I once read a book called "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" by Anne Tyler and the title intrigued me. I think often of foods we ate when I was growing up and I get "homesick" for some of them. Unfortunately my husband Jim did not grow up eating the same southern dishes I enjoyed so I don't prepare my favorites too often. He does admit to enjoying fried canned salmon patties.
Last night at a Chamber of Commerce "Taste of Elba" dinner where many local restaurants served their specialities, I latched onto one of my childhood favorites - rice and tomatoes. Mama Wilson made the best, and it always had a lot of black pepper in it, and was probably seasoned with lots of butter and chicken stock. Mama was a good Cajun cook although she lived all her live in rural south Alabama.
What I don't miss is having to chase the chickens to have for a meal. Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off? When I was a young girl, we would catch a chicken from the yard, and that chicken would have the "honor" of being our Sunday lunch. Sometimes we would just "ring the neck", but other times we would actually cut the chicken's head off by placing the head of the chicken on a block of wood and actually chopping the head off with a hatchet or ax. I did NOT like doing this! But I loved fried chicken or chicken and dumplings (and still do).
Of course, we use the saying "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" to imply a lot of "activity", but no real "direction"! If you're like me, you probably feel like you're racing about like that proverbial chicken. Life just has too many options, too much stuff, and sometimes way too many issues that demand our attention. This shouldn't be the case of retired people. I wonder how we ever found time to "work".
When we have family coming to visit us I start getting food ready to bring the family together over food. I go to Kelley Foods to get the delicious sausage we grew up on, and their good hams. Then I make sure I have peas and butterbeans (no okra, please!). I buy extra fine corn meal to make hoecake (cornbread). And lots of cookies and other desserts they relate to "home cooking".
I guess I related to the book since Ezra Tull tried using the restaurant to get his family together as his mother Pearl was dying. What a dysfunctional family in that book. Ours isn't anything like that. We all love one another and love to eat and get together - every chance we get.
Okay, Judy and Guy, the homesick cafe will be in business the 2nd week of October when you travel north from central FL to visit us for our little country school reunion. You will find all your favorite foods on the table that day. There will probably be a big pan of fried fatback for everybody to enjoy and chicken and dumplings.
