The Goat Pen

had the traditional news years dinner - black eyed peas, turnip greens, bacon in place of hog jowls, spiral sliced ham and mashed potato's.

I've really got into sugar glazed hams lately - you can pick up a half cut bone in ham for like $18 and you have so much left over afterwards you can makes sandwiches for a week.

yeah, but sugar-glazed ham makes for shitty sandwiches.

so you grew up eating (or being forced to eat) hog jowls on NY Day, too? did your dad bring home souse and eat it with saltines like my pappy did?

Saint wrote:yeah, but sugar-glazed ham makes for shitty sandwiches.

so you grew up eating (or being forced to eat) hog jowls on NY Day, too? did your dad bring home souse and eat it with saltines like my pappy did?

two meals and 4 sandwiches later, I don't care if I ever see another goddamned ham. It sounded like a good idea until I put it into practice.

That's one problem with having a depression era mother stay with you a week.

"You just gonna let that ham sit in there and go bad? How did that ham cost? $20? Lets make some more cornbread and have it for dinner tonight."

The final straw was her using the ham bone and cook a pot of white beans with it. Had those two nights in a row. We all just had to stay in separate rooms to avoid the farts coming in contact with each other.

Then she questions my manhood because I like "Yankee cornbread" - which apparently is fresh cornbread which is edible and not that pan fried crumbly ass shit I grew up attempting to eat. She tells me at the dinner table a few nights ago ...The reason we had cornbread so much is because the milk would go bad and I could use it in the cornbread and not have to throw it out."

WTF? I know we was poor but fuck--milk curry cornbread? no wonder I eat out so much.

A typical night was cornbread, salmon patties - mashed from a pink can and fried in a pan and white beans with a piece of ham or bacon to give it flavor. All those repressed childhood memories came flooding back to me after mom spent a week directing my wife in the kitchen.

"The final straw was her using the ham bone and cook a pot of white beans with it. Had those two nights in a row. We all just had to stay in separate rooms to avoid the farts coming in contact with each other."

That's just good ol depression era fun...

what about side meat? did you ever have those hard, greasy strips that resemble bacon but taste like pig ass and the hard strip on the outside will break a tooth?

Yeah, we had the fried cornbread as well as the special treat, flourbread. and boiled potatoes at every meal, plain unless you wanted to add salt or pepper. my mom always cut up potatoes and made french fries in the skillet. I don't think we started having bought frozen fries until I was in college. then there was fried herring, as despicable a food item as there is. just salty fried fish bones. I don't know how these people developed some of their dietary mores. must be the English heritage.

we only ate spaghetti when my dad was eating at the Moose Club since it burned his stomach. pizza was even rarer. the steaks on the grill were always sirloin and the salad dressing was either thousand island or french (although there used to be an oil-based french dressing my mom got at A&P that I loved but can't find anywhere...it's gone the way of Lemon Coolers)

" I don't know how these people developed some of their dietary mores."

I know where your fambly's food mores developed. You dad figured out what everybody liked and then forbade it. Pronounce forbade as "forbad"...

never had any kind of fish except the catfish we caught (dad went on a catfish bender for about 3 years - anything to fill in the space of actually having a real job) and salmon from a can. You know how at thanksgiving if your mom is feeling kind of lazy she just opens the can of cranberry jelly and plops it on a plate and it still retains the shape of the can - ridges and all? Hell, I probably thought that was what salmon was shaped liked growing up. I mean I guess I knew it was a fish but I'll be damned if I ever saw one that wasn't in a 12oz can.

Dad also at some point decided he wanted to corner the market on bar-b-q so we hand built a bar-b-q pit in the yard - not so much a pit but this tri-level brick monstrosity with a grate they used for drains in parking lots as the grill. So we go and build this monster but now I realize we didn't have they money to really buy the kind of meat you wanted to grill. But that didn't stop him from making me go out and split hickory logs into grill size pieces for coals to eat round and butt steaks, chicken thighs and pork steak.

Spaghetti was for homosexuals and italians. We didn't eat homo ethnic food for dinner - ever.

A treat was to go to Burger Chef until they raised the price of french fries to .79 cents which made Dad go into a tirade over 'its just a damn potato!" and he swore off hamburgers. After that he decided donuts was the family treat. Everyday after school I'd come home and there would be a bag of chocolate covered donuts on the table. I'd get to eat one after I unloaded a truck full of horse manure and spread it on the garden. I didn't have a choice about either one.

Our moose club , along with the eagles club would get raided about once every 2 years for serving alcohol . The eagles club was right across the street from the elementary school so the local temperance union didn't take kindly to people still recovering from bad weekend on Monday morning including our janitor who more than once was asleep in his car in their parking lot.

damn, I would have thought the Moose Lodge in KY was even more tolerant of alkyhawl. drinking and eating country shit like fish stew, fried herring and such was all that went on at the one here. they pooled their money and built a pool for members in the early '70s once the black kids started showing up at the Rec pool.

tuna casserole

pigs in a blanket

navy beans and ham with cornbread

deep fried with crisco porkchops on occasion

chili which she put spaghetti in for some reason

burgerchef on friday night

Saint wrote:damn, I would have thought the Moose Lodge in KY was even more tolerant of alkyhawl. drinking and eating country shit like fish stew, fried herring and such was all that went on at the one here. they pooled their money and built a pool for members in the early '70s once the black kids started showing up at the Rec pool.

oh they served alcohol...it was just illegal so every couple of years, they had to get raided just to keep the ladies at church from getting into a lather

we had frozen turkey and gravy a lot. And beef casserole (never the boxed stuff) with noodles, mushroom soup, hamburger and grated cheese on top.

Then there was super well-done roast beef on Sunday's (mine was coated with A1) and sirloin steaks on the grill. I never knew medium or medium rare beef looked like until I was in high school.

Damn, eCat's dad sounds like Ricky Bobby's dad. Also, I liked the detail about hickory logs. Not just any wood is good enough for chicken thighs and pork stake, oh no, it has to be HEEEEEEEEEEEEE-KRREEEEEEEEHHHHHHH LAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWGGGGSSSSSS!!!

Country folk are weird.

"A typical night was cornbread, salmon patties - mashed from a pink can and fried in a pan and white beans with a piece of ham or bacon to give it flavor. All those repressed childhood memories came flooding back to me after mom spent a week directing my wife in the kitchen."

Man that was once a week at my house when I was a kid.

The thing I miss the most is when mom would fry catfish in the cast iron skillet then after taking them out with the grease and the catfish crumbs in there, opening a can of pork n beans and heating them up in that stuff. They were tasty when they were nice and warm like that.

And yes, my mom still makes the cornbread in the skillet that is barely edible but the rest of the family loves it. I am all about the yellow style cornbread.

my mom gave my wife her cast iron skillet because its too heavy for her lift now.

my sister got all the china and antiques, my brother got all the guns, my dads war medals and my great grandfathers prize mandolin

I got a fucking skillet and a rusty toolbox with only a pair of pliers that has "Roy Vance" scratched into the handle ( my old man stole them from Roy Vance I would assume). It sucks being the youngest

Use it to smack all them around with it and take those things!!

Better sneak up up your brother though.

and I wouldn't want to be ye when Roy Vance come-a-luckin' his pliers!

"And yes, my mom still makes the cornbread in the skillet that is barely edible"

The only thing that qualifies as barely edible for you is nuclear waste, the key word being "barely"...

[img2]http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/wp-c ... oc%202.jpg[/img2]

see that nice leopard coat that croc got for christmas?