Country Cookin'

My mamma never knew when she started a meal how many might be there to eat. All the mailboxes for people miles around were in front of our house. Sometimes people would meet the mail carrier.

Folks came early to listen to the radio news, and they might just stay for dinner, which was a noonday hot meal for us. No one around then had a radio except us. It was battery operated because no one had any electricity where we lived.

My mamma got out all the pots and pans, which were very large. She cooked them full of whatever was available, and before bedtime it was all eaten.

She used to make huge wash pots full of hominy, which was a favorite food of ours. She cooked it in lye water to remove the outer husk, then we rinsed it many times to remove any lye left. The hominy was fried in huge iron skillets of bacon grease. It was good and inexpensive.

The foods we ate may seem strange to some folks. Often my mamma made cream-style corn, salmon patties, fried apples, or potato patties. All these foods were served with breakfast.

We ate a great deal of gravy made with water instead of milk. We called it "puppy gravy" except when the preacher was there. Once one of the kids forgot. Instead of saying puppy gravy, which they knew was not allowed before company, they said, "Please pass the hound gravy." This gave us a good laugh.

We all loved bolonga, which was a fairly new item to us. We liked it in big rolls which were sliced in thick slices and fried. We like it so well that my pappa would take big smoked hams from the smokehouse to the store and trade for huge rolls of bolonga, the all-meat kind with the red skin.

This was a favorite evening meal in cold weather when we heated up the kitchen. With this we had fried potatoes, hot biscuits and gravy, canned peaches or blackberries, or maybe half-moon fried pies of dried apples or evaporated peaches.