Feeders

I am stealing from Sean Dietrich again today. Can't help it. I am head over heels in love with this man, his writing, his wife, Jamie, his hound dog, Ellie Mae, and his drawings. I will confess to him that I am using him as my guest blogger once again. I can't help it with this morning's story that popped up first thing in Facebook. Even FB knows of my love for Sean. He takes me back to my small town childhood. Sends me right up 1-40, takes the Bakersville Spruce Pine Burnsville exit and points me up the "mountain." He conjures up Mama Mildred, my Granny, my Grandma Christine, my aunt Jeannette, my mutt Poochie Pie Bell, the church ladies who are still cooking for funerals at Liberty Hill Baptist Church and First Baptist Church. He recently wrote about the death of Rev. Billy Graham and made me realize that the Crusades that I attended and watched on TV sitting on the sofa with Grandma Christine were not just for us North Carolina mountain folk. They even knew him in Alabama? Whoa. Really? Anyway, a while back I wrote about cookers and eaters. Sean made me realize that there is a third category-- feeders. (There are also lookers in there somewhere, but I am leery of people who just look...) So without further ado, friends, here are Sean's musings for today. After this, I will set out the butter and eggs to come to room temperature to concoct my own pound cake. Pound cake is known to cure just about anything. Seriously. Sending you hugs, Mama Mildred. Wish I could do it in person. With a big slice of pound cake just for you.

I am in the kitchen with an elderly woman named Pauline. And, dear Lord, can she cook.

Her son, Don, brought me here. He tells me his mother’s downhome fare is good enough to coax even the most depraved human being into behaving like a Pentecostal.

This is Pauline’s old home. She raised a family here. She doesn’t live here anymore, she’s too old. She’s in the retirement home.

This house sits vacant most of the time. Old photos line the walls. Bed sheets cover furniture. The last time they used this place was for a family reunion last year.

I arrive at eight in the morning. The smell of bacon hits me like a freight train. Crackling eggs. Biscuits. Grits. Holy Chet Atkins, I’m home.

Pauline is wearing 1962—red polka-dot apron, pearls. She’s all business. The woman is a feeder. If you don’t know what that is, have a seat at her table.

Her food is breathtaking. Her grits contain so much butter I need to say three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers when I'm finished.

After breakfast, she takes a breather. We wash dishes.

“Now,” she announces. “Let the REAL cooking begin.”

Class is in session.

I’m here as an observer, watching a feeder teach her son to make pound cake. It's a private moment. I feel privileged to see it.

Don is beside her, paying attention. She uses no recipes. She goes by feel.

“See,” Don tells me, “I always wanted to learn Mama’s poundcake. It’s the best there is, ask anyone, I just wanna carry on her legacy.”

You’ve never met her, but you already know her legacy. She represents every kitchen queen there ever was.

She is frilly aprons, Thursday-night Civic League, pear salad with cherries and shredded cheese on top, and an accent that makes your heart sore.

She cooks by handfuls, gut feelings, intuition, and can cure broken hearts with enough bacon grease.

Pauline learned to cook when she was ten. As a girl, she fed six brothers. As a married woman; three sons and a husband. Her whole life has been behind a stove.

“It’s what I am,” she says. “I feed folks.”

Her hands don’t work like they used to, and she gets winded after talking too much. She is not just an old woman. She is old America.

Her husband was a pipe welder—the backbone of this country. Pauline was his lumbar muscles.

Every day, another elderly woman like her crosses The River and the world loses another recipe index.

Pillsbury tube-biscuits are taking over the universe. Shoot me.

After a full day of baking, Don is testing his pound cake. His mother samples bites like a county-fair judge.

It’s impossible not to smile in this kitchen.

The old woman chews slow. “You DID it,” she says. “I’m so proud of you, Donnie.”

Don becomes “Donnie” again. I see it on his face. Even though he’s old enough to file for AARP, Mama's pride reduces all grown men into little boys.

She kisses him. The day is over. They send two cakes home with me. They shut the lights off to a vacant house.

I’m eating cake while writing you. My lap is littered with crumbs. I’m no expert, but this cake has a familiar taste. I can’t pinpoint the flavor. It hits the gut first. It’s sweet.

I know what it is.

This cake was made with the same ingredient all feeders use. The only ingredient that matters in this life.

Hug your mother today, if you have one.

Thank you, Sean!

Mama Mildred recently passed on this well-worn cookbook to me. She worked at Baxter's for several years and we used this cookbook extensively when I was growing up. My sister and I hand wrote quite a few recipes in it on blank pages, including this one:

Mahogany Pound Cake

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

6 eggs, room temperature, separated

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1 cup sour cream

1/4 teaspoon bkaing soda

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream butter; gradually add sugars, beating well at medium speed. Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating after each addition. Sift flour and cocoa together. Combine sour cream and baking soda. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour. Mix just until blended after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form; fold into batter. Spoon into a greased and floured 10-inch tube pan. Bake at 325˚ for 1 hour and 15 minutes for until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes; remove from pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Bon appétit to all feeders out there. There is a special place in heaven for you. With a tricked out kitchen and a never-ending supply of butter and eggs. 

You can take the girl out of the mountains...

I've written before about who I am.  The age old question.  The one I started contemplating around 6th or 7th grade.  Who am I?  But more importantly, what makes me me?  That question.  After spending a couple of days with my family last week, I've given more thought to where I am from.  I am from the Appalachian Mountains.  Western North Carolina.  The Blue Ridge Mountains.  I was born there and I spent my first 22 years living there.  I love the city I live in now, but I will always be a mountain girl at heart.

