Iron Skillets.

The dawn of a new day is breaking through the fading gray color of nighttime. I opened the door to the deck out back before daylight and listened to the sounds of softly falling rain that was sent to water the earth.

After my morning weather check, I headed back into the house to make those Oatmeal cookies I had planned and I began to reminisce about...

Iron skillet cooking in the mountains of my childhood...that's what I was thinking as I made those cookies. The memories of my Momma in that mountain home kitchen add to my enjoyment of preparing meals, baking breads and desserts.

As I stood at the counter stirring, and sipping my morning coffee, the wonderful aroma of pure Vanilla extract and the Cinnamon I added to the mix surrounded me with an essence like designer perfume. And the fragrance intensified, permeating the whole house as the oven baked in the flavors.

I have indelibly etched in my mind a true picture and the feel of what a cool, mountain morning would look like from my childhood home and how the aroma of homemade biscuits and gravy mingled as though wrapping us in a warm blanket of love. The heat from the coal-fired Majestic cookstove was responsible for completing the task of cooking breakfast in my Momma’s kitchen.

She would have sifted flour from the pull-down bin in her cabinet, then reached underneath the porcelain top, behind the larger door and brought out a two pound bucket of lard and added a measure of that to the flour.

And fried apples and scrambled eggs were sometimes added to the meal. Momaw's house had a similar aroma at breakfast, except she added finely chopped potatoes which she flavored with a small amount of sugar. Great times at Momaw"s house!

She would then get the fresh buttermilk, mixed that good, rolled it out with the old rolling pin to a good thickness for tall, flaky biscuits and then she would have taken a Carnation milk can which had the top removed to create a biscuit cutter and she would have made some of the best biscuits you ever sank your teeth in. Then she would bring out the large, family size, iron skillet, add cooking grease she saved from the streaked bacon she fried, then flour, and make a roux(we called it a thickener) then pour the milk, salt and pepper and stand over the stove and stir, stir, stir, slowly so as not to get splattered by the bubbling, hot mix.

In the right time of year, she would cook fresh apples with brown sugar and cinnamon, which we loved to eat on our buttered-with-real butter, biscuits or, sometimes, momma's blackberry jelly.

Momma would have set the table with Blue Willow dishes and coffee cups but the silverware was an unmatched collection of forks and knives and spoons. But who noticed? Who really cared when u were eating such wonderful food...it was like you could taste that little pinch of love that momma added, sprinkling as she worked

I compared the differences that fifty years has made in my homemaking endeavors...

I turn a button on a stove to get the heat I need. Momma needed a fire built in the stove to get it hot enough to cook on.

I opened the freezer door, brought out the tasty Pillsbury frozen biscuits, put them in the oven and waited.

No lard in the gravy, no sausage grease, I use a light cooking oil with a little butter added to brown the roux. Then I stir, stir, stir, slowly and as I do, I rewind the picture all over again of my momma, who took great pleasure in her role as homemaker, preparing meals, having clothes that "warshed up" so clean and bright, and the beauty of sharp creases ironed in the pants leg and the artistic look of the doilies

that had been starched to hold their shapes.

Appalachian Breakfasts

Iron skillet cooking in the mountains of my childhood. Memories of home will always include the kitchen scene of my Momma standing at her cabinet or by the old Majestic, coal-fired cook stove...where the most delectable meals were produced with love. Where, in fact as I watched, I became inspired to learn much about preparing foods. Unseen, but there, was the love that Momma added to every meal. She filled our home and our hearts with her love of her children.

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