas published Kitchen Witchery (1 squash, 1 broccoli casserole), they were just beginning to catch on. Mrs. Ernest Buck uses instant mashed potatoes to mold canned tuna for her, no doubt delicious, “Tuna Drumsticks,” and Mrs. Elgin Burr explores the limits of dried beef jerky in her imaginatively titled, and no doubt Biblically themed, (please, God), appetizer, “Burning Bush.” Cream cheese shaped into small balls, rolled in dried chopped beef, and affixed with toothpicks to a grapefruit. Beautiful idea for a buffet centerpiece, and edible too!

Churchy themed foodstuffs have always been popular. Southern Manna, from the First United Methodist Church of Waycross, Georgia (c.2001 - 5 squash, 2 broccoli casseroles), offers Mrs. Ida Rodocker’s “Born Again Pickles.” Probably be really good with the previously noted “Methodist Chili,” but since you start out with a perfectly good jar of ‘store-bought’ dill pickles (which you ‘resurrect’ with cloves, vinegar, some spices and 3 cups of sugar), I don’t really see the point. (Oh, wait a minute, three cups of sugar. Sure I do.) Spreading the love to both God and country, the same book also features a black-eyed pea relish popularly known as “Confederate Caviar,” and a snack mix called “White Trash,” (also an Ida Rodocker specialty), just so we all know where we stand.

Snack Mixes are real crowd pleasers when the church ladies get together for Bible Study or just to dish on the new pastor’s cheeky little wife who you’re going to have to be nice to whether you like her or not. Serve up some of Stacy McCoy’s “Rice Chex Puppy Chow,” (make plenty so there’s some left over for the kids), from Bread of Life, A Collection of Recipes from Salem Baptist Church (2003, Milledgeville, GA – 4 squash, 6 broccoli casseroles), and if you really want to go whole hog whip up a “Pig Licking Cake” or “Oreo Trifle” for dessert. Those of adventurous palate might enjoy a side dish of Candi Badcock’s, “Table, Table, Tee, Tee,” (canned asparagus marinated in bottled salad dressing, sugar and sesame oil), and of course you want to have plenty of Yellow Punch I (straight up) or II (with Mountain Dew) on hand to sip. Really, we don’t want to over-think this.

But the real Queen of Church Lady Cookbooks may well be the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s Baptist Dishes Worth Blessing (4th Printing, 1987 - 3 squash, 2 broccoli casseroles), if only for the photo of the quintessential Baptist church lady on the cover. Table’s set with the best company china, silver goblets, you just know she’s fantasizing about what she’d serve Jesus if he were to come to dinner. I’m thinking “Amiable Chicken Curry,” (It just wouldn’t do to serve the Savior pissed off poultry, would it?), with Mrs. Bobby Neese’s “Mayonnaise Quick Bread,” Glennis Williams’ “Squash Balls,” and Ivy O’Hara’s “7-Up Cake” for dessert. And of course for starters she’d serve that most southern of nibbles, cheddar cheese straws. I’ve tried them, and they are so seriously good I swear you’ll never eat Cheetos again.



Cheese Straws
(Compliments of Mrs. Claude Howe
Baptist Dishes Worth Blessing)

1 pound grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red cayenne pepper
2 cups all-purpose flour

Place grated cheese and butter in large mixing bowl and allow to soften to room temperature. Cream by hand or with mixer. Sift together flour, salt and cayenne pepper. Gradually add dry ingredients to the butter and cheese. Mix thoroughly.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead five or six times. Roll dough out to 1/4 inch thickness and cut into strips, about 1/2 inch wide and four or five inches long.

Place strips on ungreased cookie sheet and bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until straws begin to brown around edges. Cool completely. Makes about 12 dozen.

