I spent 5 years in Oxford finally getting a sheepskin after 8 years of college classes. Ruth and Jimmie cooked my lunch at least once a week. Tonight we were talking about their smothered steak. Chunks of meat! Fudge pie! Various vegetables! Damn fine food. Never had an onion and cucumber salad like that since.
My Mom was from a tiny town 1 hour west of Memphis in Arkansas. She grew up picking cotton alongside everybody else. There was the Tiger Den (independent version DQ), a real 5 & Dime store which still made 25 cent real Cherry Cokes when we went down to visit in the summer.
My grandparents had 2-3 huge pecan trees in their front yard. We spent hours cracking them on the wooden porch of their shotgun house to take home freezer bags full of their wondrous products. I had no idea pecans were expensive - we always had bags of them in the freezer. My Grandma had a deep freezer containing treasure like homemade strawberry pies and a years worth of whatever their two lot size gardens produced. They had a lemon tree, a couple of peach trees and lots of really yummy stuff filling the gardens. My Grandpa would always take me to the tomato section and point out some that he told me were mine alone, that he didn't give them to anyone else. He also took a couple of us (we had 5 kids in our family) to a tiny fish shack on a nearby river to let us pick the catfish my Grandma would be cooking that evening. The fisherman would lift the basket out of the water and let us pick from the live fish and we loved to go there. My Grandma had a white enamel stove/oven. She always had Crisco and bacon fat on the top of it and used both liberally when cooking. I LOVED the fried okra, hush puppies, catfish, biscuits and gravy and fried green tomatoes she made. I loved the black eye peas, chicken and dumplings, with the dumplings beings more like thick noodles that she cut over the pot as she was finishing up. 97% of everything was fried. It was all in cast iron pans.
We never went out to eat - I don't believe there was a restaurant of any kind in the small town. We didn't need or want to - we had the GREAT food at Grandma's house. I can still smell and see the food being picked, prepared and eaten. Wonderful memories to this day, even though I haven't been there for probably close to 40 years. The town is mostly gone, even more so since it was directly hit by a tornado in the past 10 years. My grandparents and their home are gone. The memories live on with me.
Grew up in 900 to 1000 population logging town called Darrington, in Washington State. I know just exactly what you are talking about. Cast iron was king in our home, also. I can't remember the name of the ladies that ran 3 different cafes, but I can see their faces in my mind. I left when I graduated for HS.
We had a place like that where I grew up in Idaho. Any time our school sports trips took us past a particular burger place(literally on the edge of a canyon wall, next to the road) we would stop. They served burgers that were probably 6 or so inches wide, possibly larger. Best darn burgers I have ever had. Everyone who ever traveled that way knew of the place and stopped.
I spent 5 years in Oxford finally getting a sheepskin after 8 years of college classes. Ruth and Jimmie cooked my lunch at least once a week. Tonight we were talking about their smothered steak. Chunks of meat! Fudge pie! Various vegetables! Damn fine food. Never had an onion and cucumber salad like that since.
My Mom was from a tiny town 1 hour west of Memphis in Arkansas. She grew up picking cotton alongside everybody else. There was the Tiger Den (independent version DQ), a real 5 & Dime store which still made 25 cent real Cherry Cokes when we went down to visit in the summer.
My grandparents had 2-3 huge pecan trees in their front yard. We spent hours cracking them on the wooden porch of their shotgun house to take home freezer bags full of their wondrous products. I had no idea pecans were expensive - we always had bags of them in the freezer. My Grandma had a deep freezer containing treasure like homemade strawberry pies and a years worth of whatever their two lot size gardens produced. They had a lemon tree, a couple of peach trees and lots of really yummy stuff filling the gardens. My Grandpa would always take me to the tomato section and point out some that he told me were mine alone, that he didn't give them to anyone else. He also took a couple of us (we had 5 kids in our family) to a tiny fish shack on a nearby river to let us pick the catfish my Grandma would be cooking that evening. The fisherman would lift the basket out of the water and let us pick from the live fish and we loved to go there. My Grandma had a white enamel stove/oven. She always had Crisco and bacon fat on the top of it and used both liberally when cooking. I LOVED the fried okra, hush puppies, catfish, biscuits and gravy and fried green tomatoes she made. I loved the black eye peas, chicken and dumplings, with the dumplings beings more like thick noodles that she cut over the pot as she was finishing up. 97% of everything was fried. It was all in cast iron pans.
We never went out to eat - I don't believe there was a restaurant of any kind in the small town. We didn't need or want to - we had the GREAT food at Grandma's house. I can still smell and see the food being picked, prepared and eaten. Wonderful memories to this day, even though I haven't been there for probably close to 40 years. The town is mostly gone, even more so since it was directly hit by a tornado in the past 10 years. My grandparents and their home are gone. The memories live on with me.
Grew up in 900 to 1000 population logging town called Darrington, in Washington State. I know just exactly what you are talking about. Cast iron was king in our home, also. I can't remember the name of the ladies that ran 3 different cafes, but I can see their faces in my mind. I left when I graduated for HS.
We had a place like that where I grew up in Idaho. Any time our school sports trips took us past a particular burger place(literally on the edge of a canyon wall, next to the road) we would stop. They served burgers that were probably 6 or so inches wide, possibly larger. Best darn burgers I have ever had. Everyone who ever traveled that way knew of the place and stopped.