August 22, 2025 • 22 mins
Get the grease hot! It's time to eat. This week Brent's talking about country cooking. That can mean different types of food in different parts of the country. The similarity, regardless of the food you're eating or how it's prepared, is the feeling you get when you're sharing it with family and friends. Ring the dinner bell and gather at the table! It's time for some "Country Cooking" on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lighting and just in general
country living. I want you to stay a while as
I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life
is presented by Case Knives from the Store More Studio
on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor
(00:26):
podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab
a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores
to share Country cooking, y'all, pull up a chair. It's
time to eat. Did you notice that I didn't ask
(00:46):
you if you were hungry? I walked out on the
porch one time to tell my dad that supper was ready.
I said, Dad, food's ready. Are you hungry? And he
responded with what's hungry? You got to do with it? Now?
I never made that mistake again. It would just holler,
come eat when it was time. Now. I bet I've
(01:07):
told that story a million times because I've had some
of you folks say it back to me, bears repeating,
because I like to hear that story too. And we're
going to talk all about victuals this week. But first
I'm going to tell you a story. Now, this may
(01:28):
be a stretch for the theme of this week's struggle
since I'm talking about country cooking. But there is food
in this story kind of and it's one of my favorites,
not food but story that is. Also it's my show
and I pretty well make all the rules. So with
that said, here we go. My oldest brother, Tim was
(01:53):
on a school bus coming home from a high school
football game. The whole Rising wild Cat team was on there,
including the coaches. Now, they just put a beat down
on the Junction City Dragons. The year was nineteen seventy two.
Junction City is in Union County and sets on the
(02:15):
Arkansas and Louisiana state line, with Third Street running east
and west along the border separating both towns. That's right
plural because Junction City, Louisiana, well it starts where Junction City,
Arkansas stops. Anyway, Tim said it was thirteen to nothing
(02:36):
when the horn sounded at the end of the fourth quarter,
and we'd whooped them pretty good. Some disgruntled Junction City
in chunked a brick through the window of the bus
on their way out of town, but it didn't change
the score. Now, when I was a lawman down in
Union County. Some thirty years after that fateful Friday night
(02:57):
under the lights, I found the folks of Function City
to be somewhat more hospitable, most of them anyway. But
that night the victorious Wildcats were making tracks north Horizon.
The seat of government for Cleveland County was w number
five in what would wind up being one of eight
(03:19):
in a nine game season. Tim said frivolity was rampant
on that bus for the first forty five minutes or so,
as he and his teammates celebrating beating the dragons and
surviving the brick, and then the monotonous drone of the
bus engine and darkness of rural Arkansas lulled the tired
(03:40):
players into quiet. They slept the dreamless sleep of victors
on their triumphant return from battle. Most of them, anyway.
Tim and his seat mate were awake, wide awake, and
whispering back and forth about anything and everything. And it
was during this quiet time when Tim felt something under
(04:01):
his foot. Bending over, he retrieved a discarded can of
Frieto's bean dip. The can had been opened and left
on the bus, defining whomever was responsible for cleaning the
bus For quite some time, Tim said, The occasional light
from passing cars shine through the bus window and lit
(04:22):
up that can well enough that he could see a
liquid had started to form as it decomposed in the
can that was almost full of what had initially been
intended for human consumption. What it had morphed into over
time resembled more what you might find in a baby's
diaper after feeding him a diet of bean dip. A
(04:47):
pair of fifteen year old boys saw an opportunity, an
opportunity to play a prank on their teammates by sharing
their found treasure amongst the rest of the team. So,
with the ai of waxed paper drinking cups torn to
resemble those little wooden spoons you get with portions of
complimentary ice cream, Tim began launching the free Doo free
(05:10):
Holy bombs over his shoulder towards the back of the bus,
and a squad of unsuspecting travelers, volley after volley of
weapons grade pinto bean contaminants, arched their way rearward towards
their hapless victims. Tim said, I don't know how long
I'd been chunking them back there, but by the time
(05:31):
we got to Hampton, about forty five minutes from Junction City.