Losing My Religion

"That's me in the corner,
that's me in the spotlight,
losing my religion"
"Losing My Religion" - R.E.M

My maternal grandmother was a Tarpley. Not just any Tarpley, but rather of THE Methodist Tarpleys, direct from the line of cohorts of John Wesley himself. My g-g-g-grandfather Edward Jones Tarpley came down to Georgia from Virginia, sometime after the war of 1812, as a circuit riding Methodist preacher, part of an effort by the church to build membership among African-Americans, (let’s hope he started with his 39 slaves, as recorded in the 1810 census), Native Americans (before or after procuring their land, I can’t rightly say), and, of course, settlers of European descent, in other words, lots of very white folks. The Methodists were hot on the heels of the Baptists, who, by the grace of Jesus, got there first, but they were no less determined. Not that there was much difference in the ways the two practiced their faiths in those days. (An old Georgia joke gives the definition of a Methodist as a Baptist who can read.)

The “Shoutin’ Methodists,” as they were known, practiced a particularly severe brand of Methodism and were given to preaching hellfire and damnation at outdoor camp meetings, in the warm months, and in private homes, in the winter. Later small churches sprang up, often on the sites where the camp meetings had been held. So it was with Salem Methodist, founded in 1818, in a sandy bottom at the intersection of two winding red dirt roads, and just up the hill from a natural spring full of crystal clear running water and rattlesnakes – a church as simple and austere as the people themselves, and not unrepresentative, as it happens.

There on the second Sunday in July, in the very throes of the insufferable Georgia summer, Salem celebrates homecoming, (always has, always will), complete with dinner on the grounds, preaching, singing and “fellowship,” with people you haven’t seen in 30 years, have never met, or don’t remember even if you did.

A couple of years ago I persuaded a cousin to accompany me to the festivities. She’d heard there were “a lot of good cooks up there,” so, not to be outdone, we set out armed with homemade potato salad, baked beans and brownies. On the way a local politician, who was running for office in an upcoming election, (and not one to miss an opportunity to glad hand constituents), flagged us down for directions. If you’ve ever been to Salem you know you never forget the way. You also know it’s impossible to tell anyone else how to get there. We suggested she follow us, and although we all made it there in good order, she lost the election anyway.

Dinner on the grounds did not disappoint, (although some infidel brought KFC and I did see a couple of store bought pies, a sin that would’ve guaranteed a ticket to hell in Grandma’s day). I did some comparison shopping at the deviled egg smorgasbord, then made straight away to the homemade cakes and pies. There was also an excellent corn pudding, some better than average field peas, and don’t get me started on the fig preserves. And by the way, when these people fry a chicken, they fry it all, even the feet, and they fry it in lard. (The chicken was quite good. I can’t vouch for the feet.)

The place was crawling with Thompsons and Tarpleys and Lords and Wynns, shirt-tail relatives all. (It's a very small gene pool.) I met the son of the man who made the cedar chest, which I inherited from my mother, out of a cedar tree that was struck by lightning and fell into my grandparent’s yard, (right smack on top of cousin Wavy Thompson's brand new jeep). Well over 80 himself, he’s a 3rd cousin. Another 3rd cousin once removed, whose ‘Yankee’ mother left his father and absconded north with him just a baby, was there, looking for his “roots.” (He SO brought the KFC.) The church pianist, a 4th cousin, is the daughter of the woman who played piano there back when I attended services with my grandparents, (and she plays just a badly too).

Then I meet the controversial new pastor, a short, stocky woman with a genial, if somewhat butch, manner, wearing a big cross around her neck and a man’s wristwatch on her arm. Let’s call her the Rev. Debbie. Rev. Debbie is controversial not because she is most probably a Lesbian, (they don’t have a clue), but rather because she is a woman. That being the case, she had me at 'hello.'

