You are invited to dinner.

    "You are invited to dinner." Words that I learned to fear--after the city chicken and broccoli trees, I just wanted to stick to supper and Grandmother's cooking! However, I did have the opportunity to expose my friends to some good old Southern cooking. My childhood best friend Dana Jones liked my mom's black-eye peas. All these years later, she remembers how good they were. However, my high school bestie Patti though that they tasted like "dirt." Her words. Almost everybody loved Grandmother's fried chicken and Lane cake. There was general agreement on the subject of Grandmother's cornbread. Not one person ever disliked it. Nobody made cornbread and corn pone like Grandmother. Hot with butter, cold with butter, cold by itself, crumbled up in pot likker or buttermilk--no fancy chef has ever made anything better.

However, there was also Grandmother's pepper sauce. She used an old Avon Skin-So-Soft bottle with a cork stuck in it to make her sauce. There was vinegar, of course, and then a blend of every pepper Uncle Son and Daddy grew. There were Cayenne peppers, purple jalapenos, Scotch bonnets, habaneros, and whatever hot peppers they could find to grow. If she felt like the sauce was getting a little weak, she'd add a little more vinegar and many more peppers. I don't like spicy foods, so just the smell when Daddy popped the cork made my eyes water. The family used that pepper sauce very judiciously--just a little drizzle over greens. I didn't use it at all. One night, my friends Rose and Beverly came for supper. The sauce bottle was on the kitchen window sill (all that sun probably helped ferment that stuff). Rose spied it and wanted some. Beverly, Grandmother, and I tried to tell her that no, no she did not because it was really hot. "No, no! I love spicy foods," Rose protested. Grandmother said, "Rose, you ain't never had my pepper sauce." Rose would have none of it. She asked for a spoon so she could have a taste. Again, we begged her to put it on some food, at least. Nope, she swallowed a spoon--straight. Poor Rose. She asked for what happened, but I did feel sorry for her as her eyes watered, her face reddened and sweat began pouring down her face. We said for her to eat some white bread, but she grabbed her glass of water and chugged it. That just made it worse. Beverly and I could not help but laugh, but Grandmother was worried she'd choke. Finally, she got down some white bread, marshmallows, and milk before the burning stopped. She never even so much as looked at that bottle of pepper sauce again.

     Rose was not a fast learner in the Southern food area. Yes, I am a True Florida Cracker. I eat plenty of Cracker/Southern foods, but there are some that I cannot stomach. Black-eye peas? Yes. Collard greens? Nope. Grits? Yes. Hominy? No, nope, never, never, ever will I eat that nasty stuff. Again, Rose and Beverly were at the house for supper. That night Grandmother had a bowl of  plain boiled hominy on the table. Rose had never seen hominy before. It looks like wet popcorn, but it sure doesn't taste like popcorn--wet or dry. She asked about it, and Grandmother told her it was hominy and would she like some? Again, Beverly and I told her, "NO!!! You won't like it, Rose."  Grandmother was all in on Rose trying the hominy. I think she wanted a hominy-eating buddy. Rose took two big spoonfuls of it on her plate. She took the first bite. She didn't say anything, but the look on her face told Bev and me that it was not what she expected. After the pepper fiasco, Rose's pride had been hurt, so she managed to eat both of those giant spoonfuls of hominy. I had to give her credit. I know I would have gagged. Unfortunately, since she ate all that hominy, Grandmother thought it was her favorite and would cook some up, if she knew Rose was coming to supper. Again, Rose brought that on herself. And Grandmother did always have a soft spot for Rose.     

    Plain, boiled white hominy

Y'all hungry?

     One thing Crackers love is food. Talk about, fix it, eat it, brag on your granny's cooking, brag on your mama's cooking, brag on your own cooking. Start thinking about what you're making for supper right after you've eaten breakfast. Admittedly, I grew up in a "mixed" neighborhood--one Cracker family mixed in with a bunch of Yankees.
      I never realized how differently we ate in my family until I spent the night at my best friend's house and did not eat my supper first. At home, we'd have some kind of meat--usually fried--two or three types of vegetables, white bread and cornbread or biscuits, and tea. (I don't need to say sweet or ice, because that's the only way we had it.) It was always served from bowls and a platter set on the table, and Mommy did give us some say over which vegetables we ate--at least two of the three.

    Imagine my surprise, when her mother called us down to "dinner," and the plates were already filled and sitting at our places. On my plate was a stick with little chunks of breaded meat, a giant stalk of broccoli, and a roll. I looked at my glass, hoping for some help to swallow down whatever this food was, and it was filled with milk. Not just milk, but powdered milk. My mommy had taught me that I was to eat whatever was put in front of me when at someone's house, and here I was stuck with this. I politely asked what the meat was, and I was told it was "City Chicken." What relief! It was just little chunks of breaded chicken. I wrestled a piece off with my fork. I did notice no one else was picking it up with their hands, like I would eat fried chicken. I popped that chunk in my mouth and gagged. And covered up the gag as best as I could. What was this stuff? No chicken I had ever eaten tasted like this! I had to take a swig of that tepid, nasty, water-milk to keep from choking to death. Mrs. Jones then asked, "Donna Jo, have you never had City Chicken? It's breaded veal." Well, I didn't know what a veal was, and now I didn't want to know and I certainly didn't want to eat it again. (Actually, I have NEVER eaten another piece of veal.) "I'm fine. Thank you. It's delicious." (At this point, I was none too happy with Mommy's rules of polite behavior!)
     At least the roll was there to help. It was actually a novelty too--a white, soft dinner roll. If there had been a basket of them on the table, I certainly would have eaten more than my allotted one. Still, there was that gigantic stalk of broccoli staring me in the face. What a decision! To eat another chunk of the meat or to start on the broccoli. I knew what broccoli was, but Mommy never made it. She made "normal" vegetables like  field peas, crowder peas, English peas, well, any kind of pea. She made pole beans, green beans, Lima beans, butter beans, baked beans. She made greens of all types, but never a green tree of any type. I gritted my teeth, took my fork and knife, and sliced me a piece of the broccoli. It was just as nasty-tasting as I expected, and, worse than that, it was raw! I was used to nice soft vegetables, cooked with bacon grease. This was bland and hard. At least I didn't gag, but I did have to swig that milk-water to get it down.
     Unlike Mommy, Mrs. Jones did not insist that I clear my entire plate. Whew. I managed to eat all the roll, most of the "City Chicken," and a few bites of broccoli. Enough to be polite, but not enough to make myself sick. And I determined to eat at home before going off for supper at someone's house again. Or at least ask what they were having for supper first.