I was all out of bean dep As the bus
passed through the little town, the street lights lit up
the interior bout the same time, the folks in the
back of the bus began to wake up and see
and feel what had befallen them. Coach Somebody's throwing crap.
(05:52):
Tim and his coke and spirator laughed quietly and giggled
as they looked around at the carnage they'd unleast seeing
that a large of their artillery fire had stuck to
the ceiling and was falling off onto the folks in
the back, who were beyond disgusted and furious at the
thought of what was now all over them. They got
(06:14):
the full effect an hour later when they pulled up
to the fieldhouse and Coach Hendricks turned on the bus lights.
Tim said, you just don't realize how much bean dip
is in one of those cans until you start slinging
it all over creation. Now, he said, his friends were
wiping it off their clothes and trying to get it
(06:36):
out of the hair while not puke it all over
each other until they realized what it actually was and wasn't.
But like any wartime secret loose lips sink ships, and
Tim's battle buddy told someone they'd done it, and in
short order Coach Hendrix had cracked the case and issued
(06:58):
out some bombs of his own. Upon on, Tim and
his blabbermouthed partner's posterior. Early the next morning, they were
at the bushyard with cleaning supplies, skyring the interior of
that bus from one end to the other. To this day,
Tim says, really, you have no idea how much bean
dip is in one of those cans. You really don't.
(07:22):
And that's just how that happened. First of all, entitling
this episode as country cooking is. It's only semantics is
to get your attention that what we're talking about it.
It should really just be called cooking, because that's the
(07:43):
only kind of cooking I know. I doubt the folks
in China or Mexico call their food Chinese or Mexican.
And I realize there are different areas of the US
with the ethnic and regionally buys foods and recipes. I
happen to be a fan of both of those his cuisine,
But when it comes down to sitting at the table
(08:04):
with family and friends. The food on the table usually
represents where I'm from and could actually be a form
of identification. Last week, I had the fortune of being
a guest of Canam up in Connecticut with my colleagues
Matt Miller and Ryan Callahan. We were up there for
the unveiling of the twenty twenty six Canam Defender, which
(08:27):
is pretty sweet, by the way, but Connecticut is an
absolutely beautiful place with some really nice folks. And Ryan
and I were discussing the local trout streams we've seen
which guide us onto other types of fishing, and talking
about like what I do here in Arkansas, and I
told Ryan that I love fish. I could eat fish
(08:48):
every day and had eaten it three out of the
five days before joining him and Matthew up in the
Constitution State. Now, Ryan, he's a smart guy, a real
smart guy. But he asked me the dumbest question I've
been asking quite some time when he said, what all
ways do you cook them? Ways? What other ways are there? Right?
(09:13):
There's two ways to eat fish where I come from.
That's the traditional way of deep frying them with a
corn meal bread. Or if you're looking for something different,
you might try taking a bite out of one before
you take the hook out of his mouth and drop
it into the ice chest. That's always been the options
around the Ponderosa riding fried or fried man. Come on, now,
(09:36):
there are arguments for baked and seared fish, and even
for somewhat. A friend fixed from me on an offshore
fishing trip last October that I called raw and he
called savice, regardless of what you called it. I was
sure I was going to get worms after I had it,
but alas I did not. Also, it really tasted pretty good.
(10:00):
But there's a comfort to country cooking, I guess, a
quiet goodness of familiarity that speaks of country food not
as a collection of recipes, but as an enduring language
of love and memory. A pan of corn bread paired
with purple whole peas, butter beans or pento beans says
(10:20):
as much about where you're from where I live as
poutine and butter tart says about my hockey playing friends
way up in the Great White North. Growing up, if
we were headed to Mama's slice House for dinner after church,
you could guarantee the head count and the chicken coop
was going to be minus at least three. When roosting
time came that evening a big cast iron skilled of hers,
(10:44):
having done quite a number on a toasac full of
chicken parts, she'd run through a buttermilk and seasoned flour bath.
Good night, nurse, I can smell it cooking right now.