Rev. Debbie is pushing the sale of a church cookbook with recipes contributed by the congregation. (They’re hoping to raise enough money to install indoor toilets.) It has seven different recipes for squash casserole. Somebody named “Aunt Effie” has donated a recipe for “three ingredient pork roast, “(1 pork loin, 1 package onion soup mix, 1 can Dr. Pepper). I buy one for myself and several more for friends who like to cook and share my sense of humor. The recipe for “Better Than ??? Cake,” (that would be “Better Than Sex Cake,” anyplace else), alone is worth the price.

By early afternoon it’s sweltering so everybody is eager to move into the church, where two window unit air conditioners, (the bounty of last year's cookbook fundraiser), are heaving out a tepid draft. I grab a supplemental Jesus breeze, (that’s a hand fan with a photo of Jesus on one side and a funeral home advert on the other, in case you didn't know), and squeeze into a pew. It’s SRO. After a hymn or two the guest minister (another 3rd cousin) delivers an affable and innocuous sermon about family and reconnecting and, well, there you have it, homecoming. I’m chillin' with my homies and getting a serious case of the warm fuzzies. There’s some more singing while they pass the collection plate. I give generously. (I’m down with that indoor bathroom idea, and they might well work on paving those roads too.) Then Rev. Debbie gets up to make a few closing remarks.

I’m totally unprepared for what happens next. The Rev. Debbie passes out flyers with the names, numbers and address of all our members of congress, and urges each and every one of us flood their offices with letters, calls and emails, demanding they support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. According to Rev. Debbie the very sanctity of marriage and family as we know it is at stake, hanging on a thread beneath the specter of homosexual connubial bliss. To my utter dismay a chorus of “amens” echos around the room. Here we are in one of the poorest counties, in arguably one of the poorer states in the county, the public school system is a disaster, the nearest fully facilitated hospital is 40 miles away and the local white trash have graduated from moonshining to manufacturing methamphetamines. These people have got a lot better things to worry about than whether the prissy bachelor next door is getting it in the butt from the cute blonde guy he lives with and wants to marry him. Believe it.

I want my donation back. They deserve their porta-potties, and their fried chicken feet too.

I didn’t make it to Homecoming this year, but I'll likely go again someday. The Rev. Debbie, for whatever reason, is no longer there, and the new preacher, so I’m told, is an earnest young fellow with a wife and a couple of small children. Sounds like a safe choice. Maybe. Anyhow, next time I’m going to bake a cake for the occasion and put a little food flag on top so everybody knows just what kind of cake it is.

BETTER THAN SEX CAKE (my recipe, not theirs):

1 box Devil’s Food cake mix
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 6-ounce jar caramel topping
1 8-ounce container of Cool Whip (or, to really kick it, 8 ounces of heavy cream, whipped)
3 chocolate covered toffee bars (Heath bars work well), crushed
Bittersweet chocolate bar for shaving

Prepare cake according to package direction and bake in a 9 X 13 inch pan. Poke holes over top of cake with a skewer or chopstick. Pour condensed milk over cake, allowing time to soak in. Heat caramel topping in microwave and pour over top of cake. Scatter crushed chocolate toffee bars over cake. Chill thoroughly. Top with Cool Whip or whipped cream. Shave bittersweet chocolate on top. Serve.

Is it really better than sex? Well, that would depend entirely on the cook... or the lover.

The Unhappiest Place on Earth

"If I knew admission was thirty bucks, I'd of brought Discover Card." Disneyland - Guttermouth

Last October we went to Italy. Spent several days each in Florence and Siena and did a mini-tour of the Tuscan countryside while chasing a bit of the grape.


Can’t recommend it highly enough; great people, (except for that little jerk at the café outside Siena who threatened to call the policia because my husband used his restroom without buying anything – it WAS an emergency), great food (think pizza, pig and panna cotta), great wine, great shopping (leopard skin spotted suede gloves and lambskin jackets), and great art (so many Madonnas, so little time). And, of course, we made the obligatory visit to the Accademia Gallery to view Michelangelo’s David. It was swell.

