For Us Foodies

Since Janie was a cook, and a darned good one based on her employment record, how about a recipe in Friday's blog? It won't be Janie's recipe, but it will be an old southern one, cooked up every major holiday by a friend of my husband's family. Hint: the sweet potato giveaway in today's Charleston Post and Courier set me on to it.....stay tuned!

Leftovers

One of the realities of writing is that sometimes not everything you cook up makes it to the plate. Maybe what was written is irrelevant or off-topic. Maybe the overall document is just too long and something had to go. Maybe it’s just "scata," as my Greek friend at the newspaper used to say. "Scata" does happen, and just because it happens in a different language don’t make it smell more swell. It just makes it a more appropriate comment for an office setting. Unless the office is in Greece.

So below you will find an “out-take” from the book Janie Mitchell, Reliable Cook, An ex-slave’s recipe for living. (Funny how "out-take" is the reverse of “take-out…” does that make the definition of “out-take” a container of food you bring with you TO the restaurant? Or maybe “take-out” is something that a producer puts INTO a motion picture, after it has been edited? I’m just saying…) 

But back to the topic at hand. I wrote the words below for the book but they were either not part of the final manuscript or altered in some way. I’m not one for wasting words; they are much too precious to me. And besides, I like these out-taken take-outs. And my granny, the best country cook I ever knew, would have liked these leftovers too. So this is for you Mom:

When I was a child I asked my granny how to make biscuits. I sincerely wanted to know. Granny lived in Alabama City—now Gadsden—and she was as kuntree as the day is long. “Aw, foot,” she said, throwing her head back with a laugh that revealed two buck teeth beneath a bristly upper lip. “Ah doan no, Leeser.” Only after repeated requests did she offer a vague description, with more hand flourishes than facts, of a process involving flour and lard and buttermilk. How much flour? Enough to sop up the buttermilk. How much buttermilk? Enough to absorb the flour. How long do you cook them? Until they’re done. 

Of course, Granny was vague because Granny didn’t know. Truth was, she just cooked, with the precision, if not the “preciseness” of a talented chef. And we all just ate it up like we’d never eaten before, at Granny’s house. 

Many a skilled black woman cooked the same way in Charleston before and after the war. Most likely, it is how Janie cooked too. Janie, like many other black cooks, may have developed some of her own recipes, although it was white women who usually wrote them down. When some of Charleston’s best-loved receipts were finally assembled for publication, one thing the editor realized was that the difficulty was not in convincing the cook to share her secret; it was in translating the gesturings of the Grannys of the Lowcountry into a recipe that could be replicated. 

Cooks were plentiful in postbellum Charleston, especially newly freed black cooks, a situation that was agreeable to their white employers. Like most black cooks, Janie probably was more familiar with the business end of her employers’ kitchens than the women who hired her. While many found it difficult to secure work in post-war Charleston, Janie never seemed to be without a job. Her journal, primarily a personal account of Charleston history through the early 20^th century, is also a kind of employment history. It is her resume, in which she recounts the families who employed her during her career.  

In Janie’s time, a letter of reference would suffice to secure employment. Judging by the folks for whom she worked and the length of employment at each home, Janie’s pride in not needing “papers,” as she wrote in her journal, was not mere puffery. She must have been a coveted cook, a hard worker, a pleasant person to be around, and a trusted friend who could be counted on to watch homes and children unsupervised. 

Not only were families larger then, but the servant staff was larger as well. The job of cook was not work for the weak. Over the course of her career, Janie’s duties included daily trips to the city’s Market for fresh meat, fruits and vegetables, visiting a neighborhood green grocer or purchasing from street vendors. The term “perishable” applied to most food in the 19^th century. Food that would spoil without benefit of today’s refrigeration was either bought and eaten quickly or tossed out as Charleston eagle fodder. Keeping food longer meant buying 100-pound blocks of ice, made of water drawn from Charleston’s artesian wells and delivered daily by horse-drawn wagon.

