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Tasty
and teary food memories
Buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy—a staple of the Appalachian
culture. A traditional meal for country cook’in the mornings.
And my mother made the dynamic duo from scratch. Biscuits: flour,
shortening, and buttermilk. For a season, she baked the store-bought
biscuits from a canister, but returned to homemade. Sausage gravy:
flour, milk, butter, salt, pepper. Fried apples functioned as a side
dish.
Recently, I decided it was time. Biscuits and gravy were calling. It
would be another step toward living in a world without my mother. A
world without her homemade breakfast and brunch get-togethers. The
Appalachian queen of biscuits and gravy died May 3, 2017.
And so I drove to the best place around to order the culinary
combination. It was early and quiet in the restaurant. The main dish
arrived shortly after ordering.
Starring at the plate and bowl, my mind replayed a video of memories.
The sense of smell is the strongest sensory memory and it transported
me back into another time and another place. Food memories are often
bittersweet. Mom standing at the stove stirring her concoction in an
iron skillet. Opening the oven door to make sure the biscuits didn’t
burn. So many conversations over biscuits and gravy. As a youngster,
not once did I consider that one day she would die unexpectedly.
Feelings flooded in from my food memories. I wanted to look across the
table and see my mom. And thank her for the bazillion biscuits she’d
baked over her lifetime.
Noticing the apple butter condiment, another memory popped up. My
grandmother and mother washing, peeling, slicing, and dumping apples
into an outdoor iron cauldron. Adding brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt.
Stirring and talking the entire afternoon. Mother-in-law and
daughter-in-law; the best of friends. The aroma of apples and cinnamon
filled the air as the mixture boiled and bubbled. As a youngster, not
once did I consider that one day they both would pass away.
“These days, apple butter is mostly produced at community
get-togethers, fall festivals and courtyards of aging country churches,
but a hundred years ago producing apple butter was a family event,”
according to a 2018 article inAppalachian Magazine.
Berkeley Springs, West Virginia and Grand Rapids, Ohio has an annual
apple butter festival. There is also an Apple Butter Stir Off held on
the first weekend in October in Belpre, Ohio.
Before bakeries and Betty Crocker arrived, breakfast items were made
from scratch in cozy kitchens. Extravagant dinning rooms did not exist
in most Appalachian homes.
“What we eat and how we cook our food tells a story about who we are,
where we've come from and what we care about. Our food also connects us
to other people — family and friends with whom we share our meals.
That’s why our favorite dishes often stir up strong memories of people
we love,” according to a 2017 article on NPR.
Tasty memories. Teary memories. The past lives on in the deep alcove of
my mind. Paying the bill, I leave the restaurant with my memories and a
doggy bag with a leftover biscuit.
My next memory meal will be cornbread and brown beans.
“The food memories will remain. There must be a corner table in heaven;
a place where one can meet with those we’ll forever love. A place where
food memories come to life once more,” penned Sandra Gutierrez.
Melissa Martin, PhD, is an author, columnist, educator, and therapist.
She lives in Southern Ohio.
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