The Way That Mama Made It....

The comment that has probably wounded more feelings and hurt more marriages than any other is some unthinking husband blurting out, "It's OK, but it's not the way that Mama made it". Once those words escape your lips, there is no way to redeem yourself. You've made your bed but you dare not sleep in it. That would require closing your eyes and you realize that it will never be safe to do that again.

When the truth is told, all Mamas may not have been the grand champion of cooking. In my case, mine was probably a little better than average. But for some reason, the things that our Mamas did excel in are the things we remember so vividly. And those that they may not have been so good at have become totally unimportant. My memories are cornbread and biscuits. Neither had a recipe written down. Had it been, I would be wealthy if I had no more customers than my siblings! And there is a probability that neither of these recipes may have been as totally delicious as I recall them. But I can think about them and salivate!

Most people would describe the majority of our food as plain Southern cooking. Most people don't know that this is one of the highest compliments that can be paid a cook.

Plain Southern cooking means taking what is available (or what you can afford) and make it feed however many people show up at the table and to do it in a tasty (usually) way. The exception to that rule was when the menu was determined by a request from my father who happened to love some foods that some of us were less than enamored with. I've heard stories of cooks who could make calf's liver appeal to anyone's palate. My mother was not one of those cooks.

But, like all forms of adolescent influence, democracy was not present at the Shields' dinner table. If we didn't like something, we got to complain. Once. After that, we were allowed to sit there until we decided we did like it. We may not have eaten all of it when we left the table (after receiving permission) but we knew we had eaten the last bite that we would see before the next meal time.

I remember most meals during the week as being pretty ordinary. Breakfast was breakfast. Cereal, oatmeal, occasional eggs and bacon, pancakes, sometimes waffles (my personal favorite) on the weekends. Lunch was normally a hurriedly concocted sandwich except on Sunday. And the evening meal, referred to in our house as supper, was the time when the cooking was done unless there was a ball game or some event that required the presence of children, parents, or both. Then things got complicated. But the special times for me were Saturday night and Sunday after church.

Saturday night was hamburger night. With French fries and iced tea. And the special part about it was that it was the night when you could have all you wanted. Patties fried in a black cast iron skillet. Two, three, even four hamburgers. Not the size that we see today. In fact, looking back on them, they were pretty puny. But we thought they were great! And the French fries cut from fresh potatoes could fill an entire plate!

The one o'clock meal on Sunday followed church and was called Sunday dinner...not lunch. It was a sit down affair and often included my Aunt and Uncle from Mobile who would time their arrival to occur a few minutes before the food was served. Either fried chicken, pot roast or 'steak' with all the 'fixin's' are the meals I remember most. The fixin's were fresh vegetables, rice or mashed potatoes and gravy, dried lima beans or blackeyed peas, and on special occasions, stuffed eggs. I still prefer dried beans to fresh ones.

The steak in question was no more than a quarter of an inch thick and had a round bone somewhere in it. Yes, I know what round steak is...but back then I thought it was the only kind of steak in the world. It easily fit into a nine inch skillet and was floured and browned on both sides. Finally it was cut into the same number of pieces as there were eaters. But not necessarily the same sized pieces. Big is big and small is small. There was a relationship between the size of the eater and the size of the serving. And the chicken was 'a' chicken. Singular. One. Uno. Unlike today, chicken backs were cooked and served. I can't remember a time in the last twenty years that I've seen a chicken back cooked. My father got served first so that limited the chances for white meat being available by the time the platter reached the last few people at the table.

And maybe, just maybe, there could be dessert. Lemon icebox pie and egg custard were standouts.

As time passed, Mama did less and less of the cooking for the family gatherings and the acknowledged culinary champion of Moss Point Shieldses became a title held by my wife.

You learn a lot by listening at the dinner table. And one of the most important lessons men can learn is that it's smart to compliment and thank the cook. Cooks like that. My wife always treasured the times when my Dad would eat with us and pronounce her meals as fittin'.

Fittin' is not a word that gets used much any more. But any cook worth her salt knows a compliment when she hears one! And fittin' was the highest form of praise!

And that's the way I remember it.