The families for whom Janie worked may have kept gardens as well, providing produce for the household. She may have tended some gardens in her lifetime. Canned foods were available during Janie’s years, but she likely did her share of canning and preserving as well. As cook, Janie would have been responsible for preparing cuts of meat or whole birds for cooking, perhaps even chasing a chicken down in the yard on occasion.  There was plenty of time standing over a hot stove without the luxury of air conditioning, and a heaping portion of bending and lifting heavy iron pans or pots full of water, not to mention washing, chopping, and cleaning. Rice, for example--so much an edible commodity that they named a variety "Carolina Gold"--was a fixture at almost every meal. To bring it to table required spending copious amounts of time washing, rinsing and sifting the grains over and over again in a cleaning and culling process to remove all the dirt and gravel. 

   

I do believe I would have loved eating Janie’s leftovers, just like my Granny’s. I’m thinking scratch-made cat head biscuits with apple butter, creamed corn right off the cob, pickled okra, greasy green beans, fried chicken, and peach cobbler for dessert. Whole milk. Black coffee. And the top button of my capris undone before it popped off on its own. Take some home with me? Well, if you insist; maybe just a small plate for later. No sense wasting it just because we didn't eat it all up in one book deal, I mean meal.

I'm hoping you agree; even Janie's take-outs are good to chew on. Bon appetit.

Honesty

"The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity--your name in print--that MAKES people."               

Steve Martin, The Jerk

                                                 
There is just something about being published that confers the illusion of personal worthiness. Call it a need of the inner child if you will, but there is some part of all of us that wants to see our name (favorably) in print. Even us shy types. People don't hear from us often, but that doesn't mean we don't have something to say. We all have something to say, and the perceived permanence of the printed word leads us to believe--correctly or incorrectly--that our words, our names, our lives, have value.

For many, being published means writing a book, or being a part of some written work such as a newspaper, magazine, playbill or a brick with our name on it in the middle of King Street. For others, being published means contributing something that gets written about. Both are means to one end: ensuring that people who come after us will know our name. 

That particular flavor of Kool-Aid leads us to believe that our name, and by association our existence, will live forever. Of course the fallacy is that just because no one knows your name doesn't mean it can't still be a fun Boston-area sports bar. And it doesn't mean you won't be remembered.

I think that's it, at its core. We all just want to be remembered.

Some of us want to be remembered for making a difference. Some of us just don't want to to be forgotten. We are afraid we will fade into oblivion. And if we do, that means, somehow, that our lives were meaningless. Without purpose.

That's one reason people have children. It is. So there'll be one child left in this world to carry on, to carry on....the family name. Or the family business. Or the memory of WHO I WAS. Children are our living tabula rasa, our opus,es...opi. They are vessels for some portion of our soul.

So we'll call this my Honesty blog. And here is the part where I gulp, step to the edge, and have the courage to take my own leap of faith in pursuit of my special purpose. Sorry Steve, we all have one. Even the girls.

I could say I wrote Janie Mitchell, Reliable Cook because it is the kind of story that needs to be shared with a wider audience. That would be true. Being associated with Janie through her writing has been an honor and a pleasure. This work is historically significant, and it is my privilege to be associated with it.

I could say I wrote the book because I want to honor Janie's memory and protect what she intended her journal to do: make a difference. Tru dat squared. But what is even truer (the trueyist) is that I have an inborn (maybe inbred) need to be appreciated. My inner child enjoys hearing that people like what I wrote. I like the attention, the accolades. There. I said it. I have always wanted to be published, not just as a writer but as an author. While I am scared to death about what lies ahead in this process, there is also a sense of calm, knowing that this means the Library of Congress, at least, will have me on file. And that means I will be remembered. 

Was Janie motivated by the same desire--to be remembered--when she wrote her journal at age 77? Perhaps. But I hope I've come to know Janie well enough over the last 3 years to speculate on her motivations for writing. I believe she wanted to make a difference by helping a new generation understand where they came from.

She feared that black history would be lost unless each and every individual takes charge of remembering it. "The negro teachers say nothing has been taught in history about the Negro," Janie wrote in her journal. "Well if you want a history get busy commit to memory," she wrote. Quicherbellyaiken, I can hear her say. In my mind Janie is a pressed and prim, finger-wagging lovable old lady who does not put up with excuses.

She also desperately wanted to pass along her religious beliefs to a current generation that had fallen away from biblical teachings. She worried for their souls.

