Southern Fried

                        Southern Fried





         Growing up in the 1950's wasn't much different than growing up ten or twenty years earlier. Many people still used out houses, drank water drawn by the bucket full from deep wells, took baths in wash tubs and cooked on wood burning stoves. Kids ran around barefoot in the summer and always had a runny nose in the winter.
      Medical science was progressing but lagged behind in many areas. Childhood diseases like chicken pox, measles, and mumps were still around, as was polio. People died from heart attacks and cancer but no one seemed to know why. Smoking was widely advertised as a good thing recommended by doctors and cholesterol was not yet a word.
     Mom was a good cook as was her mother before her.  Time tested recipes were handed down from mother to daughter.  Staples at our house were mashed potatoes, Navy beans and cornbread - and if we could get it, maybe a roast or a ham hock cooked with the beans.  Real stick to your ribs kind of food.
     I have often heard that it wasn't the cook but the ingredients that made the food taste good - but think about that for a minute. In the 1950's and 60's every housewife had a gallon can of lard in their cupboard.  Crisco was the most famous of the brands. Lard was used to make biscuits, pie crust, cornbread, fry fish or potatoes - the many uses for lard constitutes a long list. If you didn't use lard you used butter, real butter, none of this salt free easy to spread stuff we have today. No one threw away the empty lard can you set it on the stove and poured the cooking grease from the pan in to it, you see lard was a re-usable commodity and when mixed with a little bacon grease some foods were made more tasty. Mom could go thru two gallon cans of Crisco in a week not counting what she dipped from the used can on the stove.
    In the 50's there was no such thing as diet cola, sugar free food, salt free or gluten free food. Everything was fried and in our case it was "SOUTHERN FRIED". Dad was a butcher and every steak had a nice edge of fat around the outside and when Dad finished a steak there was only the bone left.  A little marbling of fat in a roast made for a better roast. Ever eat Red Eye Gravy?  It is the grease from frying country ham in a cast iron skillet. Some would mix a little flour with the grease to give it consistency and the last thing you do would be to wipe the gravy off your plate with a hot biscuit and eat it. Green beans were often cooked with strips of bacon to add flavor.  It was delicious and you didn't mind the little grease from the bacon that floated in the juice.
    Granny Wade would cook cabbage, another one of those things that smelled when cooked.  She would cook corned beef with the cabbage. Mom on occasion would make sauerkraut with pieces of hot dogs - it was tolerable but I never did acquire a taste for cabbage.
     Farmers still killed hogs in the fall and made their own country hams and sausage.  The sausage was stuffed in the hogs intestines for a casing and when fried in a cast iron skillet it was delicious. Chitlins are fried hog intestines and considered a delicacy by many country folk.  I could never get past the smell.
     Granny Riggan never, as far I know, cooked on anything but a wood stove. She did a pretty good job and again most things were fried and there was always a can of lard nearby. One of the things I remember about Grandpa Riggan was his breakfast.  After eating two fried eggs and some bacon or sausage he would slice off a pat of butter and place it in the middle of his plate then pour some Br'er Rabbit sorghum on the butter and mix it into a paste with his knife. He would slice open a hot biscuit and spread the mixture on the biscuit and eat it. I have a jar of sorghum in the cabinet now.
     Dad had it in his head that he was a good cook and I will say he could cook a steak or fry fish on a grill but I was never happy with his skills on a stove. Anything he cooked on a stove was fried.  He used to cook liver but it turned out with the texture of a hockey puck and his steaks were either overcooked or running red with blood they were so rare. He had a specialty he called goulash it was a concoction of fried ground beef, stewed tomatoes, onions and, I think, green peppers and noodles. He would start by frying up the ground beef and when it reached the right texture he would pour in the other ingredients and continue cooking until ready to eat. Did I say that he never poured off the grease from the beef?  He just added a little water. One of the worst whippings I ever had was when I turned up my nose at a plate full of his goulash.
     People today eat a lot of fast food and I have to admit I have consumed more than my share.  But walking into a Burger King or Wendy's is not the same as eating at a local, family owned, "greasy spoon ". The smell is different as is the taste of the food. Back in the early sixties, one of my favorite places to eat when I worked at the grocery store, was the Woolworth's lunch counter.  After gulping down a burger and fries I would top it off with a banana split. They had balloons hanging above the counter with different prices in them, you choose one and paid the price inside for the banana split, anywhere from one cent to forty nine cents.
     Dad had a customer by the name of Daisy.  She was loud, flirty and fun.  She also owned a greasy spoon restaurant about a quarter mile from the store. She served home style cooking to a hungry lunch crowd. I always sat at the counter rather than a booth. At the counter I could watch the short order cook frying hamburgers and piling them on a plate until they were needed. I can't remember the cooks name, he was a black guy that talked to me as he cooked.  Every now and then the plate of burgers would get so high that one would slide off on to the floor where he would pick it up, brush the dirt off, and put it back on the plate, all the while looking to see if anyone saw what happened. I always made sure I got a fresh one hot off the grill.
    Over the years medical science has made many advances.  Polio has been all but eradicated, vaccines control mumps, measles and chicken pox, cures for many cancers have been found -  or are close. Smoking has been determined to be the leading cause for lung cancer and high levels of cholesterol are major contributors for heart disease. At one time eggs were good for you and then they were bad for you and now they are good for you again. Cooking with lard is down because vegetable oil and peanut oil is better. Sugar and salt are bad if consumed in great quantities so we now have foods that are sugar free, fat free, gluten free, caffeine free, low cholesterol and organic. For all of these advances kids have ADD  or OCD and allergies for everything. Remarkably every one in the world should not have a cholesterol level higher than 200 and if you are over the age of fifty you are probably taking one kind of pill or another to combat clogged arteries. By the way, there was a report on CNN the other day that doctors have determined organic food is no better for you than non-organic - just more costly.
     I was a picky eater with a definite sweet tooth and I survived "Southern Cooking" as did my siblings, parents, grandparents and forefathers. I never knew what an allergy was until sometime in the 80's and never had a cholesterol problem until the last couple of years ( it's not that bad ). Cancer had a hold on Mom's siblings and they all died of one kind or another, Mom was the only one to have lung cancer - twice -and she lived into her late 70's.   Prior to that all of our ancestors lived to ripe old ages in their late 70's, 80's and even 90's. If there was any heart problems it didn't show up until real late in life.
    I am not advocating going back to using Crisco lard but I do think modern medicine has taken some of the fun out of life and definitely flavor out of food in their effort to extend life. Linda has a heart condition and diabetes, her pill intake on a daily basis could constitute a meal on their own. For myself, except for a slightly elevated cholesterol level, I'm OK - but my doctor says I stand a chance of having a heart attack if I don't start taking cholesterol pills. After watching Dad pass away with cancer a heart attack seems to me to be more merciful.
    What I wouldn't give for an old greasy spoon restaurant hamburger and fries. Who wants to live to be 150 anyway !