There'd be vegetables and potatoes and biscuits and gravy of
that terrible Hoover gravy. Hoover gravy was named after President
(11:05):
Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression, when folks didn't have
milk to add to the flyer increase to make gravy,
so they substituted water. Let me tell you that is
not a good substitution as far as I know. President
Hoover had two things named after him, the Hoover Dam
and Hoover gravy. One of them saw one hundred and
(11:26):
thirty eight people died during this construction. The other makes
me want to die after I try to eat it.
It's terrible, and milk during the Depression from my family
was as close as the barn out back. I had
a couple more examples of parallels for the names Hoover
Dam the Hoover gravy, But I'm trying to keep the
cussing on here at zero and saying hoover gravy without
(11:49):
including the term for a water control structure. It is
hard enough that gum was awful, But I think a
big part of the cooking experience, especially when I think
about mama slies kitchen centers. Around any holiday, when the
whole family would gather to visit and eat, all the
grown ladies of the family would be busy as bees
(12:12):
in the kitchen, a mama sly right in the middle,
navigating a tight space with the coordination of a well
old machine. Regardless of what was cooking, the feelings and
the sounds were the same. Laughter, joy and reverence and
love poured out of that kitchen more than the food
they were preparing. Mamasly, I'm hungry, it'll be ready, directly,
(12:36):
get outside and on slammed screen out we'd go starving
and feeling nearly dead from a lack of groceries. The
meal you could count on as being almost as satisfied
as the socializing, but that wouldn't be realized until later
in life, when one by one, time reduced the presence
(12:56):
of the older ones and new ones were added, either
by marriage or birth family gatherings were a being of
their own as they grew and changed with time, shifting
from what I first remember them being to what they
are today. The face has changed, the location has changed,
but the food mostly stays the same. We are creatures
(13:21):
of habit and while we can't control the progression of time,
we can control the menu. The staples of subtenance that
remind us that the pie were eating in twenty twenty
five could have been made from a recipe from many
generations before. The connections between now and then are subtle
and endearingly timeless. It may be cooking that gets me
(13:44):
to the table, but the people I share it with
is what keeps me in my chair. My mother asked
me once what she should get a lectures for Christmas,
and I didn't have a clue, And then I suggested
that she write down her recipe for cherry pie that
she's made me since I became a tax deduction. It
(14:04):
is my favorite pie. Not a cherry pie from the store,
not one from a restaurant, not one from a bakery,
the one she's been making me all my life. When
birthday time came around, there may not have been a
lot to go around as far as presence went, but
the birthday person got depict their favorite meal to share
(14:25):
with the rest of the family, and the dessert. Mine
was a lead pipe cinch. Every year you could bet
on it and you'd win fried chicken, biscuits, gravy mash, taters,
english peas, and cherry pie. That was it. Every year
I lived at home. The year I turned sixteen, I
(14:46):
asked her to make me two cherry pies, and she did,
and they had had just enough time to cool off
when I walked in the kitchen from whatever I was
doing outside before suppering. I saw the pie sitting on
the table, and I asked her if I could have
one piece before supper, since I was the birthday boy,
and she said, well, I guess so one of them
(15:07):
is yours. You go ahead. She poured me a glass
of sweet milk, and I got a fork, and I
sat down at the table and the first bite I
took came right out of the middle. She leaned up
against the counter to watch, and I didn't stop until
I hit the whole thing. It was one piece of
pie that just happened to be as big as the
(15:28):
dish it was baked in. Happy birthday, Brent. Now that
recipe is framed and it sits in our kitchen, special
occasions and holidays will have alexis moving gracefully around the kitchen,
measuring flour and rolling out door free heating the oven.
