Food, food, food

Jake's favorite is Aunt Imogene's fried corn. What do her children call it?
and vegetables grown in the garden, picked and put up immediately are the best in the world. Home grown tomatoes. Imogene and Franklin are professionals, and I know Gary and Ronald both continued the tradition.

Do any of you remember when Charles and Marjorie and Jack and Jo and somebody else truck farmed outside of Boyle. And it drove Marjorie crazy if the vegetables weren't picked at the youngest and tenderest? And the summer days shelling parties, when we used to get the whole neighborhood of kids in on shelling bushels of peas and beans, then we would eat homemade popcycles on the front porch.

And I watched Becky and Bobby shuck corn (hate those worms). They could get every little hair out of the kernals. It's kind of like dust...I just can't be that precise.

I remember watching Granny make biscuits in the biscuit board. Jack and Jo now have the board. Who made it? I think Mae and Audie got one of the two made. More about them later.

And when we would go on trips together, like to Chicago or Baltimore to see the New Orleans Cousins. You wouldn't believe how much food it took to leave home. And Daddy (that would be Uncle Charles) would go and get sausage and biscuits from Rudolph's (Rudolph did barbeque and also breakfast. He killed a man and had to go the Parchman, where he cooked, of course. When the train derailed, and they had to evacuate Ruleville, Drew and Parchman, Rudolph refused to leave. He was cooking barbeque for the governor, and he wasn't going anywhere, so they left him on his on). Those biscuits were goooood, but even better were Granny's butterscotch brownies, which she brought in a shoe box. I always sat in the back seat with them. We often traveled in multiple cars and Jack and Jo went, too. Eating at a drive in was high entertainment, while Jack tried to get each of the girls orders of hamburger, add this, not this, just right. And when Jack and Jo lived in Amory? Crystals had arrived. Tiny little burgers. I could have eaten twenty.

Oh...and the fried fish suppers when Granny had enough fish in the freezer. The kids ate on the floor in the living room. I remember it was one of the few times I remember toddler Gayle putting her feet on the floor in the first couple of years of her life. She would come in where the kids were eating and we would have to have lots of ketchup with our fish, and and we would make bets on whose plate she would plop her little rear on. It was a great game. Then when she had ketchup on those plastic over pants, one of the grown-ups would say, wasn't anybody watching her?, and we were smart enough not to erupt with laughter until the grown-up was out of the room and headed toward the bathroom.

Oh...and do you remember the year of the blue cheese sausage biscuits? As they baked, our normally close family moved further and further apart. We all thought we had come down with a terrible b.o. problem, and wanted to get ourselves out of sniffing range.

And one holiday Marjorie came home from Cleveland Clinic laughing. The women there were anxious because they were serving the holiday meal for sooo many people--12 0r 16. The week before Sandra and Don had come home with shrimp, and Marjorie put out the invitation to come over if you could, and we had an inpromptu supper for forty. A lot of people were out of town.


there's more, but it's someone else's turn..oh, those peanuts were cooked in a big black pot, and we would throw the vines onto Bossy's (is that her name) horns.

Oh, and the time we went to Baltimore and Scarlet,Pat and I rode the trains into see Uncle Ed in his office and he took us to a deli, and I had my pastrami on rye with swiss cheese. And those big Kosher dill pickles. Is that a Reuben?

I remember Granny Vowell's sugar biscuits. That is why I am so large. She would take the homemade biscuits out of the oven, butter them, and put 1 spoon of sugar in them. mmmmmm
I can almost taste them now, they were great!
MA Camellia says, I REMEMBER THOSE SUGAR BISCUITS!!!! THEY WERE SOOO GOOD. And my dad made sugar and cinnamon toast (don't toast the bottom side) with butter, and the sugar glazed and cracked, like the sugar on creme brulee now, which I think they do with a torch, and I can't do that any more. How did he do it?*************

Shelling parties:
Yea, like they were really parties. We had to have 1 quart of each vegetable for each week of the year (that's 52) and a few extras. Okay think about it: Purple hull peas; colored butter beans; white butter beans (we now call these baby limas); green beans (in a jar); corn - on the cob and fried ("smochy" as me kids call it) tomatoes (in jars), okra and of course pickes. You can see that these parties were long and hard. I didn't have to pick stuff - I think I must have messed up at one time so they did make me anymore.
I remember cousins helping to shell and counting how many peas or beans in their bowl!!!! Now how much time did that take, when the time would have been better spent--finishing!
Manager1 Camellia says, you are such a grouch. Were you like that when you were a kid? NOT! The shelling parties were at McClain, though I remember shelling with you. Does anybody know the debate about not shelling into the same pan as the unshelled veggies? And those green beans in a jar. Did your mom do the vinegar ones? My fav. Does anybody still do those? Have a recipe? And did your family do refrigerator soup? My dad made the best? And who ate ketchup sandwiches?*******

And berry -picking. I remember going out to Aunt Imogene's to go blackberry picking. It might have been dewberries. I didn't have to pick berries because I was going to some kind of party/dance that night and Mother didn't want me to have my arms all scratched. (Was it the Debutante Ball when I represented the Fireman's Club?) I was rather glad because I didn't want to come face to face with some snake.
Scarlett

Camellia says: that's where you were. Nell was here, and we didn't pick at Imogene's, it was over by the Sunflower River (or were you there for that one). We picked lots and lots, and Nell and Granny decided to go into the woods (SNAKES) and get more, and left us out to finish the bushes by the road, and somebody threw a berry and then somebody else threw one, and then somebody threw a bunch, and I don't know why Nell was perturbed...we had picked them, hadn't we?

Scarlett says: Daddy would slather (it has to be pretty think so the sugar can melt into it) butter on the piece of bread and then put about two tablespoons of sugar on that. Then he would sprinkle cinnamon on that. He would put the oven on broil and have it pretty hot and slide in the pan of cinnamon toast. (Perhaps the stove was gas and that made a difference.) But he would broil the toast and it would come out all crusty. I can't get it to do that. Maybe I don't put enough butter or sugar. And do you remember him making sugar syrup when we didn't have any other kind in the house?

I think Mother had the recipe for the vinegar green beans (sweet and sour). I even tried to do them once myself. I think Donna got all the cooking genes.