In truly Southern food, it doesn't get any simpler or better than pot likker. I'm pretty sure pot likker came from days of poverty when you didn't waste anything. But I grew up watching Daddy eat it every time Mom would make vegetables and cornbread, and I learned to love it (also, from Dad I got my love of coffee and mass quantities of ice cream -- ha). It's basically whatever veggies you have, with some crumbled cornbread and the juice from the peas or beans poured in to make a soup. If you have your own tomatoes, your own veggies, it's only better. AND if you have just come in from gardening or playing in the sprinkler, that enhances it all the more. It's amazing to taste the nuances of flavors melding together in one bowl. **After Jennifer's comment yesterday, I googled "pot likker". There are actually definitions. I originally spelled "pot likker" as "pot licker", which, it turns out, is a derogatory term for someone of very low station -- so poor, that they have to lick the bottom of the pot for nourishment. "Pot likker" is the appropriate spelling for the leftover juice from cooking greens, used for a soup base. This practice was started in times where a good ham bone wasn't always available and as time went on, people made up their own versions of pot likker, but there was always some sort of boiling juice involved. Boy, for something so good, it sounds disgusting! You may read about it here, although they spell it "pot liquor", which according to a letter written to the NY Times, only a Yankee would spell it that way (boy, people get passionate about these things!).
Can you tell I love food? Well, I do.
And so does Addie! My kids eat all sorts of things that would be considered strange for kids. Here is Addie with a plate of guacamole:
And guacamole really isn't that abnormal, but she LOVES spicy pickles and anything else spicy. Carter loves raw sushi. They're just funny kids.Last month, I made chicken n' dumplin's with the pie crust, and peas, cornbread, tomatoes, etc., on the side. I haven't had pot likker in years so I decided to make a bowl of it on the side (pictured above). Addie took one look at it and piled everything on her plate together, including the chicken n' dumplin's. As she ate, she proclaimed, "MMMM! Good pan likker!" :) She tasted a few bites of my concoction and loved it.So, I told her next time we would do it properly.
Monday night was her chance to do it properly. We had butter beans (put up from the farmer's market earlier this summer), cornbread, chopped onions, home grown tomatoes, etc. We grilled some deer sausage for protein. I fixed her a bowl, and she insisted on throwing in the sausage as well. She cracks me up. Here is the product.
The bits of brown in the picture above are barbecue sauce where she would dip her sausage in it, then in the pot licker. And she ate almost the whole bowl.She is truly my Southern gal...
3 comments:
Oh, I wish my kids ate like that! They'd rather die than eat a veggie - except Shelby, but she's still picky.
Okay ... I consider myself a true "Southern girl" but this is a new one on me. "Pot licker" in our family was the juice from peas or beans ... mostly peas. I loved the peas, but wasn't real big on the juice, but my daddy would fill a bowl with the pot licker, cornbread and sometimes raw onion after he had eaten the rest of the meal ... sort of a country dessert, I guess.
I have to agree with Rie ... my kids would never eat many of those things you were talking about, they will eat veggies though, so that is good.
Well, both of my kids have their "things" that they won't eat. For instance, Carter has an automatic gag reflex if he even sees a banana. Seriously. When he was in school, a mom brough a cake for her daughter's birthday that had bananas in the middle of it. He didn't see or smell them, took a bite and threw up on his lunch tray. His comment was, "Who would put bananas in cake?" He said it to me, not them, but I think they got the hint that he didn't like it when he threw up. Addie won't touch blackberries with a ten-foot pole. But they both eat just about everything else. They're funny. That always takes people off-guard. It's nice that they do it but I think it's more because we have always put a teensy spoon of everything on their plate (unless it is one of those TRUE dislikes) and said, try it or go hungry until breakfast. It doesn't work with everyone's kids but it worked with ours. But they have gone above and beyond by requesting sushi and pot likker.
AND now I am about to update this blog with the appropriate spelling of "pot likker" and a brief history that I looked upt his morning after you shared the difference in your family's concoction, Jennifer!
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