Deep South Memories and Sunday Dinners

In keeping with Mother's Day down south, I cooked a traditional Sunday dinner the way my mother, grandmother, and aunts used to do. Fresh collard greens, cornbread, beef with pan drippings, and white rice. I tried brown rice for several years, and it's... okay. But it just doesn't have the right taste with the rest of southern home-cooked dinners.

My mother would start cooking Sunday dinner on Saturday evenings around 6 pm or so. By 11 pm everything was done. All we did after church, oh, you were going to church, was heat and eat. Here is mama before I was born working in a garden shared by several neighbors back in the day.

Like most of our neighbors, mama came from a rural upbringing and farming was natural. Even moving to a small city, most folks had gardens and chickens back then. S

So, inspired by childhood memories I decided to go back to the good old southern tradition. I stripped the collard leaves from tough stems and washed them good. Sauteed garlic and bacon, added chicken broth to the pot, and then put the greens in. No frozen greens for me. They don't taste the same anyway. Mixed up batter for skillet cornbread from scratch, no pre-mix. Put a small cut of beef in the roaster after browning stove top, added broth and Worcestershire to enhance the pan drippings. Cooked a pot of white rice. My house smelled just the way our kitchen smelled when I was a kid. The food, especially the greens, came out great!

But whew, I'm tired! The greens had to cook for at least 2 hours to be tender. Meanwhile I mixed up the batter, put the meat in the roaster, and finally put the rice on. Then I fried up a skillet cornbread pancake. All of which reminded me that cooking is hard work. That was one exhausting trip down memory lane y'all. 

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day!