By reading this title, I’m assuming you understand how I feel about Southern food. Yes, I do love me some Southern food! Actually, I like just about all kinds of food, but there’s really something special about living in the South, the history of Southern food, Southern dishes, Southern recipes, and Southern cooking to me. Gee…do you think that’s because I was born and reared in the Deep South? I was, and so was the long line of Southern cooks before me – my mom, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother…
My family hails from the Low Country, and I grew up hearing tales about Charleston and Savannah. Cooking and serving food to family and friends has always been a big deal in my family. I don’t remember much about my great-grandmother, but I remember that my grandmother and my mom always had some homemade treat on hand to serve any unexpected guests who might stop by. In Mom’s case, this was usually a pound cake. My grandmother usually kept a supply of her teacakes on the alert.
I think most traditional Southern ladies of generations past, including my mother, would have been mortified if the minister or someone else stopped by the house and she didn’t have some refreshment to offer. I remember on such occasions, the visitor could barely get in the door before Mom was pressing him with a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea, along with a slice of pound cake. That’s just the way it was. I think this is a symbolic gesture in the South. Offering and providing food is Southern hospitality, and when it’s done for family members, it’s a form of nurturing.
I firmly believe the importance of food in the South really began in the plantation era. Plantation owners often held huge food events like barbecues, to which they’d invite neighbors and dignitaries. Most plantations were sprawling affairs, and the closest neighbors might have been miles away. When the owners paid a visit to each other, they might spend several days as a guest. Of course, there was always a running friendly competition about which one served the best food and the best libations.
Food was an important form of entertainment, and practically any gathering revolved around it. The plantation owners and their wives even made a spectacle at times of feeding their slaves. The slaves might get only the barest essentials on a day-today basis, perhaps barely enough to survive, but on special occasions many owners would lavish their slaves with large quantities of special foods. This was especially true at Christmas, when most slave owners provided whole smoked hogs as a special treat. The slaves, of course, reveled in this bounty, and the owner and his wife usually sat back and watched the festivities of the blacks while patting themselves on the back for being such kind masters.
The slave culture itself had a huge impact on the way food was thought of, too. As you can imagine, the slaves had very little. Their diets consisted mostly of rice, beans, cornbread, and seasonal vegetables. Some of the slaves had their own garden plots, maybe along with a few chickens and/or a pig. Whenever they could, they supplemented their diets by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruits from wooded areas. Whatever they had, they shared with their fellow slaves. Food was extremely important – it meant survival.
After the Civil War, the South was devastated. Many whites and former slaves were hungry, with some near starvation. Food became more important than ever. The act of sharing one’s meager food supplies with another was an act of love and concern, often in a self-sacrificing way.
When you consider the history of the South and of Southern food, it’s easy to see how food is so important to us Southerners. Even though few of us go hungry these days, the memories of our ancestors must be ingrained within us somehow. I think that’s why we celebrate food so much.
And celebrate food we do! Preparing food is almost a ritual with many Southern cooks. We love getting together and cooking as much as we love getting together and eating. Take, for example, when an entire pig is cooked. People enjoy the cooking process as much as they enjoy the finished product. They’ll often stay up all night tending the fire and mopping the meat, and the process becomes somewhat of a party in itself.
I’ve found that most Southerners are generous to a fault when it comes to sharing food. When an older Southern cook, along with some younger Southern cook, prepares a meal for you, it’s done with pride and often with love. We love feeding the body, but even more so, we love nurturing the soul.
