Insurance Tips with Amber Thomason

Reminiscing with Diane SouthernMamas

and Iron Skillets

It rested there on a back burner of

Mother’s old white enamel stove that had seen better days. Every day. It needed that rest because that cast-iron skillet never had a day off. Sometimes there’d be leftover bacon grease in it or perhaps it was clean, just waiting for Mother to pick it up and start frying the best chicken I’ve ever eaten. Or any one (or two) of the vast array of foods Southerners fried back then. But that skillet was always right there. Waiting. Calling her name.

Every Southern mama had at least one—we referred to them as “iron” skillets—everyone knew it was cast-iron, so why waste a perfectly good word saying so? I was the proud owner of my first iron skillet before I was a mama; Mother gave it to me as part of a wedding gift in 1973. Soon afterward I tried to kill it. A totally innocent mistake (every criminal claims innocence). A dishwasher wasn’t a fixture in our house when I was growing up, so how was I to know the skillet didn’t like that kind of cleaning? To this day I remember how mortified I was when I opened that dishwasher and saw a clump of rust. The good news is that it’s pretty hard to kill an iron skillet so I didn’t have to tell Mother I’d destroyed it. Forty-seven years later, that iron skillet still serves me well. No matter what horrors I put it through, it just keeps hanging on. I often wonder how many years it has left—many more than me, that’s for sure. The one thing my skillet has never done, so I can only assume it never will, is produce food as scrumptious as Mother’s. Don’t recall ever having anything come out of hers that wasn’t Southern perfection. Nothing fancy, just plain old-fashioned Southern fried anything and everything. Perhaps not my favorite, but certainly the most important thing she cooked in that skillet, was cornbread because it ended up in her chicken ‘n dressin’—oh, the mouthwatering anticipation. When making cornbread she always did a little something special that I’ve never seen anyone else do. I can still see her leaning over, potholder in hand, pulling her pre-heated, piping-hot iron skillet out of the oven. She threw a scant handful of cornmeal into the hot lard to sizzle, scattering the crumbs around before adding the batter. Just enough cornmeal sprinkled in to add more crunch—as if the generous helping of lard didn’t make it crunchy enough. That extra cornmeal did a tad more than make it the crispiest, crunchiest cornbread crust in the world. It made it the messiest. The sheer delight of eating it—cornmeal crumbs all over my fingers, falling on the table and into my lap—rendered the mess meaningless. To me anyway. All these years later, I realize it likely wasn’t meaningless to her. Can’t talk about Mother’s iron skillet without being reminded of Granny’s, although that might just be one of those things that should remain a family secret. Granny cooked a lot of good food in that skillet, such as salt pork for breakfast every morning. I kid you not. Salt pork. You had to wash the salt off before cooking it. However, when it came to cornbread, she used a square aluminum pan. What Southerner does that? I’m betting she’s the only one who’s ever committed such a sacrilege. If I could talk with her today, I’d ask why. At least I draw comfort from knowing that every family has skeletons in the closet. And now I’m all teary-eyed with these memories and thoughts of my mother and granny. Granny’s been gone for forty years and Mother for sixteen. As I sit typing this tonight, I can still hear their voices, see them moving around the kitchen. If my phone rang right now, I would recognize both their voices in a New York minute. Who has more impact on our lives than mothers and grannies?

by Diane Ferrell

Diane has been publishing this magazine since 2007. She loves all things Texas and Southern. Except humidity.