I was born in Spruce Pine Community Hospital.  The hospital was built some time between 1950 and 1958.  I know this because Roy Williams, the men's basketball coach at UNC-Chapel Hill, is from Spruce Pine, too, but he was born in Marion because Spruce Pine didn't have a hospital in 1950. It was built by the time I came along in July 1958.  Roy only spent 6 months in Spruce Pine, though, before moving on to Asheville. (I know this because when he was up for the Carolina job the first time, the sportscasters said he was from Spruce Pine.  I did not know that, so I called his secretary at Kansas and asked. Coach Williams was at the NCAA tournament she politely told me, but she would get back to me. And she did.) I lived there for 18 years, before moving on to Boone and then to Durham.  (Roy and I are practically neighbors, but we haven't run into each other at the grocery store or post office yet.)

      Photo: www.athletepromotions.com

I digress.  As usual.

I forget how much I miss the mountains until I go back to visit.  There is just something soothing about the views.  

After exiting Interstate 40 and driving around Marion, this is the stretch of mountain that you have to climb to get to Spruce Pine.  I don't really like this road.  Trucks can lose their brakes.  One of my cousins and her husband died that way about 30 years ago.  

The view at the top is pretty spectacular, though.  And worth the drive.

On the way out of town, before heading down the mountain, I took a little detour to visit with Miss Vicky at Big Lynn Lodge in Little Switzerland.  

In less than two months, my graduating class from Harris High School will hold our 40th Reunion at Big Lynn.  One of my classmates, PW, who lives in Texas and I are frantically trying to find the other 88 names on the back of the program from our Commencement Exercises held on May 28, 1976. 

We know that we have already lost at least six of our classmates, including my cousin, Kathy.  It is past time for a get-together.  It was nice to meet Miss Vicky and put a face to a name.

I was in the mountains to take my baby sister Moo to the hospital in Boone for sinus surgery.  I would post the photo she asked me to take post-surgery, but I think she would stop speaking to me.  And I do not want that to happen.  I am the only one of my siblings to leave Spruce Pine.  As a matter of fact, Mama Mildred, Sister Cindy, and Moo all live on the same street, Bell Street, named for my Papa.  On the way home from the hospital the day after the surgery, I couldn't resist pulling off in Linville for a couple of photos.  Moo was still pretty drugged, so she didn't object.  I spent three summers working in Linville at Eseeola Lodge as a waitress.

It is much fancier now, featuring a spa and an updated pool, as well as the golf course.  It also stays open longer, not just Memorial Day through Labor Day the way it did back in the '70's.  It was a great place to work and live.

One of my Lodge buddies, The Honorable JR, has a family home next to the Lodge.  I had to take a photo.

And my old friend, The Grandfather, is still lying there watching the clouds roll by and allowing hikers to climb all over him.

Although I have no photos to prove it, I don't think I've ever seen so many shades of green. The trees covering the mountains are leafing out.  Spring has hit the Appalachians.  Spring and fall put on magnificent shows of color up there.

I physically left 36 years ago, but my heart is and always will be there.  I hope that I appreciated the beauty that surrounded me for those 22 years, even while I dreamed of taking airplanes to faraway places.  I knew that I wanted a different life than I could have there. Marrying The Mailman (who, by the way, just happened to be bringing mail to my mom as I was leaving... bit unsettling to run into him after all these years) would not have been a good idea.  I needed a bigger world, a world where I could teach middle school French and make my own way.  Daddy didn't understand, but I think that he was proud of me.  Mama Mildred has always encouraged me to follow my dreams, even if that meant leaving the mountains.  I've never regretted the decision to leave, but I sure miss the views and my family.

While sitting around the table at Mama Mildred's house, I remembered to look through her tattered cookbook- the one she and Sister Cindy fight over- and find her favorite pound cake recipe.  I wrote it out in that cookbook for her, copying it from Southern Living magazine, she says.  I do not remember where she found it.  So, my kitchen smells like chocolate cake.  It just came out of the oven...

 (I took a croissant-making class yesterday at Sur La Table and was told that my goodies will bake better if they are not just placed on the wire rack in the oven, but on a "platform."  Thus the pizza stone. That is supposed to make them bake more evenly.  We shall see.)

The Ex-Ex will be eating chocolate cake for breakfast this week.

Mama Mildred's Mahogany Pound Cake

1 c. butter, softened

2 cups granulated sugar

1 c. firmly packed brown sugar

6 eggs, separated, at room temperature

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I use King Arthur's)

1/2 cup cocoa (the last of the box of Van Houten I brought home from France in January)

1 cup sour cream, at room temperature

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Butter and flour a 10-inch tube pan.  Set aside.

Cream butter; gradually add sugars, beating well at medium speed.

Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating after each addition.

Sift flour and cocoa together. 

Combine sour cream and baking soda.

Add flour mixture to creamed mixture, alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour, scraping down the bowl often. Mix just until blended after each addition.

Stir in vanilla.

Beat egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff peaks form.  Fold into the cake batter.

Spoon into the pan.

Place in cold oven, set the temperature to 325˚F and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. (I had to add 12 extra minutes.)

Cool in pan 10 minutes.

Remove from pan and let cool completely on wire rack.

Bon appétit to all my fellow mountaineers!  Enjoy the views wherever you are.  And eat more chocolate cake.  Life is short.