Friends Old, New, and Soon to Be,
It takes a long time to close out a life. Three years on, we’re still sorting through the boxes that came out of the house in which my grandmother lived for more than seven decades. Three held cookbooks.
Betty Ann Campbell Russell, Nana to me, was a magnificent cook. Not a chef mind you, a cook. Chef implies formal training she did not have. But cook? Even the most expansive understanding of the word barely speaks to the joy my Nana took in putting food in front of people, in giving the people at her table a hug from the inside out. They were legion, those people.
Nana fed literal thousands on folding card tables, porch furniture, television trays, and a custom-made dining table that sat ten without the leaves inserted. Many of them brought her cookbooks from all over the world, sharing the flavors of their home with her. She acquired more in her travels, but most of the cookbooks we’re parsing through now were fundraisers; spiral bound and reflective of the decades in which she lived: The Presbyterian Ladies, Junior League, the Congressional Wives Club, and an inscribed 1944 volume from the Florida State Women’s College of Tallahassee, her alma mater before Johnny (and Robert Lee Russell, Jr.) came marching home again and it became Florida State University.
Nana understood flavors and ingredients from across the world but defaulted to those that make the South’s culinary legacy what it is. She never scoffed at today’s concerns around heavy cream, butter, flour, lard, and sugar because it never occurred to her that anyone would have such concerns. Nana loved a velvety beef filet cooked on cast iron and sizzling in butter, but wild game held an elevated place in her heart, quail above all else. She appreciated fine dining but her pairing of cube steak in gravy with the best grits anyone ever spooned on a plate would have made Anthony Bourdain sit down and think awhile. Still, she adored fresh vegetables and fruits with the fervor of the most svelte vegan. Regardless, who can argue with dying in your own bed at ninety-six?
I reflected on a lifetime of her cooking as I parsed through those boxes in my mother’s basement, fighting my hoarder’s urge to take all of them. The books I culled now sit on shelves in my kitchen, notably The Joy of Cooking, tattered and coverless, her favorite recipes bookmarked with cards bearing other recipes, thank you notes from diners, and her notes on dinners she served fifty years ago. Recipes that found her disfavor are simply marked, “No.” Nana was always brief but clear in expressing displeasure, and the critical notations remind me of touring the Scottish Highlands with her for ten days, all the way her asking, “Do y’all have sweet tea?” Each time, the inevitable offer of hot tea, sugar, and a single ice cube brought an exasperated “Hmmph” and a shake of the head.
My favorite cookbook came not from her bookshelves but her hand. Twenty years ago, I understood there would be a day I could no longer ask her how to cook something or stand at her stove and do what she told me. I asked her to fill a cookbook with my favorite recipes, written in her hand. For weeks she watched “Wheel of Fortune” and wrote till her hands cramped, shook them out, and resumed. I realize now how selfish my request was. But along with the recipes she wrote me notes and suggestions, the kind of guidance she would have offered when I called and said, “Nana, I’m feeding six people Thanksgiving dinner. How do I do it?” Now I run my fingers over the paper, feel the indentations caused by the pressure of her pen, and I am thankful that I was so unconsciously selfish.
When we feed someone else, we offer life. As hunters and anglers sometimes literally, for we take it to feed ourselves and others. Always, we are offering time, the only thing of which we cannot make more. Nana gave freely of both. In that spirit, I leave you with her cornbread recipe below, as written by her, for me.
Ingredients:
White Lily self-rising cornmeal mix
One and a half cups eggs
Bacon grease - 3 or 4 tablespoons?
Almost one cup milk
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a cast iron skillet, eight or ten inch, on low heat, melt the bacon grease. While this is melting, put one and a half cups of cornmeal mix in a bowl and beat in one egg. Add enough milk to make a “runny” mix. Pour half of the hot grease into this and mix well, (leaving skillet on the hot unit). Pour mix into the skillet with the other half of the grease. Do not stir. Put on the top shelf of the oven and bake until browned – probably 20 minutes. Turn out to eat.
I like thin cornbread, so I often cook this in a griddle (iron). You may use less meal to milk and cook in a 6-inch skillet – also you add more meal and another egg for larger amounts (in the large skillet). Your mom likes thick cornbread, Worth.
Note: To keep your ironware “seasoned” so the bread won’t stick is a must. This recipe makes good cornbread for dressing to serve with turkey.
Yours,
Russell Worth Parker
Editor-in-Chief, Tom Beckbe