It's as good as my mama's in it. It might
even be better. But I'm not sure if it's the
(15:50):
taste or the triggering response of nostalgia that makes it
so good. Coun'try cooking so much more than the culmination
of ingredients and heat. It's an excuse for us to
be together. Now. I can't speak for anything above the
Mason Dixon line, but I can only assume the similarities
would be more than coincidental. I learned full well that
(16:12):
outside of the differences in how we talk and the
foods we eat, sentiment is the same down here. You
never get invited to do anything that doesn't usually involve
or revolve around food. A fish fry, crawfish boil pot
looks up for all occasions and maybe even excuses to
(16:33):
gather with family and friends. And since we all got
to eat, why don't we just do it all? Visit,
cook and eat the recipe that my mama wrote down
for Alexis will one day belong to Bailey. I have
my dad's handwritten barbecue sauce recipe that he wrote down
for a family friend many years ago. She ran across
(16:55):
it and sent it to me, and I believe those
items are meant to be shared amongst the family, not
only to enjoy, but to have that link to the
past that goes beyond memories and even pictures. I can
imagine and remember what it sounded like to hear my Mama,
Slye and all the other ladies in the kitchen. But
when we're frying chicken in my home now, I have
(17:18):
a tangible link to the past that, even though I
can't see it, it is as real to me as
it can get outside of physically being there back in time.
There is a direct correlation between smells and memory, and
there's a good reason for it too. Check this out.
It's called the Prowsed effect or prows phenomenon, and it
(17:40):
occurs when you experience a vivid, emotional, autobiographical memory that's
triggered by a sensory experience, particularly a smell or a taste.
It can be both positive and unfortunately, it can be
negative too, But In our case, it's all intertwined with
the feeling of home, and that's where the term comfort
(18:02):
food comes from. But it may be entirely different depending
on where you're from. On the ride back to the
airport from the Canam event in Connecticut, I was riding
with a daughter and a dad from Missouri and a
lady from Australia. The event only lasted a day and
a half, so when we weren't learning all about the
new Canam, we were learning about each other, and the
(18:26):
hour and a half ride back to the airport was
one of my favorite parts of the trip. I've always
been fascinated with Australia and I couldn't have been talking
to a better representative of the land down Under than
Miss Jessica Edwards or jel Rue Jess as she's known
on Instagram, just as as country as corn bread, and
(18:49):
was overwhelmingly intrigued to learn about our way life. She
wanted to know about the things we ate and how
we prepared them, and as we talked, I watched our
driver list in complete silence for an hour and a half.
He negotiated through the quiet little towns, forested mountains and
pasted the well groomed yards of houses that didn't have
(19:10):
front porches. As we talked, I thought to myself as
we passed home after home, where in the world their
hounds sleep. Then I realized mine usually sleeps on the
floor of my room or on my side of the
bed while I'm on the road. But still the absence
of front porches on the homes puzzled me. Still does
(19:31):
I bet someone listening has an answer, so let me know. Anyway,
I mentioned eating bullfrogs, and that brought on a conversation
about the many ways to eat them, along with squirrels, deer, elk, coons,
and bears. She was in an absolute delight to talk to,
and her accent was superb. She mentioned something about my accent.
(19:52):
I smiled and nodded politely, but I'm still not sure
what she was talking about. Accent, what accent? Anyway, about
five minutes before we piled out of that suv at
the airport, our driver spoke up and, in a very
Northeastern accent of his own, he thank He thanked us
for the hour and a half lesson on hunting, fishing,
(20:14):
and the eating of animals he'd never thought would be
on a menu in any country, especially his own. But
it doesn't have to be critics from the country. I
was in Pennsylvania with Alexis and Bailey last year and
my Case family in the beautiful town of Bradford. And
for the uninitiated, Bradford, Pa is where my champions of
(20:38):
goodness dip buckets of case pocket knives out of the
every flowd knife spring the Case brothers discovered back before
the turn of the twentieth century. There it's a variety
of foods with Italian and German influences and some of
their own making. Doesn't matter really what it is or
where it is, where it came from, now, that's important,
(21:03):
just like where we come from. And if you dig
far enough in your past, you're gonna find a link
to the country and the food you eat. It may
not even be in this country. It might be Italy,
Germany or even Australia. I hope that one day, one
hundred years from now, descended of mine gets a cherry
pie for his birthday, made from the recipe that's framed
(21:26):
and sitting on the counter in our kitchen. I actually
hope they get two and that person eats one of
them all by hisself. I hope you've enjoyed a little
look at country cooking this week, and I appreciate so
much all of you. Give it a meat, Lake and
Clay some of your time here on the Bed Greas
Channel until next week. This is Brent Reeves, sign it off.
