Notes from the Spring Creek Arts Guild

An ongoing conversation on a Facebook page regarding American versus British foods has gotten me to thinking. The British participants are mostly interested in Southern foods for some reason—biscuits and gravy, cornbread, grits, and fried chicken have been hot topics lately. Some of the Brits are looking up recipes and giving these things a try. I have tried looking up recipes for traditional British foods such as Cornish and Devonian pasties, Scottish girdle scones, real English scones (quite different from what we call scones here), and bangers and mash and have had some challenges recreating what I tasted there. Often the recipes you find online have been “chefed up” somehow and often call for ingredients that we have no exact match for here. The same seems to be true of Brits trying to make American foods.

Then there is the problem of regional variation. There was a conversation today among American Southerners as to exactly what “proper” grits are and the “proper” way to cook and eat them. Having lived in every Deep South state except Florida and Louisiana, I can tell you what’s proper in one area will be improper in the next county in regard to many Southern foods. It is my opinion that if you are telling people what is proper based on what you have eaten in a restaurant, you need to sit down and hush. If you are speaking to propriety based on what your Granny taught you, then please speak up.

To be clear, I think I could count myself as being close to a Southern food expert having grown up learning to cook from some of the best, having researched it from an academic standpoint, and having studied it from a practical perspective for nearly all of my sixty-something years. Really, I love learning about anything to do with home life in different periods of history and in different cultures, even micro-cultures, but food production and preparation have always been near and dear to my heart. Southern foodways are literally baked into my being, a part of who I am.

So this is what I have been thinking about…those of us who are native-born Southern cooks are getting to be scarce! I have at least two friends and two relatives here in San Saba County that are real, native-born Texas-style Southern cooks, which is a little different from the more eastern part of the South, but Southern nonetheless. That makes five including me that I know of, and that is sad. Now I have no doubt there are others here in San Saba County, but I will bet there are few to none who are under the age of 40. I am getting worried that real Southern cooking will die out completely in the near future. What is to be done to prevent this tragedy?