Good lessons from a wise lady. Whether she would have been remembered in some way if her journal had not been published...who can say. Contrary to what Steve Martin's character believed, though, being published (whether in the phone book or anywhere else) is not what "makes" a person. Not in the Grand Scheme of Things. Janie understood that. And I would further venture to say that Janie would not have been concerned with being remembered so much as with being memorable. I believe she would have liked the idea of her journal being written on the hearts of future generations. Yes. She would have liked that very much. That's where she would want to see her name in print.

There, and in the Lamb's book of life: heaven's directory.
                                                             

What Inspires You to Write?

I have many blank "books:" journals, really, but I like to think of them as books that just haven't been written yet. One of my favorites is a care-worn leather journal with leather strap that I use on special trips, to record thoughts, observations, little snippets, ideas or turns of phrases I want to remember. This journal looks like something among the possessions of Indiana Jones or Dian Fossey: a soul keeper that has seen salt and spray, been lost in a jungle mud slide and found under sand-swept dunes many times over the course of its life. It has the appearance of something inherited, or won in a fist fight. It is the kind of journal that can only improve with age, wear, and the vicissitudes of life. It is my Velveteen Rabbit.

I took this journal to Devil's Fork State Park, on Lake Jocassee, last week. I knew that, of all my blank books, this was the one that should accompany me there. This was my nature book yet to be written. Nature is my best inspiration. It makes me introspective.

And itchy.

Lake Jocassee is 75 miles of undeveloped shoreline and more than 7,500 acres of water as clear as any in the Caribbean. It is deep. And cold. At its deepest, it is 385 feet. Where land licks liquid, sandy shores spread out below bright white rock. Thumbing through my "mind pictures" right now I can see Turtle Island. Behind it are three progressively higher mountain ranges, each one a lighter shade of green, like a watercolor, until the last barely visible peak almost blends into the clouds. I can hear the cicadas. I can smell the faint fishiness of mountain stream-fed water. This is what I want to preserve in my journal, for myself and for future generations. This is the image I want to share. This is what inspires me to write. And it makes me wonder: what inspires others to write?

Something in me believes that Janie Mitchell, the 77-year-old black woman who wrote a journal of her Charleston memories from 1862 through 1931, wanted to write. I think maybe she didn't write, until that journal, but I think there was a writer in her. There's a little captain in all of us, as the sage advertising copywriter reminds us, but some of us have more "captain" than others, and some of us have souls that ache to communicate, to be understood, to make a difference on little slips of paper. Janie was one of those souls, one of those "writer types," even if she had never written before, or since.

So what motivated Janie to write on that Emancipation Day January 1, 1931?

For one thing, she was encouraged to do so. At that time Janie worked for a family whose youngest daughter was home from college, where she studied history. This young woman had grown up hearing Janie's stories. And she knew the old cook had personal experience of a pivotal point in American history; with Janie's passing, these first-hand observances would be lost. So she made a gift of a composition notebook to Janie, and encouraged her to write about her life and those times. Janie did just that, in a burst of inspiration, never knowing that her words would reach across generations almost a century later.

Janie had something to say, and she knew it. She knew men, black and white, who were instrumental in the war and who played significant roles in moving forward after the South's defeat. Charleston was a broken city. The nation was brought to her knees. These were Phoenix times, and Janie knew people who helped us rise from the ashes.

She also wanted to speak to the younger generation, both of her time and of coming times. Janie was steadfastly religious. I often think that exceedingly trying times will polarize a person: either they cling to their beliefs or they abandon them completely. Janie was the former, and she watched as a generation came along who had not been brought up in the church. She wanted her writing to make a difference in their lives by sharing what she had clung to.

And Janie wanted certain facts to be remembered, because there are just some things that should never be forgotten.

But the truth is, Janie probably just got itchy.

She was inspired to write on that New Year's Day 80 years ago. She had a sudden urge to scratch out her observations. Because really, when you're itchy, there's not much else you can think about.

We all have something to say, to preserve and interpret for posterity. We all can be history's eyes, recording the truths of our short life spans. Certainly along the timeline of history, there are generations who can never travel the path of those years, except through our telling of it. So my question today is, what makes you itchy?

And to that, whatever that is for you, I raise my camp cup to the possibility of an epic shortage of Benadryl.