Traditions

I did not cook as a child. I watched, sitting at the table while my grandmother chopped onions and threw in spices before saying "Oh I put in too much salt." She did not have measuring spoons or cups or bowls. Nor did she have an array of unrecognizable spices on the rack. She was a woman who kept the kitchen simple. Sundays were big meal dinners. There would either be a roast, or a roasted chicken or my favorite fried chicken filling the house with a spicy smoke. I would steal a gizzard or wing unless she caught me. When she was feeling up to it, there would be deviled eggs, candied yams, collard greens, macaroni and cheese and biscuits. She was not a baker, she was a cook who had perfected South Carolina style southern cooking. Since her, there has never been anyone's yams that have camelized sugar and cinnamon, that are not overcooked and soggy, with the taste of sweet butter and sugar that make them melt as you eat them. This was my favorite. The flavors of the sweet yams with the sharpness of the cheese and taste of onion from the macaroni and cheese was the taste of happiness and love. She taught me how to butter biscuits and how to dip the biscuit in molasses as to get just the right amount without making a mess.

For holidays she would cream the yams and bake them in the orange rinds with a marshmallows coating. For dessert there would be sweet potato pie and a vanilla cake with chocolate icing and ice cream. Her favorite ice cream was banana and then butter pecan; however I never took a liking to the butter pecan, I opted for pralines and cream.

Liver and onions with grits were my best morning breakfasts. I watched the oil pop over the flour, her fork scrapping the bottom of the pan as the floor looked as if it were burning, but it never did. The steam from her water cup would shoot up, the flour bubbling and her hand still scrapping the bottom of the pan, she would look up, smile at me and ask if I had all my books together. On the table next to me were her coffee cup and the paper, folded neatly with an indentation of where she left off reading. I never knew when she awoke, but she was always at the kitchen table drinking her second cup of coffee and had read two thirds of the paper read by the time I came downstairs. This is the only meal I have closely matched. I replicated the recipe by memory.