On the way home we were treated to a night at Disneyland Paris, a little lagniappe, courtesy of Air France and Mother Nature. I like to call it the unhappiest place on earth.

To really appreciate the adventure you have to start back in Florence, when our commuter flight to Paris was cancelled due to weather. (I swear, at this juncture the sun was shining.) After standing in line for a hour and a half to book a new flight, we were told, “the line you need is ‘over there.’” God forgive us, but before we could stop ourselves, we exercised our prerogative to be ugly Americans and simply pushed our way to the front of the appropriate queue, cutting ahead of a group of Japanese schoolgirls. Since they didn’t speak English, or we Japanese, we have no idea what they were saying, or to whom, as they transmitted our pictures over their cell phones and spat gibberish into to the receivers. Fortunately it did not become necessary to remind them who won WWII.

Alas, the brazen and boorish usually get their comeuppance, especially when they’re us. We got ours when we learned we would need to take a bus to Pisa, (‘maybe we’ll get to see the leaning tower,’ we thought, but you just know we did not), fly from Pisa to Paris, overnight, and then on to Los Angeles the next morning. Might even squeeze in a nice dinner in the City of Lights. What could be bad? Plenty.

Our flight left Pisa more than two hours late so we didn’t even get to Paris until around midnight. Once there we were hustled aboard a bus with a veritable United Nations of about 50 other stranded travelers, all bound for the Hotel Cheyenne at Disneyland Paris, an hour’s drive away. (If anybody knew why we were being exiled to the fringes, they weren’t saying.) Then we sit on bus for an hour and a half waiting for “six Nigerians,” in route from London to Lagos, to obtain visas, since their stay in France will now exceed the non-visa window of 12 hours. A young Brazilian woman two rows behind us begins to have an anxiety attack, flailing and wailing in a language we likely wouldn’t have been able to understand even if we had known what it was. Revolution is thick in the air. An inebriated Scotsman asserts loudly that he knows how to drive a bus if anyone knows how to hot wire it. Several brave souls venture out to confront and demand answers from the Air France employees assigned to monitor the bus. Said employees quietly slip into the terminal and lock the doors. I’m not making any of this up.

The Nigerians finally arrive, tired, chagrined and wearing dripping wet dashikis. (Did I mention it was raining?) Then we have to wait for the bus driver. Then, finally, we leave.

The Hotel Cheyenne, a western movie set of a ghost town, was surely designed by Walt himself in league with Rod Serling and Franz Kafka. It is 2:30 AM by the time we arrive, and our driver tells us another bus will pick those of us with morning flights up at 6:30 AM and transport us back to the airport. Great.

The desk clerks, Eastern European youths wearing name tags that style them as “Francoise” and “Jacques,” (for sure), are duded up like zombie square dancers. Their English is poor. Our French is worse. The “Chuck Wagon” is closed. The lodgings are two story “bunkhouses” with names like “The Wyatt Earp,” “The Jail,” “The OK Corral,” and “The Gallows.” Our bunkhouse, “The Calamity Jane,” is at the very end of a really long, really dark, really muddy, street. (I did mention it was raining, didn’t I?) The shuttle, needless to say, is not running this late at night so we must walk. There is no elevator, no soft drink or water vending machines, no en suite mini-bar. Our room has bunk beds, a wagon wheel ‘chandelier,’ and a single boot shaped table lamp. (The entire space is approximately the size of the box the boot came in.) The sole amenities in the bathroom are a single roll of toilet tissue and a bar of soap with Mickey Mouse embossed on the side. We decide to save it as a souvenir of the occasion.

Three hours later our automated wake up call comes. I kid you not, in flawless English, “Good morning buckaroos! Do you know what time it is? It’s time to rise and shine!”

