Tasting Home

Lately I’ve had a strange homesickness to share conversation and food with the people from my childhood. 

This longing probably stems from the fact that there are more of my extended family in heaven than there are here on earth. In fact, two years ago, when my cousin Sabrina passed away, I realized I no longer had anyone to talk with about my childhood. She and I were partners in crime and could just look at each other and start remembering.

I’ve imagined conversations with Aunt Edna as we share popcorn (out of the popcorn pan) and watch TV. I’ve been certain that I could still smell the sweet scent of my mom’s vanilla wafer cake as I walked in the door from school on a rainy afternoon. I’ve dreamed of cold mashed potatoes and gravy with Uncle Bud, and of being awakened for school by my Aunt Opal handing me a hot washcloth for my face and a mincemeat cookie to get my day started.

What I wouldn’t give for another moment with any of them!

Last week I kept thinking about Aunt Madge. One of my grandma’s sisters, she and my Uncle Roy lived on a farm in Claremore, OK. They had chickens and pigs and cows. Every summer I would stay a week or so with them. They taught me to fish, to gather eggs and to drink water from an aluminum ladle out of the well. I learned to pick persimmons, to fill the cows’ water trough, and that a little manure on my feet wouldn’t kill me. (I also learned to climb the ladder to the hayloft when the sow got out and chased me.)

She smoked nonstop and had wrinkled skin and a rough voice. She kept a huge garden and happily shared her extras. Dinner was at lunchtime and always included fresh-picked produce.

Mom would often wake me up on a Saturday and tell me, “ Get up. We are going to see Madge.”  I would spring out of bed knowing that it was going to be a fun day.

Mom would call ahead and tell her we were coming. She always answered the same way, “I’ll have dinner waitin’.”

That meant chicken fried steak with gravy cooked in an iron skillet, homemade biscuits and freshly-churned butter, fresh roast’nears (her term for roasting ears or fresh corn-on-the-cobb), cucumbers and tomatoes sliced on a plate, and green beans with new potatoes, all straight from the garden. (Usually there was a dessert, but I was so full by then I never ate any.)

When they drove to our house they brought sacks and sacks of produce. Mom would fry up the okra and squash and stick the beans and potatoes in a pressure cooker. It would spin and hiss and steam until they were perfectly tender.  (We were never allowed in the kitchen when the pressure cooker was running in case it “exploded,” which it did one time, all over the kitchen ceiling. Mom sat on the kitchen floor and cried over that mess. The stain was still on the ceiling when we sold the house forty-five years later.)

The other day I started craving green beans and potatoes. Sadly, there is no written recipe for those beans.

So, I spent an hour scanning recipes on the Internet…there were hundreds of them. Most used ham or ham hocks for flavor but I remembered mom and Aunt Madge using bacon or salt pork. I decided to try bacon.

A vegetarian recipe used mushrooms for flavor. I like mushrooms so that sounded interesting.

After reading through dozens and dozens of recipes, I decided to combine what sounded best and just see what I came up with.

They were surprisingly good, sort of an updated version of those green beans I had as a child.

Here is what I did:

Slow Cooker Green Beans n’ Potatoes

Ingredients:

2 lbs fresh green beans, rinsed and cut

1 ½ lbs of new or red potatoes

1 large onion, chopped

1 8-12 oz carton of mushrooms, sliced

1 12 oz pack of bacon

1-2 garlic cloves, pressed (or 1 t. of garlic powder)

1 t. onion powder

1 ½ cups of chicken broth

Directions:

Fry bacon until crisp. Drain on paper towels. When cool, break into one-inch pieces.

After removing the bacon, retain 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease and add onion and mushrooms. Cook until almost tender. 

Add bacon pieces back into the skillet with the onions and mushrooms. Continue to cook and stir mixture for 2 – 4 minutes until bacon gets a bit more brown  — I know it sounds weird but I promise it is good this way. It gives the bacon a great texture – even after a long cook time. (No slimy bacon for us.)

Spray slow-cooker with cooking spray. Add green beans. Pour the bacon, mushroom, onion mix over the beans, scraping out the bits and adding them to the pot. (I added a half cup of the broth to the empty skillet to loosen the bits from the pan first, then added the broth and bits to the beans.) 

Layer potatoes on top of bacon mix. Add garlic and onion powder, salt and pepper. Pour the remaining chicken broth over all.

Cover and cook 4 – 5 hours on high or 8 – 10 on low. You will need to watch this the first time since all slow-cookers heat differently. You want the beans to be tender but not mushy. I checked it half-way through the first time and then mixed it all together. Now, since I know the cook time, I just put it in and leave it alone.

The mushrooms would not have been part of my mom’s or my Aunt Madge’s version, but they add a rich, deep taste and when combined with the broth almost make a gravy. We loved them.

In fact, instead of adding potatoes to the slow cooker, you could serve mashed potatoes and use the broth mixture for gravy.

 Other Variations (can you tell I like to experiment?):

•  Substitute jalapeno bacon instead of regular. (This is hot, but our favorite version so far.)
•  Add 1 lb of smoked sausage
•  Add 2 T of Cajun seasoning
•  Skip the bacon and use leftover ham cut into small chunks (great use for your after-Easter ham)

 

Sunday dinner suggestion: Prep and layer all but the broth on Saturday night and store in the fridge. Sunday morning add the broth and start cooking. It will be ready when you get home from church.  Serve it with grilled pork chops, biscuits and sliced tomatoes. 

I think mom and Aunt Madge would like my updated version of their recipe. I know they’d be proud of me for figuring out something on my own. (Well, sorta on my own; I did read all those recipes first.)

I hope you enjoy them, too!

What food from your childhood do you find yourself wishing for?