[mensplace]

ALL of which makes me glad to have grown up in the fifties when there was still self-sufficiency and flavor. When my grandmother made chicken and rice it came from a yardbird. Everyone used to have a small chicken coop in the back. When she mad pound cake, she drove out into the country for fresh churned butter and combined that with fresh eggs. FLAVOR! The uncles always brought in quail they had hunted that morning and it was covered with pan gravy. That low-country food was a memory I treasure, but it was always combined with family. Even snapping beans in a rocking chair on the porch was an occasion for aunts, uncles, & cousins to get together. The holidays brought pig-pickings and every conceivable side dish. Occasionally the uncles would get together and go out to the hunting lodge to cook up a huge pot of "pine bark stew" that was served over rice. Rice was served in an almost endless number of ways...even as the basis for callas to go with STRONG coffee in the morning. Just north of me in GA they made large cauldrons of hog's head stew. ON January 1, we ate Hopping John, almost religiously, as it was the duty of every righteous southerner to remember when they were left with nothing but rice, dried beans and some greens. The stories that were passed down were a direct link to the past and were expected to be remembered.