(21:50):
Y'all be careful.
Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lighting and just in general
country living. I want you to stay a while as
I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life
is presented by Case Knives from the Store More Studio
on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor
(00:26):
podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab
a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores
to share Country cooking, y'all, pull up a chair. It's
time to eat. Did you notice that I didn't ask
(00:46):
you if you were hungry? I walked out on the
porch one time to tell my dad that supper was ready.
I said, Dad, food's ready. Are you hungry? And he
responded with what's hungry? You got to do with it? Now?
I never made that mistake again. It would just holler,
come eat when it was time. Now. I bet I've
(01:07):
told that story a million times because I've had some
of you folks say it back to me, bears repeating,
because I like to hear that story too. And we're
going to talk all about victuals this week. But first
I'm going to tell you a story. Now, this may
(01:28):
be a stretch for the theme of this week's struggle
since I'm talking about country cooking. But there is food
in this story kind of and it's one of my favorites,
not food but story that is. Also it's my show
and I pretty well make all the rules. So with
that said, here we go. My oldest brother, Tim was
(01:53):
on a school bus coming home from a high school
football game. The whole Rising wild Cat team was on there,
including the coaches. Now, they just put a beat down
on the Junction City Dragons. The year was nineteen seventy two.
Junction City is in Union County and sets on the
(02:15):
Arkansas and Louisiana state line, with Third Street running east
and west along the border separating both towns. That's right
plural because Junction City, Louisiana, well it starts where Junction City,
Arkansas stops. Anyway, Tim said it was thirteen to nothing
(02:36):
when the horn sounded at the end of the fourth quarter,
and we'd whooped them pretty good. Some disgruntled Junction City
in chunked a brick through the window of the bus
on their way out of town, but it didn't change
the score. Now, when I was a lawman down in
Union County. Some thirty years after that fateful Friday night
(02:57):
under the lights, I found the folks of Function City
to be somewhat more hospitable, most of them anyway. But
that night the victorious Wildcats were making tracks north Horizon.
The seat of government for Cleveland County was w number
five in what would wind up being one of eight
(03:19):
in a nine game season. Tim said frivolity was rampant
on that bus for the first forty five minutes or so,
as he and his teammates celebrating beating the dragons and
surviving the brick, and then the monotonous drone of the
bus engine and darkness of rural Arkansas lulled the tired
(03:40):
players into quiet. They slept the dreamless sleep of victors
on their triumphant return from battle. Most of them, anyway.
Tim and his seat mate were awake, wide awake, and
whispering back and forth about anything and everything. And it
was during this quiet time when Tim felt something under
(04:01):
his foot. Bending over, he retrieved a discarded can of
Frieto's bean dip. The can had been opened and left
on the bus, defining whomever was responsible for cleaning the
bus For quite some time, Tim said, The occasional light
from passing cars shine through the bus window and lit
(04:22):
up that can well enough that he could see a
liquid had started to form as it decomposed in the
can that was almost full of what had initially been
intended for human consumption. What it had morphed into over
time resembled more what you might find in a baby's
diaper after feeding him a diet of bean dip. A
(04:47):
pair of fifteen year old boys saw an opportunity, an
opportunity to play a prank on their teammates by sharing
their found treasure amongst the rest of the team. So,
with the ai of waxed paper drinking cups torn to
resemble those little wooden spoons you get with portions of
complimentary ice cream, Tim began launching the free Doo free
(05:10):
Holy bombs over his shoulder towards the back of the bus,
and a squad of unsuspecting travelers, volley after volley of
weapons grade pinto bean contaminants, arched their way rearward towards
their hapless victims. Tim said, I don't know how long
I'd been chunking them back there, but by the time
(05:31):
we got to Hampton, about forty five minutes from Junction City.
I was all out of bean dep As the bus
passed through the little town, the street lights lit up
the interior bout the same time, the folks in the
back of the bus began to wake up and see
and feel what had befallen them. Coach Somebody's throwing crap.