It’s time to leave France. Only problem is Air France has canceled the 6:30 AM bus. Not that anyone bothers to tell us. When one of our group goes to the desk and inquires why our bus is late, “Francoise” explains that we have two choices, either take a cab to the airport, at a cost of something like 90 Euros, or wait until 8:00 for a EuroDisney bus. Since our flight isn’t until 10, and there’s a half hour wait for a cab anyway, we opt for the latter. (At least this way we’re able to avail ourselves of our “complimentary breakfast” in the “Chuck Wagon,” were we discover there is indeed bad food in France.)

But that’s another story, and to tell you about the EuroDisney bus, filled with developmentally disabled young adults who sang “Happy Birthday” to someone all the way to Charles DeGaulle would just be wrong. But it probably wouldn’t be wrong to mention that the bus made stops at all the other Disneyland Hotels before heading for the airport and then encountered a massive, rush hour traffic jam on the way. Fortunately our driver, (the same one we later figured out charged us double what our fare should’ve been), turned out to be very adroit at driving on the shoulder, cutting through petrol station lots, and squeezing the enormous vehicle through narrow alleys clearly designed for foot traffic.

We made our flight with just moments to spare. And then something very wonderful happened. We discovered that we had an empty seat between us for the flight home. Maybe there is a God after all.

We look forward to going to Italy again soon, but not on Air France.

Still Walters Run Deep

"for you have seen some unbelievable things..."
Crossbones Style - Cat Power

I am quite fond of cats.

My present tribe consists of Maude, a big, fat hoochie mamma cat, born a poor black stray under the house next door, and Hank (aka Henry II of Jungletouch), a designer puss with a trace of African Serval and a ton of ‘tude.

They were preceded by Harold, a magnificent creature who came to me as a kitten from the household of the late, great Frank Zappa. Harold should have been named Henry, but wasn’t, and therein lays the tale.

My father’s mother’s people were the Walters, but until I was nearly grown I thought their last name was Waters, because that’s the way they pronounced it. And they still do, as does everyone in Wilkinson County, Georgia, one of the great mysteries of the old south.

Daddy’s maternal uncle, Lee Walters, up and married my mother’s older sister, Mintora, who died shortly after giving birth to my first cousin and first-cousin-once-removed, Little Mint. Sometime later, Uncle Lee married his first wife’s (and my mother’s) first cousin, Mary Lee, making Little Mint also my step-first-cousin-once-removed. (Take your time.)

The Walters were considered peculiar, the universal mispronunciation of their surname not withstanding. (As you can see, even they got confused.) They generally married late, if at all, were not as super double Christy religious as most of their contemporaries, and were given to the accumulation of vast quantities of land, acquired by whatever means necessary and seemingly without the encumbrance of conscience. Although they didn’t necessarily like each other all that well, as witnessed by their numerous and storied internal feuds, they kept to themselves, even in death, having their own cemetery exclusively for the burial of their kith and kin, a practice in and of itself not uncommon in the rural south of the day.

As was customary, family members gathered at the cemetery once a year, usually in the summer when it was good and hot, and brought their rakes and hoes, lawnmowers and bush hogs, picnic baskets and coolers, for “clean-up day,” when they polished and pruned and prettied up the final resting places of their ancestors, loved ones, and, in the case of a few unmarked graves no one had a clue about, possibly even a charity case or two, though the Walters were not known for such. It was a ritual that continued well into my teens, although nobody had been buried there since 1959, except for Henry the cat.

I may have been present for the denouement of Henry’s not quite final resting place, but I can’t say I remember it, having been either too young or too stoned to take cognition of one of the family’s defining debacles. (In truth, if forced to go at all I usually spent the day in the cab of Daddy’s pick up, parked in the shade, listening to my transistor radio. God, I wish they'd had cell phones back then.) Consequently I didn’t learn of Henry’s unfortunate interment until years later, when during a trip to the homeland I visited Uncle Lee’s “baby” sister, my great aunt, Cora Walters Billue, a formidable woman, even in old age, (tall, overbearing and, quite frankly a bit scary), and then cousin-cousin-cousin Little Mint and her stepmother Mary Lee, who was by then a widow and living with her.

