The Best Kept Secret of the South hint: It’s the food
I was born the fifth daughter on a working family farm that longed for sons, so I learned to make myself useful early by joining my mama in her kitchen. I helped her roll out dough for biscuits (and ate the raw scraps). I let her know when the water was boiling and ready for the grits, and later for the shrimp and the cheddar cheese. I let her throw salt into the boiling water and feel the steam on my face. My brown arms were dotted with white spots where grease from frying chicken landed on my skin. My mama didn’t use a measuring cup or teaspoon. Everything was a handful of this or a pinch of that and everything she fed us was delicious. She cooked with real butter and cheese and whole milk and fresh eggs. The vegetables came from her garden and the meat from her farm. She didn’t do low-fat or low-cal.
In her day and mine, a woman’s recipes were sacred, top-secret files; a weapon she used to show off at state and local fairs, and to get and keep her man. And in small
towns like ours, there was often a competition for the better-looking boys. Even a homely girl could catch a husband if she knew how to cook. So my mama didn’t
share her recipes with anyone, or invite other women into her kitchen, immediate family excepted, in-laws not. Family ate in the kitchen; guests ate in the dining room.
At my home it would be the same. For my own family I would come to prepare breakfast for my husband, son and daughter daily, lunch for my husband when he chose to come home from the office in the middle of the day, and supper for the four of us, seven days a week, 365 days a year. On their birthdays I prepared their favorite dishes and baked their favorite cake, pie or dessert. I hosted dinner parties for my husband’s bosses, barbecues for coworkers, neighbors and friends, and a get-together breakfast buffet every New Year’s Day. Even when we were on vacation, I was expected to prepare our meals. And I did. And they were good, tasty, flavorful dishes from recipes I found in The Joy of Cooking and on the backs of Campbell’s Soup cans, in magazines and newspapers, from my husband’s mother (when she was willing to share), from friends and from cookbooks friends and I later created to raise funds for local causes. We didn’t have the option to Google “chicken recipe” back then and finding good dishes was something of a scavenger hunt. I was always on the lookout for a new recipe.
People call me “Miss Georgia” because I’ve taken home so many prizes for cooking at the Annual State Fair. I’m too old to be bothered with that now. My family is grown
and raising children of their own, and my husband of 74 years recently died. At my age, I’m not looking for another man. He’d likely be a burden. Since I’m not
entering any more contests and my husband is no longer around, I’m opening up my recipe box and sharing its secrets. These are the recipes that landed and kept me a
husband, fed and nourished a family, and won prize after prize at the Annual State Fair.
This aint diet food so don’t ask me to count the fat and calories for you. You can look at the ingredients and decide on your own. This is good, down-home, delicious cooking that’ll make you glad you ate.
-Miss Georgia
