Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food

INTRODUCTION: Whose Food, When, and Why?: Longing for Corn and Beans

In the 1760s, ancestors on my mother’s side of the family landed in Philadelphia and started down the Trans-Allegheny trail, heading for South Carolina . By the 1790s, they had moved up into the North Carolina mountains to a series of communities in Transylvania and Henderson counties—Quebec, Toxaway, Brevard, Hendersonville. Most of them never left. They worked in timber, tannin, and the later paper factories; kept boarders; had small general stores; and generally did what they could to survive. They helped found churches and build schoolhouses; they farmed in small ways and kept garden patches. For more than two hundred years, my family practiced and perfected late-summer, southern meals to share. Surely they cooked real southern food done right. Clearly, it must have been authentic and pure; the nostalgia we feel for it, uncomplicated. From the Fourth of July through Labor Day, with birthdays and visits in between, any weekend could bring a reason to gather, talk, and eat. The gettogether could take place at a picnic shelter up in the forest (whether Pisgah, theNantahalas,ortheSmokies),besidethelakeatCampStraus(wherepresent andformeremployeesofthelocalpapercompanycouldplay),orsimplyinthe kitchen of my grandmother, Iva Sanders Whitmire (1907–2001). Regardless, certain foods always made an appearance. Green beans, picked and snapped Whose Food, When, and Why? introduction Longing for Corn and Beans U 2 introduction earlier in the day and then cooked long and seasoned with ham, graced the table. Silver queen corn joined the beans; both were almost always from Uncle Jerry and Aunt Betty’s garden. Tomatoes thickly sliced and watermelon sliced even thicker added color. Fried chicken was piled high, hot from the cast-iron skillet, lightly battered, pan fried, and juicy. From the same skillet came fried okra and fried squash. Biscuits with homemade apple jelly or blackberry jam accompanied the meal. Canned by my grandmother, Uncle Joe, or Uncle Jesse (who was not my uncle in terms of blood but in every other way), the jellies andjamsalwayshadhandmadelabels.Eachyear’sbatchheldstoriesofhidden, pick-your-own farms or discoveries of patches by the side of the road. Late summer meals often meant the first taste of flavors that kept us company all winter. Potato salad and slaw filled large bowls in summer, cutting down on heat in kitchens. My family was particular not only about how to dress the slaw— Duke’smayonnaise,vinegar,milk,salt,sugar,andpepper—butalsoabouthow tocutthecabbage.Weusedaparingknife(mygrandmother’sbladewasalmost gone from years of sharpening) to flake off the small bits of cabbage between thumb and knife blade. It took at least half an hour to do a head of cabbage this way. Chopping, slicing, or—heaven forbid—using a food processor was frowned upon. Although I have asked my mother and aunts, no one knows if this came from a desire to achieve a particular taste or if it was the only knife my grandmother had and, thus, how she always did it. Whatever the reason, we all agree the slaw somehow came out better that way—the final arbiter of any family’s favored food practices. On special occasions, the day ended with homemade peach ice cream— my dad, the chemical engineer, supervised that job, his knowledge of ice and rocksaltincombinationoutweighinghisperceived-as-unfortunatechildhood outside western North Carolina. The freestone peaches came from down the mountain in South Carolina, and the ice cream was cranked by hand with cousins and uncles all taking turns. Electric cranking ice cream mixers have been moderately tolerated in later years—but, to my family’s mind, the kitchen counter, computerized, mechanized appliances that whir and buzz introduction 3 and automatically freeze the ingredients hard have nothing to do with real peach ice cream. Pitchers of cold, sweet tea sat nearby to refresh the tired and impatient ice cream makers. Variations of that meal were being enjoyed by families at the next picnic shelters over, by mountain residents in earlier decades, and by southerners across the region. Your family may have similar memories and menus. A closer look at the meal, though, reveals four dilemmas that are at the heart of this book—and they are why I am telling you so much about my own particular family traditions here at the beginning of a project whose chapters are not so much about my personal history as they are about a broad story of food and gender in the southern United States during a crucial transition period of the 1870s through the 1930s. The turn-of...