Mary Lee, who had been well ensconced in spinsterhood when Lee tapped her as his bride, ostensibly because he needed a mother for his motherless only child, was, as ever, tart and testy, and, as some alleged, quite possibly a little “touched.”

When I mentioned my visit with Aunt Cora, Mary Lee began to sputter like a wet Roman candle on the Fourth of July in hell. “Does she still look like a wrinkled up old prune?” she spat, looking like nothing if not a raisin in a crimson fright wig herself.

“Just how old is Cora now anyway?” It was not so much a request for information as a suggestion that she was tired of waiting for her to die.

I said Cora mentioned she’d be 92 come October.

“No such thing,” Mary Lee snorted, “Cora ain’t but ten years older than me, and I’m fixin’ to be 80. She always was a braggart.” (On checking the numbers, it turns out Mary Lee was right, about their ages anyway.)

“I ain’t had no use for Cora Billue for more than 20 years. Me and Lee had this white Persian cat named Henry. Had him for 18 years and he was just like another youngun’ to us. When he died, we made him a little casket, and and buried him in our plot in the Walters Family Cemetery. Next time we went to Dublin, we went by the monument company and ordered a little headstone, like you’d get for a baby’s grave, with ‘Our Beloved Pet, Henry,’ carved on it. When it came in, we took it up there and put it on his grave.”

“Come clean up day, Cora comes up to me and she says, ‘I didn’t know you had a baby who died.’”

I said, “I didn’t.”

“Well, whose baby is that then?”

I told her, “that ain’t no baby, that’s our cat, Henry. Can’t you read?”

“Cora damn near had a fit. Cussed me a blue streak for buryin’ a cat with her people. I told her they was our people too, but that didn’t make no never mind to her. Next time me and Lee was up to the cemetery, that tombstone was gone and there wasn’t nothing but a big hole in the ground where we’d buried poor Henry.”

When I got home to California, I called Daddy’s sister, the reigning family matriarch, and mentioned that I’d seen both Aunt Cora and Mary Lee. I asked if she was aware of any bad blood between them.

She was. “Oh, my God, they’re not still carrying on about that cat are they?”

It was a story with legs, but not one with a happy ending. While Aunt Cora hadn’t dug up the cat and stolen the tombstone herself, word was she’d put one of her boys, Lanier, up to it and that he’d even kept the grave marker as a souvenir. “Used it to prop up firewood in his camp house down at Bear Camp Lake,” according to those who claimed to have seen it. As for Henry? “Probably ended up thrown out in the woods somewhere.”

To make the saga even more delicious, some family members had actually taken sides in the squabble. The leading consensus was that Mary Lee had in fact engineered the burial of Henry the cat next to Lee’s first wife (the aforementioned Mintora) so there’d be no space for Lee to be buried beside her. Thereby assuring that when his time came he would have to be buried next to Mary Lee in her family's plot at Northview Cemetery in Dublin. (Which is how it turned out, eventually.)

A few months later when I got a kitten I thought to honor the exhumed family feline icon with a namesake. Unfortunately “Henry” slipped right through the sieve of my brain and “Harold” slipped out. I was none the wiser until I next saw Little Mint and she set me straight. By then, however, Harold was firmly Harold, and it suited him very well. Mint also filled me in on the back story.

I had initially figured, his having been eighteen and all, that Henry the Persian had wandered gentle into that great litter box in kitty heaven. But, no, tragically Henry was decapitated and partially devoured by old man Joe Lavender's German Shepherd, Robert, a vile and villainous beast who'd been trying to catch him for years. Finally did. I hear tell Mary Lee caused quite a scene the Sunday morning she found Henry's broken body in old man’s Lavender’s front yard. Called him of his house and "preached him a sermon, he won't likely ever forget." Apparently there was also some loose talk about a gun and doing some killing, but Uncle Lee and Little Mints' husband pulled Mary Lee off the lawn and dragged her home before things got too out of hand.

