Summer supper

Whenever I cook, I feel like I am channeling my parents and grandparents. My grandmothers and one of my grandfathers all cooked (well, my PaPa Bruce cooked boiled peanuts and helped with Brunswick stew, I think that counts), my parents both cooked, and all contributed to my joy of food, both eating and preparation. So this blog is just to celebrate cooking, purely selfishly, so I don't bore the whole facebook community with my detailed descriptions of my cooking processes. Last night I canned some vegetable soup, and there was a little left over. Plus, the pint jar that I processed with the larger jars didn't seal, so I had a good mess of soup that I could cook tonight. I thought I would add some potatoes, and since I had gotten pork chops out of the freezer last night, those had to be cooked too. Cornbread would go well with this, so that went into the mix. And since I had stopped at The Vegetable Bin in search of honey (which they were out of) and speckled butterbeans for the soup (which they were also out of), I picked up some fresh South Carolina peaches and blueberries. I had some lemons in the refrigerator without their skins (I started a pitcher of limoncello this morning) that I needed to squeeze, so one thing led to another and there appeared a pan of peach blueberry crisp that went into the oven. Peaches in summer always remind me of my daddy. He would get a couple of bushels in early summer, just as they were coming in. One bushel stayed in his truck, and would be eaten by him (and any lucky passenger) over the course of a few days. He always carried a pocket knife and handkerchief, so he would just peel and sometimes sprinkle with a little salt and eat. The other bushel would go home to Momma, to be frozen or canned (I prefer frozen) for pies later on. My mother makes wonderful cobblers. I have never really gotten the hang of making them her way, and usually just make what I call a cuppa, cuppa, cuppa version. But hers are out of this world. She makes pie dough and rolls it out thin and cuts it into strips, dropping about half of them into the boiling fruit to cook for a few minutes. Then she pours all that sweet, hot fruit and dumpling mixture into a casserole dish. Then she dots it with butter and lays more strips of pie dough over the top. Finally it goes into the oven, to bake until the crust on top is brown and the filling is bubbly. It is good hot and even better cold the next day. Top it with some homemade ice cream-wow. The blueberries remind me of a time my parents, brother and I went blueberry picking in the mountains. We found some wild blueberry bushes on the side of the road and just picked to our hearts' content. Now I buy them, but I try to buy local ones, at least. As for the crisp aspect to my dessert, when I was young, first living with my husband, I had a Fannie Farmer cookbook (I still have it, I think) and I loved trying new things. One of my go-to desserts was Apple Crisp, with a crumbly oatmeal/flour/sugar/butter topping. Easier than my mother's pie and a great way to use fresh fruit. When I was scrubbing and cutting the potatoes for the soup tonight (soup made with my mother's instructions, by the way)I was remembering my Granny Gable. When I was a child I would always spend at least a week with each set of grandparents. Granny would make fresh green beans with potatoes and those and fresh tomatoes and fried okra and corn were my favorite things to eat at her house. She didn't peel the potatoes, but scrubbed the skin off. I finally realize the reason she could do that is because those potatoes were fresh dug from her garden the day she cooked them, and not store potatoes. We had sliced tomatoes and fresh vegetables every meal those summers, and I try to do that now at my house. If the soup is my mother's, the cornbread is definitely my daddy's. He taught me how to make cornbread when I was a teen. My mother was a nurse and often did shift work, so Daddy did his share of the cooking, too. He taught me cornbread, fried chicken (and pork chops), gravy, and the importance of tomatoes with every summer meal. I didn't use it tonight, but the biggest cast iron frying pan I have came from my MaMa Bruce, via my mother. When I use it I imagine that it still has her fingerprints embedded in its patina, along with my mother's. Romantic, I know, but I love the idea of connection. And was supper good? Oh, my, yes, and now I am as full as a tick, as my mother used to say.