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Remembering Grandmomma (Adella VonCassie Smith) One of the things I remember about my grandmother was her cooking. On Saturday mornings, we had streak-of-lean (that's thick slices of bacon for the young crowd), eggs, rice, biscuits, and homemade apple butter. Sunday morning breakfast was fried chicken, biscuits, rice and gravy. Grandmomma made the best biscuits. Over the years I have tried to duplicate them without success. She would put flour, baking powder and salt into a sifter and sifted it into a bowl. Then she added shortening (lard is what it was called then). She used a knife to cut the shortening into the flour mixture until it was real coarse then she added buttermilk and mixed it with her hand. She kneaded the dough until it was just right, adding more milk or flour as needed. Then, using a wooden rolling pin that had been dusted with flour, she rolled the dough on a cloth that had also been dusted with flour. The cloth was really a flour sack that had been turned inside out and was used only for rolling dough. She used a biscuit cutter or sometimes a glass, to shape the perfect biscuit. I remember the "Poo" sound the dough would make when the biscuits were being cut. My dough never made that sound. When those biscuits came out of the oven they were as light as a feather. They would literally melt in your mouth. If you would spread a little butter on a biscuit you were in heaven. Grandmomma cooked on a wooden stove most of her life. I remember when she and Granddaddy built their new house it required a gas stove that she didn't like that too much but she adjusted. I always wanted a biscuit from Grandmomma even when I was grown with children of my own. Over the years Grandmomma babysat one or the other of my children during the day. I was usually running late for work when I dropped them off, but Grandmomma almost always had a warm biscuit wrapped up for me to eat on the way to the office. Berry cobbler, sweet potato cobbler, and fruit cobbler were all time favorites. There was a field in front of one of the three houses that I remember my Grandmomma and Granddaddy living in and in the field was a patch of wild blackberries. I remember Grandmomma, my brother Darryl and I picking blackberries. Some she used for a cobbler right away and some she put into a mason jar for later use. The cobblers were beyond description. The crust was light, a flaky variation of her biscuits. The filling was sweet and bubbly and if you got a piece of the cobbler when it was warm from the oven it was pure ecstasy. Also in that field was rabbit tobacco. Grandmomma would make a tea from that plant that was good for some type of ailment but I can't remember what. It did taste good though. I had a friend named Theresa Rawls and together we tried to smoke rabbit tobacco wrapped in brown paper. We would have gotten away with it except for the ducks that Grandmomma raised in the backyard. We hid back there to smoke and nearly choked. Our coughing and gagging set the ducks to quacking and Grandmomma came out of the house to see what was wrong with them. She was very protective of her ducks but not so protective of my rear end when she saw what was going on. Needless to say, I didn't smoke rabbit tobacco around the ducks after that. Another thing Grandmomma could do was iron. Granddaddy was what kids today call "all that". Even though he worked in a pipe shop I never saw the man dirty. Grandmomma kept his clothes washed, starched, and pressed so neat that the creases in his pants could cut meat. That is another amazing thing because until they built their house, Grandmomma used a "flat iron". That was a cast iron iron that you heated on the stove. She washed by hand using a rubbing board and a Number 10 tub. She used boxed starch to get that crisp look. There was a brand of starch called Argo that came in broken chunks. She put the starch in a pan of water on the stove and stirred it until she got the consistency she wanted. She poured the starch in the rinse water, dipped the clothes in and then hung them outside to dry. Sometimes the clothes that were to be ironed were taken from the clothesline while still damp. She rolled the clothes into balls to keep them moist for ironing. If the clothes got completely dry they were sprinkled with water just before and during ironing. |