March 14, 2012
Connections. That almost sounds calculating, kind of like “networking,” using people for what they can give you. What I mean by it is a sense of connectedness to a place or to other people or to one’s own past, or to a present and future. It is a feeling that one has a place within this vast universe and, in some way, matters because of that.
Connectedness has always been important to me, I think because I grew up feeling slightly on the outside of every culture and group I was in. I now know that we are all “on the outside”, so to speak.
Food in a strange way offered me connections. I didn’t like to cook--I grew up surrounded by brothers and was offended when I was told I had to work in the kitchen while they could play outside. Naturally, I rebelled. But I loved to eat. I loved the tastes of food; the way food seemed to bring the whole world to a halt to concentrate it in those acts of chewing and swallowing.
That may have been because both my mother and her mother were wonderful cooks. Both were grounded in the southern traditions of frying and making pan gravy, biscuits, green beans flavored with fatback (my mother later left out the fatback and steamed vegetables), sauces, and wonderful desserts. In my early years, we went to my grandparents’ house in Kannapolis on Sundays for Sunday dinner (the big family meal after church—both of which were southern institutions). I remember my grandmother cooking and serving wonderful dinners. I would eat and eat, usually to the point of a stomachache from eating too much! My brothers and I would turn eating into a competition, but I oftentimes overate out of the sheer joy of the food.
To this day, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, biscuits, cold slaw, fried corn, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and pecan pie take me back to my grandmother’s table. That’s also the quintessential southern meal, but for me it’s special and very personal. I’m named after my grandmother--her name was Lucille—and my mother was adamant that I inherit her violin, which I now play as a fiddle for old-time music and in a band, the Root Cellar String Band. Memories of those meals, then, definitely connect me to my past and my family, but they also connect me to my own present, a present that combines that past with all the new potentials for connectedness.
I heard a phrase recently that has been rolling over in my mind since..."I love to make great dishes for the people I love." I think that phrase describes the last generation, your grandmother and mine, more so than now. These days we get so distracted, involved, etc., with the concerns of anything but the kitchen, not to mention the kitchen garden wich has all but disappeared.
ReplyDeleteTell us about the traditional kitchen gardens of your travels that have helped create the love affair with the actually preparation of the yield?
I, for one, get so excited in fixing 'a mess of beans with new 'baby' potatoes'....and cornbread (no sugar) fried a little on top of the stove in an iron skillet, then finished in the oven...... Brenda H.
Great article, Lucy. I inherited my grandma's oak harvest table. I remember the Sunday meals of fried chicken, green beans with fatback, corn, mashed potatoes, green beans and her specialty, egg noodles dried on new papers laid out in the kitchen. It's the southern Illinois version of what you describe. My grandpa farmed with horses despite his neighbors having tractors. The horses had names like Ed and Jim and he slept in the barn if one was sick. Who'd do that with a tractor with a leaky head gasket? Food takes me back to those great memories faster than most things. Thanks for the blog and the fiddling.
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