The Foods I Miss And Why I Miss Them

Probably not the reasons you would expect


A Facebook thread among my family just minutes ago got me thinking about the foods I miss, and the people who made them, who I miss even more than I miss the foods themselves.  I wrote about some of my bread memories and stories here in one of my earliest posts right after I started the blog and the weight loss journey prior to surgery.  I come from a family of wonderful Southern cooks on both sides, and I married into a family of other wonderful Southern cooks.  So to say that food has been an important part of my life would be more than fair!

What surprises me these days is that, while I do miss certain foods, I don't miss them as much, or for the reasons, I might expect.  What I really miss is the people who made them, and the warm memories I have of the times I enjoyed both the foods and the people.  My eating habits are so radically different now that a lot of the foods I am thinking of would probably bother my stomach or make me feel queasy.  It's not the food...it's the cooks and the memories that I miss the most.

Mama was a wonderful cook.  She didn't cook fancy, gourmet food, just tasty Southern fare.  Every Friday of my childhood I remember her making a cake for the weekend, and her warnings not to slam the door or make a lot of noise for fear of making the cake fall.  I think that might have been a ploy to get a few minutes of quiet more than any real fear of a collapsing cake!  She had a couple of mainstay things she would make to take to "Family Night" at church, a covered-dish affair in the fellowship hall where the entire church would show up, food in hand to share with everyone else.  Mama's usual dishes were either a brown rice casserole (which didn't contain brown rice at all) or her famous baked beans with bacon on top.  I was the "official taster" for the beans, and they were always delicious.  Mama also made banana pudding, from scratch, in a double boiler, with the most gorgeous meringue on the top.  And I miss her fried chicken in the electric skillet, her Swiss steak in the CrockPot, her chili in the Revere Ware Dutch oven and her rump roast with potatoes, carrots and onions in that old beat-up aluminum roasting pan...the stuff of my dreams to this day.  But if I had to name just one thing that Mama was known for making, it would be her cornbread.  It was legendary.

Aunt Ruby made biscuits every morning for over 4 decades, and they were the biscuits I judged every other biscuit by my whole life.  I remember lots of times spending Friday night at her house and she would often make us pancakes on Saturday morning.  Simple, but such a treat!  And always the best breakfast I could ask for.  The Hubs has always said that Aunt Ruby's potato salad was his favorite of any potato salad he ever ate.  I never liked potato salad, so I'll have to take his word for it.  I'm glad he has that wonderful memory of her, since she doesn't cook anymore.

Aunt Martha was a great cook too, and she loved her sweets.  Aside from Mamaw, Aunt Martha was the only person who made apple stack cake.  One year my brother went and spent the day with her to learn how she made it, and he has made a few of them.  Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that baking session!  She also made a Fresh Apple Cake with homemade caramel icing that I have the recipe for.  But I could never hope to make it as good as hers was.    She gave me lots of recipes for gooey desserts, one of which was Banana Split Pie.  Aunt Ruby also shared this recipe with me.  For years I made one for Thanksgiving at Aunt Ruby's.  It's a no-bake dessert that needs to be refrigerated, rich and very sweet, and a little dab will do you!  For several years at Christmas, she would make little individual loaves of banana bread for everyone to take home.  I will never forget working one Christmas night at a television station, all alone in the building, warming her banana bread in the microwave, smearing it with butter and crying with gratitude for something from home when I was stuck at work on Christmas.

"Mamaw" Allred was my next-door neighbor until I was nearly 17 years old (when we moved because a construction project razed our neighborhood), and very much a part of our family.  She and Mama and ladies from her church used to make hot tamales in the fall every year to sell by the dozen as fundraisers.  Lots of churches and groups still sell hot tamales.  Oh, my word, how those tamales warmed my body and soul on many a cold night!  Boil them, enjoy the smell and fidget waiting for them to be done, then smother them with chili and prepare to hibernate like a big old bear!  "Mamaw" Allred also made what she called hot tamale pie, which was similar to chili with hot tamales.  And she made peanut butter potato rolled candy which was ridiculously sweet and good.  But my favorite thing of hers was Baptist Pound Cake, a rich, dense, almond-flavored scratch cake.  It has to be started in a cold oven, and it develops a crusty layer on the top that is about as addictive as anything I've ever eaten in my life.  She gave me the recipe and, after a few attempts, I became good at making it myself.  She loved that and congratulated me for being able to make it because it was a recipe that Mama never mastered!  It's been many years since I made one, but maybe next year at Christmas I'll whip out the bundt pan and bake some cake to give away.  The world needs love, and it needs Baptist Pound Cake.

As much as I loved eating these foods, it's less about the foods themselves and more about the people who made them and the memories of times I spent with them.  Everyone I've written about here is gone now except Aunt Ruby, and Aunt Ruby doesn't cook anymore.  I miss the tastes and aromas of these foods, to be sure...but what I really miss are the conversations shared while the stove warmed the kitchen, the laughter as the flour flew through the air, the loving way the recipes were written down and the advice never to cook when I was angry because the dish would turn out bad.

Proverbs 17:1 reads:
Better is a dry morsel with quietness,
Than a house full of feasting^[a] with strife.

So, it's not really about the food so much.  It's about the love.  Yes, our bodies are nourished by food, but our souls are, too.  I am grateful for the cooks in my life and my family who have nourished me, both body and soul.