Food for Thought or Thought for Food?

 

I was rummaging around the kitchen the other night, looking for something to eat that didn’t involve defrosting, mixing, or cooking.  For some reason, a vague memory skittered through my head of pineapple sandwiches.  It seemed so unlikely that I had to look it up.  Sure enough, pineapple sandwiches were, and possibly still are, a southern thing.  My granddaddy used to make them, if I recall correctly.  My granddaddy did not cook on a regular basis, but he had a few things he specialized in.  Before I ever heard of s’mores, he made s’mores-like things with crackers, peanut butter, and marshmallows.  I can still picture them, toasted in an old black baking pan.  The crackers at that time came in square packages with four crackers in a large square.  I haven’t seen them like that in years and years.  I’m not sure, but I think they later came packaged with two small squares hooked together to make a rectangle before it became common to just have them in a small sleeve with a single cracker. The peanut butter was spread on crackers, topped with a marshmallow or two and slid into the oven under the broiler.  There was no chocolate involved, although I wouldn’t doubt that some people added it.

I have mentioned before in a story that Granddaddy was famous for his country ham.  He began with a ham processed and cured right here on the farm.  Sugar cured ham from a recipe that, if it was written down, has been lost over the years.  I have his instructions for cooking the ham, a long process involving boiling the meat in a lard stand, wrapping it in a quilt and allowing it to sit, then trimming and baking it in an oven with a coating of sugar and spices.  He didn’t use pineapple on his ham, something that I have a deep-seated prejudice against even now.  Pineapple sandwiches, pineapple in sweet tea, but pineapple never appeared in any kind of meat when I was growing up.   I think there is something in the Bible about that, somewhere in the Old Testament, right close to the verse about not putting sugar in cornbread.   We didn’t eat pizza when I was a young child, but I’m positive that if we had, no pineapple would have appeared on that dish either!  Fruit is not meant to touch meat, just like fruit salad must be kept separate from other food on your plate, preferably in a pretty little cup.  But that food touching on your plate is a whole different story.

I do remember eating sandwiches made with crowder peas, mustard sandwiches and crackers with butter spread on them.  I saw something not long ago about crackers with butter being a popular new snack.  We not only ate crackers spread with butter; I’m pretty sure they used to bring a basket of crackers with little containers of butter to the table in restaurants before they brought our food.  Maybe that was a Southern thing.

Granddaddy also made fruit tea when we had big gatherings at church or at other community meals.  He had 2 or 3 big stoneware crocks, cream colored with blue strips near the top, that he would fill with tea, sugar, lemon juice, sliced lemons and pineapple juice.  I don’t have his exact measurements – I’m not sure he had them written down and I can’t imagine making that much tea at one time anyway.  But people who knew him still talk about that fruit tea, mixed in the big crocks with ice and covered with dish towels to keep the flies out. 

In those days, we served church dinners on large hay wagons out back of the church.  It wasn’t so much dinner on the ground as it was dinner on the wagon!  I wish I could say that I still have one of those big crocks, but somehow we accidentally sold both of them in an auction after my daddy died.

I can’t remember as much about the pineapple sandwiches as I wish I did. I can’t remember if they had cheese slices on them or if it was just mayonnaise spread on white bread and a pineapple slice.  I expect my grandmother made the mayonnaise in the beginning, but I think she eventually used Miracle Whip instead.  I think these were made for church dinners too, although I am not positive.  They may have just been a weekend supper dish in hot weather.  My mama told me that when we gathered at my great-grandmother’s house for meals, they always waited for Nanny to make the mayonnaise. She had a glass container with the word “mayonnaise” and the recipe for it etched on the front with a little handle to crank on top.  I still have the container, but I would not dare to attempt to make mayonnaise.  I don’t see that ending well. 

Granddaddy also made excellent scrambled eggs.  He cooked sausage in the skillet first then cooked the eggs in the same skillet with the leftover grease and little bits of sausage meat.  I remember one time when my mother had been in the hospital and said when she same home that Granddaddy cooked those eggs for breakfast the next morning and it was the best thing she had ever tasted.

When I looked up pineapple sandwiches, I found directions for plain old pineapple mayo and bread and I found several recipes for grilled pineapple and cheese sandwiches.  I did not find recipes for un-grilled pineapple and cheese sandwiches.  Maybe the cheese part is just my imagination because I don’t think our sandwiches were grilled.  I do still eat pineapple and shredded cheese with a dollop of mayo on top and I still eat what we called pear salad.  I thought everyone ate pear salad, which was served in little dessert cups with a leaf of lettuce under the pears, shredded cheese on the pears and of course that little dollop of mayo that was also served on top of congealed salads.  A weird thing about pear salad is that it’s not nearly as good with sliced pears as with halved pears.  I have no idea why, but it’s true.   It's the same principle of cutting sandwiches in four little triangles.  You can eat a dozen little triangles, even if you normally would only eat one sandwich at a time. It's a math thing, I suppose.   I found out years later that pear salad is apparently a Southern thing and people up north never heard of it.  I’ll bet they haven’t heard of pineapple sandwiches either, and I’ll bet they never ate fried chicken, deviled eggs and potato salad served off a hay wagon under a grove of oak trees.

Just after my book was published, my friend Linda bought her copy from Amazon and a couple days later she sent me a message that she had started reading it but had to stop to eat lunch because I wrote so much about food.  I don’t know why I write so much about food; maybe I need to ponder on that and write about it!