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View From Your Table

Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

This is what I’m talking about! A mess of greens, turnip roots, and buttermilk cornbread, all made this afternoon by ME! I think everybody else in the house is too polite to complain about how much I stunk up the house by making it smell like greens, but they all sure loved the cornbread. Funny, but I hated greens as a kid, though I didn’t mind the smell, because I associated them with my Nana, who always cooked them.

The smell of greens cooking in their pot liquor on the stove is one of the elemental aromas of the rural South — or at least it was. I wonder if it’s a generational thing. I was talking about greens with a black woman cashier at the grocery store the other day. She looked to be in her early 20s, and really liked greens (collards are her favorite; my favorite are turnip greens), but that conversation made me aware that the only white people I know who eat greens are people of my generation and older — and honestly, I can’t think of anybody in my generation who do. Or if they do, they never talk about it. I’ll talk about greens with anybody, anytime.

UPDATE: I don’t have a recipe for greens — I just make them by instinct — but here’s the recipe for my wife’s Mammaw’s cornbread:

1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 egg
2 cups buttermilk

Mix it all together until smooth. Pour into a black iron skillet that has been greased with butter or bacon fat. Bake in a 425-degree oven until top is brown and firm.

That’s all I know.

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