I wasn't there, but I know witnesses who swear it happened just that way.

My Greens Bowl

“I'm a Southern Girl.
Countrified. Everything I eat is fried.”
Southern Gul – Erykah Badu

Where I came from most folks figured if you couldn’t fry it, it probably wasn’t worth eating. That’s certainly how I felt about it. But then you’d just be amazed at what all you can fry. Sure, there’s chicken and chops and catfish and green tomatoes, and so on. But I’m thinking about things that require a little creativity. Not the gross stuff like fried Mars Bars and Twinkies that you find at the county fair, (although I understand fried Oreos are very good), but things that require real culinary imagination. And when it comes to frying, most southern cooks have plenty. Corn, beans, peas, carrots, peanuts, bread, dill pickles, cream cheese and last night’s leftover rice can be fried, and that’s just for starters. Fruits? Wrap ‘em in pastry and make a fried pie. Apples, thank you very much, do quite well without the pastry. Green apples, sliced, tossed into a pan of hot bacon fat, and dusted with sugar, were a big favorite of mine. But then so was anything fried in bacon.

Which, in a roundabout way brings me to greens, which is what this is all about. That and the bowl I serve them in, but I’ll get there.

Growing up, I wouldn’t touch cooked greens. Probably because nobody had come up with a way to fry them, although God knows I’m sure they’ve tried. In my family they cooked greens in a pressure cooker with a smoked ham hock thrown in for seasoning. Then they served them up with a generous dash of homemade pepper sauce and a serious slab of hot water cornbread. Some people might add fatback or sprinkle cracklins (like pork rinds, only better) on top, but we were purists, and Methodists. We liked to keep it simple.

I might eat a bite of turnips, if you bribed me, (then, as now, I was cheap – the promise of a coca-cola after supper, or French fries for breakfast, would suffice), but never collards, which I found particularly foul. They imbued the kitchen, and sometimes the whole house, with a smell not unlike puppy farts, and sat dull green and slimy on the plate, like the desiccated kelp washed up on the beach, minus the flies.

Mustard greens weren’t in play because we didn’t eat them nor did anyone we knew. (A kind of food snobbery, I think. Some people raised mustard for their chickens, but it wasn’t considered fit for the proper table.) Kale and Chard? Never heard of ‘em. Spinach was something that came in a can. Popeye ate it. We didn’t. And in our family mixed greens were unheard of. As I said, we were Methodist.

My distaste for cooked greens persisted well into adulthood. Quite frankly, I considered them nasty. Do you have any idea how long it takes to wash greens straight from the field? We’re talking like three or four sinks of water. And that’s before you tear them off the stalks, stem by stem, and separate them from the ribs, leaf by leaf. (My mother’s sister, Aunt Sister, said only lazy cooks had stems in their greens, and the look on the face of a guest who bit down on one would bear her out.) Then there’s the enormous amount of vegetation required. Imagine three big grocery bags, the kind you get at Piggly Wiggly or Whole Foods, depending on where you shop, stuffed, absolutely stuffed, with greens. (Hence the expression " a mess of greens.") That’s what you’re going to need to feed a big family or holiday gathering, and you’re still going to want to have Macaroni and Cheese as an extra side. That’s the other dirty little secret of greens, they’re mostly water and cook down to nearly nothing. It was more of an investment than I was willing to make.

Then I got the greens bowl. I can’t remember whether I bought it or if it was a gift, but I think I knew from the minute I saw it what it was, although I was loathe to admit it for quite some time. It was made by an old boyfriend, not my first love, but my second, (which those who’ve had a few can tell you is infinitely more intense), who now a potter. It sports a gray/green glaze (roughly the color of my cat’s eyes) that he was particularly proud of. I honestly forget what he called it, but in and of itself the bowl is right pretty, and quite reminiscent of his work, though it has evolved considerably over the years.

