#AmCooking #AmEating #AmRemembering

Tell me where you are from, just using food. I’ll start.

Country Ham with Red-Eye Gravy and White Grits.

Just typing “Country Ham” caused my salivary glands to wake up. My God. The salt! The not-quite shoe leather quality that, in truth, I still crave! (On our way to the Florida Panhandle for vacation, we’d make a stop at the store at Jimmy Siddens Country Ham Motel and buy country ham, country ham bacon, and country ham sausage. Vacation breakfasts were serious business.)

Red-Eye Gravy calls for country ham pan drippings and strong, bitter coffee, which was pretty much the only kind of coffee my Maw-Maw made. On more than one occasion I watched her lift the still-percolating pot off the gas flame, pour it into a mug, take the lid off the percolator, slowly pour the coffee back over the grounds, and set the pot back on the fire to percolate more, because clearly that coffee wasn’t yet strong enough to raise the dead.

White grits — my grandmother thought they were prettier than yellow grits — were prepared with lots of salt and served with a nice slice of butter, then topped with hot gravy. There would be fresh buttered biscuits, too, with homemade strawberry jam and eggs fried in the country ham fat. (She lived to be 93, by the way, but she and my mom were also proponents of lots of fresh vegetables. Just not at breakfast.)

Here is a photo of the most epic breakfast feast ever that involved fresh-caught Cobia, Mahi-Mahi, and Mackerel from a deep-sea fishing trip the day before. Photo taken in the cottage we rented from the Windes in Walton County, Florida. (This was way before Destin was “discovered.” Often we’d be one of maybe 3 or 4 other people on the beach.)

L-R, Judy Windes, Joyce Rouden, my mom Ginny Gummere, Janet (Rouden) Frost, me at 13, school chum Becky Herrick, my grandmother, Jack Rouden, and my dad Walter Gummere. My grandfather took the photo.

Okay, your turn! Let me hear from you in the comments below! Where are you from, using only food to tell us!