From DORI SANDERS' COUNTRY COOKING: Recipes & Stories from the Family Farm Stand by Dori Sanders 1995 by Dori Sanders. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.
I still live on the farm where I was born - a farm that has been in our family for more than seventy years. Here in York County, South Carolina, our family spends many hours working together -- planting and harvesting and running the farm stand where we sell peaches, okra, crowder peas, and all the other wonderful produce we grow. Often when we're working we find ourselves talking about the past, and what we seem to remember most is the food.
Whenever we talk about food -- or whenever we eat, for that matter -- we always think of our Great-Aunt Vestula. Over the years we have shared so many memories of her, and they still surface every time we gather together.
Aunt Vestula worked in the Low Country of South Carolina, down near Charleston, in the earlier part of this century. We don't know exactly where or for whom, but we do know that she worked in the kitchen of a very, very wealthy plantation owner.
In my recipes, it's easy to find the influence of my childhood. I grew up the eighth of ten children, with five brothers and four sisters. With that many children in the household and only two milk cows, every bit of sweet milk was churned to get butter for the family table. For cooking and drinking we used the buttermilk left after churning. So I have lots of recipes that use buttermilk, which makes the dishes lighter. Many of my recipes also include lots of fresh herbs and little sugar. Like my mother before me, though, I do cook rich foods when company is coming, so you will find both types of recipes here.
Like most farm-family cooks, I don't measure of fuss too much with details. How much of an ingredient? Enough for one good mess, a couple of handfuls or so. What size pan? Whatever I have handy. If it's too small, I just cut down the amount I'm going to cook. If it's too big, I end up with something cooked for tomorrow as well.
My approach to cooking is simple because for the most part our foods are simple. But that doesn't mean our foods are boring. Oh, no, they're not. To the gourmet chef who cooks with wine, fresh vegetables and herbs grown in her own garden, I say, well, we cook that way too. Been doing it for years. But I must confess, even though a number of my recipes include wine (especially the ones from Aunt Vestula), our family's bottle's rarely make it to the stove. Whether our wine is home-made or store-bought, we usually decide it can be used in a better way than for cooking.
As a hard-working farmer, let me tell you, the farming life leaves precious few hours for anything but simple cooking. So I am pretty much stuck in the past. I still cook the basic, simple survival foods, dishes that brought us through the Great Depression and the hard times of failed crops and lean harvests.
Our original family home no longer stands. The old wood-burning cookstove has rusted into pieces. The silver teas are a thing of the past. But precious recipes are still intact, and the tastes and smells of the foods of my childhood let me know that I can go back again. I hope that this collection of recipes and memories will take you back too, to a world of old-fashioned family cooking and Southern country warmth and hospitality.