(05:52):
Tim and his coke and spirator laughed quietly and giggled
as they looked around at the carnage they'd unleast seeing
that a large of their artillery fire had stuck to
the ceiling and was falling off onto the folks in
the back, who were beyond disgusted and furious at the
thought of what was now all over them. They got
(06:14):
the full effect an hour later when they pulled up
to the fieldhouse and Coach Hendricks turned on the bus lights.
Tim said, you just don't realize how much bean dip
is in one of those cans until you start slinging
it all over creation. Now, he said, his friends were
wiping it off their clothes and trying to get it
(06:36):
out of the hair while not puke it all over
each other until they realized what it actually was and wasn't.
But like any wartime secret loose lips sink ships, and
Tim's battle buddy told someone they'd done it, and in
short order Coach Hendrix had cracked the case and issued
(06:58):
out some bombs of his own. Upon on, Tim and
his blabbermouthed partner's posterior. Early the next morning, they were
at the bushyard with cleaning supplies, skyring the interior of
that bus from one end to the other. To this day,
Tim says, really, you have no idea how much bean
dip is in one of those cans. You really don't.
(07:22):
And that's just how that happened. First of all, entitling
this episode as country cooking is. It's only semantics is
to get your attention that what we're talking about it.
It should really just be called cooking, because that's the
(07:43):
only kind of cooking I know. I doubt the folks
in China or Mexico call their food Chinese or Mexican.
And I realize there are different areas of the US
with the ethnic and regionally buys foods and recipes. I
happen to be a fan of both of those his cuisine,
But when it comes down to sitting at the table
(08:04):
with family and friends. The food on the table usually
represents where I'm from and could actually be a form
of identification. Last week, I had the fortune of being
a guest of Canam up in Connecticut with my colleagues
Matt Miller and Ryan Callahan. We were up there for
the unveiling of the twenty twenty six Canam Defender, which
(08:27):
is pretty sweet, by the way, but Connecticut is an
absolutely beautiful place with some really nice folks. And Ryan
and I were discussing the local trout streams we've seen
which guide us onto other types of fishing, and talking
about like what I do here in Arkansas, and I
told Ryan that I love fish. I could eat fish
(08:48):
every day and had eaten it three out of the
five days before joining him and Matthew up in the
Constitution State. Now, Ryan, he's a smart guy, a real
smart guy. But he asked me the dumbest question I've
been asking quite some time when he said, what all
ways do you cook them? Ways? What other ways are there? Right?
(09:13):
There's two ways to eat fish where I come from.
That's the traditional way of deep frying them with a
corn meal bread. Or if you're looking for something different,
you might try taking a bite out of one before
you take the hook out of his mouth and drop
it into the ice chest. That's always been the options
around the Ponderosa riding fried or fried man. Come on, now,
(09:36):
there are arguments for baked and seared fish, and even
for somewhat. A friend fixed from me on an offshore
fishing trip last October that I called raw and he
called savice, regardless of what you called it. I was
sure I was going to get worms after I had it,
but alas I did not. Also, it really tasted pretty good.
(10:00):
But there's a comfort to country cooking, I guess, a
quiet goodness of familiarity that speaks of country food not
as a collection of recipes, but as an enduring language
of love and memory. A pan of corn bread paired
with purple whole peas, butter beans or pento beans says
(10:20):
as much about where you're from where I live as
poutine and butter tart says about my hockey playing friends
way up in the Great White North. Growing up, if
we were headed to Mama's slice House for dinner after church,
you could guarantee the head count and the chicken coop
was going to be minus at least three. When roosting
time came that evening a big cast iron skilled of hers,
(10:44):
having done quite a number on a toasac full of
chicken parts, she'd run through a buttermilk and seasoned flour bath.
Good night, nurse, I can smell it cooking right now.
There'd be vegetables and potatoes and biscuits and gravy of
that terrible Hoover gravy. Hoover gravy was named after President
(11:05):
Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression, when folks didn't have
milk to add to the flyer increase to make gravy,
so they substituted water. Let me tell you that is
not a good substitution as far as I know. President
Hoover had two things named after him, the Hoover Dam
and Hoover gravy. One of them saw one hundred and
(11:26):
thirty eight people died during this construction. The other makes
me want to die after I try to eat it.
