Beans, Greens and Cornbread

My mother learned to cook by age eleven. The eldest of seven surviving children, every day began before the cookstove my granny stoked before dawn.

Scrawny yet strong, Sadie Lee stood in her mother’s stead before the blazing stove, stirred a bit of flour into sausage or bacon grease, added a bowlful of their cow’s milk, stirred until thick, seasoned with salt and pepper.

She set the gravy bowl on the table for her family to smother fried eggs and hot, buttermilk biscuits-food that stuck to their bones.

“Those were hard times,” Mom would say in her old age.

Hard indeed. Inconceivable to me, a Baby Boomer.

Born January 10, 1922, raised on the McCoy Bottom along Peter Creek, Kentucky, Mom said, “every child did their part on the farm.”

Mom proved capable to lay enough food on the breakfast table to nourish her family until suppertime.

All the while she pumped water, washed and dried dishes, cleaned the cookstove until it shined, Sadie thought of her younger sister, Sarah.

At last, she took Sarah’s hand for another visit with their Grandpa Lark. They walked the path from their homeplace to the Old Homeplace, as Mom named it.

There, they’d find their Grandpa Lark sitting before the fireplace. “His eyes lit up when he saw us,” Mom would say.

After offering a few bits of wisdom, such as, “Don’t ever take what doesn’t belong to you,” their grandfather would point to the fireplace.

“Now, Sadie, would you fetch me the little bottle behind that loose stone over there?” he’d say.

“Grandpa liked his ‘nips’,” Mom said.

Rested from her morning chores and loved by their grandfather, Mom and Sarah returned to their homeplace. Sadie commenced cooking supper.

An Appalachian staple for the meal, perhaps my mother removed the lid to the bean pot where she or Granny had soaked pinto beans overnight. She drained the beans in a colander and rinsed them. Then returned the beans to the rinsed pot and covered the beans with water.

She added a ham hock, set the pot on the stove to simmer.

Now, this is where I stand in awe of my mother and her “soup beans”, as my folk name pinto beans boiled with a ham hock (or bacon).

For cooking on a woodstove demands constant stoking with wood, and skill to achieve consistent heat. Not once in our conversations did Mom mention the danger of a fire out of control.

Hungry for comfort food on this Valentine’s Day without my mate, I praised my mother while I culled a few bad pinto beans and tossed them into the garbage. Since I forgot to soak the beans overnight, I simmered the pintos for two days, whetting my appetite all the more.

Dear Reader, I used bacon and onion to flavor my beans, and buttermilk in my cornbread. As I had no collard greens to boil and flavor with vinegar, I threw a salad together.

Oh yes, you must have cornbread and greens with soup beans.

Food that sticks to your bones in hard times.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com