I know this because I’ve Googled him a few times and have seen some of his pieces on the web. I also know he’s married to a tall woman who looks good standing next to him, served as a member of the city council in his small coastal community, and, rumor has it that he was the model for a semi-nude, semi-famous statue of Neptune, touted as one of the largest working sundials in the entire world. (An image that lends itself so freely to the abuse of the imagination that I include a second link.) I also know he likes greens. As do I, because as soon as it dawned on me what the bowl was for, I felt obligated to cultivate the taste.

I first learned to tolerate them in some of the finer meat and threes, and worked up to even ordering them in a proper restaurant on occasion. Eventually I guess you could say I came to the point where I actually enjoyed a good helping of greens, but I never felt the kind of lust for them that I feel for chocolate, or the aforementioned old boyfriend, back when we were barely legal and living in sin, not that rip off your jeans, lock the door and, oh sweet Jesus, roll around the bed until the sun comes up kind of lust. Needless to say, I require a lot from my food.

Meanwhile the greens bowl was sitting on one shelf or the other in one or the other of my apartments. Sometimes I’d use it for potato salad or coleslaw, but it never really felt right. And anyway, potato salad already had a pretty blue banded yellow ware bowl, and I’ve never liked coleslaw well enough to give it a bowl of its’ own.

I didn’t fall in love with greens until shortly after I married, when a friend of my husband’s (and later of mine) brought greens as his contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. He was from Texas and his greens were steeped in the drippings of freshly fried bacon and topped with the crumbles. Those greens were so good that if the man hadn’t been gay, I might have lost my bearings. As it was, I was content with his recipe, which I’ve goosed to feed a crowd and tweaked with more bacon, of course.

It would delight me to report that the gray/green glazed greens bowl, (say it five times real fast), virtually sang with joy when I piled my first pot of ‘gourmet’ greens into it, but really, it’s just a bowl, can’t sing, and couldn’t care less. It does, however, make a splendid backdrop for a dish that, let’s face it, needs one. The greens sort of slip into the finish, and the blush of clay peeping through the glaze echos the crisp red brown of the bacon. I guarantee you, these greens don’t just look better than yours; they are better than yours.

Whenever I serve them I always give credit where it’s due, a shout out to J. D., who gave me the recipe, and a nod to the bowl maker, who, after all, as the second love of my life can never be forgotten.

And finally, if I’m with a grace saying crowd, I always add my two cents. “Dear, God, I hope that glaze doesn’t have lead in it, and I sure hope that, wherever she is, my mamma doesn’t find out I’m cooking mixed greens, and using mustard too.”


My Greens Are Better Than Your Greens Greens

2 bunches collard greens
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch kale
1 bunch chard
1 large onion, chopped
3 or 4 large carrots, diced
3 or 4 large celery stalks, diced
1 pound bacon

NOTE: Fortunately most greens we buy today are pre-washed, but you’ll want to wash them anyway, at least once. Also you can buy packaged “pre-cut” greens, but I don’t advise it. They’re full of stalks and stems and take as long to pick over as preparing them from scratch.

Wash greens and tear into bite size pieces, making sure to remove all stalks, stems and large ribs.

Brown bacon in a large pan or pot. (I use an 8 1/2 quart saucier pan.) Drain bacon and reserve.

Drain about half of the bacon grease from pan and discard. Add chopped vegetables to pan and sauté over medium heat until soft (about 10 to 15 minutes).

Add prepared greens, a few at a time, (the greens cook down quickly, making room for more), until all greens have been added to pot.

Lower heat and braise for 45 minutes to 1 hour (depending on how tender you like them).

Crumble the reserved bacon, add to greens and serve.


P.S. I’m still looking for a fried greens recipe (not sautéed, mind you, fried, preferably battered and in bacon fat). If anybody finds a good one, do let me know.