It's terrible, and milk during the Depression from my family
was as close as the barn out back. I had
a couple more examples of parallels for the names Hoover
Dam the Hoover gravy, But I'm trying to keep the
cussing on here at zero and saying hoover gravy without
(11:49):
including the term for a water control structure. It is
hard enough that gum was awful, But I think a
big part of the cooking experience, especially when I think
about mama slies kitchen centers. Around any holiday, when the
whole family would gather to visit and eat, all the
grown ladies of the family would be busy as bees
(12:12):
in the kitchen, a mama sly right in the middle,
navigating a tight space with the coordination of a well
old machine. Regardless of what was cooking, the feelings and
the sounds were the same. Laughter, joy and reverence and
love poured out of that kitchen more than the food
they were preparing. Mamasly, I'm hungry, it'll be ready, directly,
(12:36):
get outside and on slammed screen out we'd go starving
and feeling nearly dead from a lack of groceries. The
meal you could count on as being almost as satisfied
as the socializing, but that wouldn't be realized until later
in life, when one by one, time reduced the presence
(12:56):
of the older ones and new ones were added, either
by marriage or birth family gatherings were a being of
their own as they grew and changed with time, shifting
from what I first remember them being to what they
are today. The face has changed, the location has changed,
but the food mostly stays the same. We are creatures
(13:21):
of habit and while we can't control the progression of time,
we can control the menu. The staples of subtenance that
remind us that the pie were eating in twenty twenty
five could have been made from a recipe from many
generations before. The connections between now and then are subtle
and endearingly timeless. It may be cooking that gets me
(13:44):
to the table, but the people I share it with
is what keeps me in my chair. My mother asked
me once what she should get a lectures for Christmas,
and I didn't have a clue, And then I suggested
that she write down her recipe for cherry pie that
she's made me since I became a tax deduction. It
(14:04):
is my favorite pie. Not a cherry pie from the store,
not one from a restaurant, not one from a bakery,
the one she's been making me all my life. When
birthday time came around, there may not have been a
lot to go around as far as presence went, but
the birthday person got depict their favorite meal to share
(14:25):
with the rest of the family, and the dessert. Mine
was a lead pipe cinch. Every year you could bet
on it and you'd win fried chicken, biscuits, gravy mash, taters,
english peas, and cherry pie. That was it. Every year
I lived at home. The year I turned sixteen, I
(14:46):
asked her to make me two cherry pies, and she did,
and they had had just enough time to cool off
when I walked in the kitchen from whatever I was
doing outside before suppering. I saw the pie sitting on
the table, and I asked her if I could have
one piece before supper, since I was the birthday boy,
and she said, well, I guess so one of them
(15:07):
is yours. You go ahead. She poured me a glass
of sweet milk, and I got a fork, and I
sat down at the table and the first bite I
took came right out of the middle. She leaned up
against the counter to watch, and I didn't stop until
I hit the whole thing. It was one piece of
pie that just happened to be as big as the
(15:28):
dish it was baked in. Happy birthday, Brent. Now that
recipe is framed and it sits in our kitchen, special
occasions and holidays will have alexis moving gracefully around the kitchen,
measuring flour and rolling out door free heating the oven.
It's as good as my mama's in it. It might
even be better. But I'm not sure if it's the
(15:50):
taste or the triggering response of nostalgia that makes it
so good. Coun'try cooking so much more than the culmination
of ingredients and heat. It's an excuse for us to
be together. Now. I can't speak for anything above the
Mason Dixon line, but I can only assume the similarities
would be more than coincidental. I learned full well that
(16:12):
outside of the differences in how we talk and the
foods we eat, sentiment is the same down here. You
never get invited to do anything that doesn't usually involve
or revolve around food. A fish fry, crawfish boil pot
looks up for all occasions and maybe even excuses to
(16:33):
gather with family and friends. And since we all got
to eat, why don't we just do it all? Visit,
cook and eat the recipe that my mama wrote down
for Alexis will one day belong to Bailey. I have
my dad's handwritten barbecue sauce recipe that he wrote down
for a family friend many years ago. She ran across
(16:55):
it and sent it to me, and I believe those
items are meant to be shared amongst the family, not
only to enjoy, but to have that link to the
past that goes beyond memories and even pictures. I can
imagine and remember what it sounded like to hear my Mama,
Slye and all the other ladies in the kitchen. But
when we're frying chicken in my home now, I have
(17:18):
a tangible link to the past that, even though I
can't see it, it is as real to me as
it can get outside of physically being there back in time.
