DINNER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY

My Dear friend and mentor, Kathryn Tucker Windham, has two things she feels very strongly about. One in that you should never put sugar in cornbread and the other is that dinner is served in the middle of the day with supper being served at night.
Yesterday, we had dinner in the middle of the day for the volunteers who worked on the movie premier. We wanted to say “Thank you” in a tangible way. We know that food is at the heart of most all southern traditions, especially here in rural Southwest Alabama. Our menu was one that reflects our culinary traditions. The menu was:

Pulled Barbequed Pork with Norman’s Secret Family Sauce
Hash brown Potato Casserole
Fresh Butterbeans and Okra with fresh tomato relish
Seven Layer Salad Sweet Tea
Homemade rolls with butter
Cheesecake Soufflé and Egg Custard Pie

There are certain things you should know about some of the dishes.
• One: The way a person doe’s barbeque is a highly personal thing. The sauce may vary in our region from a sweet or tart tomato base to a highly vinegar concoction. It will never have a mustard base. The best barbeque is a two day process. It must be smoked most of one day, then pulled or chopped. In our family, we have discovered the real secret of the best barbeque is to pour a mixture of mostly water with Ketchup, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce in it over the hot meat and its natural juices, then refrigerate it overnight. The liquid will disappear into the meat by the next day. Heat the meat up and serve it with whatever sauce you like. The mixture from the previous day is not considered sauce, it is marinade.
• Two: Butterbeans or peas are generally served with some kind of relish to add spiciness and flavor according to the eater’s preference. Many cooks have a special relish that they can when the tomato crop comes in, or when they are looking for something to do with those hard pears that are in every old house yard. They generally contain spices of various kinds, almost always adding some amount of onions and peppers – sweet or hot. Southern food is not bland, but like Mexican, you add the spices and heat yourself at the table. My family has a relish that is not cooked. My great aunt invented it as far as I know. It is very simple. We used to try to guess what was in it and complicate the simple mixture that we discovered to be composed of chopped fresh tomatoes, onions and peppers with 2 tablespoons of sugar per quart. Salt and pepper is added to taste. Usually, cornbread is served whenever there are peas and butterbeans. We had homemade rolls to be fancier since they are not every day fare (too much trouble), but I did miss my cornbread.
• Three: Okra is generally cooked with the peas or beans. It doesn’t look nice, though, if the okra falls apart, so for company, the okra is removed to a separate dish for serving. Everybody has an okra story. My family traditions tell of relatives who didn’t think they liked okra. My grandmother used to remove it from her pea pot because one of the children wouldn’t eat the slick stuff that boiled okra becomes. She wasn’t about to cook two pots of peas, so she just removed the okra from the peas/beans before bringing them to the table, so that the picky child never knew. The family got the full benefit of the flavor with her none the wiser. The okra was added near the end, so it didn’t have time to get slick. We don’t stir the pot while the okra is steaming on top, so it doesn’t break up.
• Sweet Tea is always served at a dinner in the middle of the day. I personally like to sweeten my own tea, but with guests, it must be already sweetened> the logic behind this is that cold tea does not sweeten well and takes more sugar. I don’t know how anybody could stand more sugar than sweet tea already has. To be perfect, it should taste like cane syrup. It is too much for me, but my guests require the effort.
• Potato salad is the general potato side served with barbeque, but so many cooks are shortcutting the process with bought potato salad that the hash brown casserole seemed to say we cared about the palates of our guests.
• We always say egg custard pie rather than just custard pie for a reason. There are chocolate custard pies and coconut custard pies that are cooked on the stove and added to a baked crust then topped with meringue and baked. An egg custard pie on the other hand is baked in the crust with no meringue. It is, if done right, a silken concoction that melts on the tongue.

The guests at the dinner in the middle of the day seemed to enjoy the food. As usual, I prepared way too much. It would be real faux paux to not have as much to eat as the guests could possible stuff in. I have included pictures of them enjoying the food. There is an individual picture of one special gentleman, Reverend Mosley, the owner of Mosley Funeral Home who provided limousine service for the premier. I had to take his picture to show you. Con you believe this man is 88 years old? He told Kathryn Tucker Windham that night that he was 89. When I said I couldn’t believe it, he said “Let’s straighten this out right now. I am only 88.” He will be 89 this year. He looks and acts so young. I wonder what his secret to perpetual youth is – embalming fluid? Whatever it is, we all need to get some, unless the embalming fluid is being used on us. We can wait a while on that.