There is a direct correlation between smells and memory, and
there's a good reason for it too. Check this out.
It's called the Prowsed effect or prows phenomenon, and it
(17:40):
occurs when you experience a vivid, emotional, autobiographical memory that's
triggered by a sensory experience, particularly a smell or a taste.
It can be both positive and unfortunately, it can be
negative too, But In our case, it's all intertwined with
the feeling of home, and that's where the term comfort
(18:02):
food comes from. But it may be entirely different depending
on where you're from. On the ride back to the
airport from the Canam event in Connecticut, I was riding
with a daughter and a dad from Missouri and a
lady from Australia. The event only lasted a day and
a half, so when we weren't learning all about the
new Canam, we were learning about each other, and the
(18:26):
hour and a half ride back to the airport was
one of my favorite parts of the trip. I've always
been fascinated with Australia and I couldn't have been talking
to a better representative of the land down Under than
Miss Jessica Edwards or jel Rue Jess as she's known
on Instagram, just as as country as corn bread, and
(18:49):
was overwhelmingly intrigued to learn about our way life. She
wanted to know about the things we ate and how
we prepared them, and as we talked, I watched our
driver list in complete silence for an hour and a half.
He negotiated through the quiet little towns, forested mountains and
pasted the well groomed yards of houses that didn't have
(19:10):
front porches. As we talked, I thought to myself as
we passed home after home, where in the world their
hounds sleep. Then I realized mine usually sleeps on the
floor of my room or on my side of the
bed while I'm on the road. But still the absence
of front porches on the homes puzzled me. Still does
(19:31):
I bet someone listening has an answer, so let me know. Anyway,
I mentioned eating bullfrogs, and that brought on a conversation
about the many ways to eat them, along with squirrels, deer, elk, coons,
and bears. She was in an absolute delight to talk to,
and her accent was superb. She mentioned something about my accent.
(19:52):
I smiled and nodded politely, but I'm still not sure
what she was talking about. Accent, what accent? Anyway, about
five minutes before we piled out of that suv at
the airport, our driver spoke up and, in a very
Northeastern accent of his own, he thank He thanked us
for the hour and a half lesson on hunting, fishing,
(20:14):
and the eating of animals he'd never thought would be
on a menu in any country, especially his own. But
it doesn't have to be critics from the country. I
was in Pennsylvania with Alexis and Bailey last year and
my Case family in the beautiful town of Bradford. And
for the uninitiated, Bradford, Pa is where my champions of
(20:38):
goodness dip buckets of case pocket knives out of the
every flowd knife spring the Case brothers discovered back before
the turn of the twentieth century. There it's a variety
of foods with Italian and German influences and some of
their own making. Doesn't matter really what it is or
where it is, where it came from, now, that's important,
(21:03):
just like where we come from. And if you dig
far enough in your past, you're gonna find a link
to the country and the food you eat. It may
not even be in this country. It might be Italy,
Germany or even Australia. I hope that one day, one
hundred years from now, descended of mine gets a cherry
pie for his birthday, made from the recipe that's framed
(21:26):
and sitting on the counter in our kitchen. I actually
hope they get two and that person eats one of
them all by hisself. I hope you've enjoyed a little
look at country cooking this week, and I appreciate so
much all of you. Give it a meat, Lake and
Clay some of your time here on the Bed Greas
Channel until next week. This is Brent Reeves, sign it off.
(21:50):
Y'all be careful.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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