INSIDE VOICES

INSIDE VOICES

Robert Gwaltney and Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce Mary Martha Greene

Mary Martha Greene is a South Carolina native and government relations consultant who perfected her entertaining skills for making friends and engaging clients during her forty-year career. She divides her time between Beaufort and Columbia, SC. She is the author of the bestselling book, The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells All and the sequel, The Cheese Biscuit Queen, Kiss My Aspic!: Southern Recipes, Saucy Stories, and More Rambunctious Behavior.

Inside Voices/Jeffrey: In the dedication in The Cheese Biscuit Queen, Kiss My Aspic!, you write: “For my Gran-Gran, who let me be underfoot in the kitchen and first taught me to love stories. Thank you for the world of people you have brought into my life through food.” Tell us more about your beloved Gran-Gran and other influences in your life that have brought you to the intersection of award-winning cookbooks and storytelling.

My Grandmother was one of those fabulous, incredibly gracious Southern Women, she could charm you into doing something you really didn’t want to do, and by the time she got through with you, you’d have sworn YOU begged HER to let you do it.  She could also cut you off with just that one look, and whatever it was you’d done that displeased her you NEVER even THOUGHT about doing that again.  She retired after 40 years of teaching the May before I was born in December, so my older brother George and I were sort of her retirement projects.  I spent most of the summers with her in Greer, South Carolina, and then on my 6th birthday she and my Aunts moved into the house I own now in Beaufort right next door to us.  When I would spend those summers with her, she’d tell me bedtime stories like the Three Little Bears and the Little Red Hen, intermixed with family history stories. She was always cooking something delicious in the kitchen – I’d give anything to have her creamed corn one more time.  So I really think that’s where my love of food AND storytelling comes from. When I was probably in elementary school and I’d spend Saturdays with her when my parents would come to Columbia for football games, she’d have me sit down and write poems or stories, so I also credit her with teaching me to love to write.  She lived to be 100 years old, and was just bright and vibrant until the end.  My Mother and both my Aunts were wonderful cooks, and each had their own specialties.  So they also had a big influence on my cooking and entertaining abilities, but it was my Grandmother who tied them all together with stories and writing.

Inside Voices/Robert: In your latest book, you confess that you are not the true Cheese Biscuit Queen. Talk about that and the importance of cheese biscuits in your storytelling.

My Aunt Mimi – the Martha in Mary Martha – was the one true cheese biscuit queen.  I’d love to know how many of them she made over her lifetime, because if anyone was having a party or there was a church function in Beaufort, her cheese biscuits were usually there.  She also bore a striking resemblance to that other Queen from across the pond, to the point when we were in Victoria, British Columbia, this street performer dressed in Elizabethan garb came running up to her, bowed before her like Sir Walter Raliegh and exalted “My Queen, My Queen”. And then the young lady at the Beaufort Post Office told her one time she kinda “favored” the Queen, so it was also a big joke in our family. 

The cheese biscuits just have so many stories about them.  They are alleged to have medicinal qualities, from fighting my friends morning sickness when they were pregnant to helping with nausea when my brother and other friends have been going through chemo.  My oldest goddaughter even told her mother when she was little that her tummy hurt, but a cheese biscuit would make it feel better. 

And they’ve traveled literally all over the United States and to several countries.  Mimi liked to travel and when my mother developed lung problems and couldn’t travel anymore, I started going with Mimi on trips, and if we were on a tour, she’d pack a tin of cheese biscuits to pass around on the bus. A friend who was the food writer for The State Newspaper even interviewed Mimi about them once and wrote a column about her. Mimi was quoted in the article as saying “All obligations can be paid with Cheese Biscuits.”

Inside Voices/Jeffrey: Word has it that your mother was none too happy about some of the stories you included in The Cheese Biscuit Queen. We’d love to hear the backstory there and, in general, how you approach infusing your family and friends into your stories. 

My poor Mother is probably rolling over in her grave, and she was cremated, so I’m not sure how that works – does the urn spin or do the ashes just kind of whip around like a tornado inside the urn??? The original working title for this book was “The Cheese Biscuit Queen – I don’t believe I’d have told THAT!” and that ended up being the title of one of the chapters in the book, but my editor didn’t think if you could hear the emphasis in my voice that it wouldn’t make as much sense for the title.  Apparently, I had a never-ending ability to say the wrong thing and embarrass my mother as a child, and that’s what she’d say to me.  My Mother so wanted a dainty, prissy little girl, and I so was not! But I also think that’s what made me close to my grandmother, because she thought I could do no wrong, and always ran a lot of interference between my mother and me. 

I really didn’t set out to write a book to embarrass my Mother, I set out to write down recipes and stories for one of my godchildren who’d asked me to teach her to cook. Once I started, the stories about the people who those recipes belonged to just started wanting to be included also. But you know how things go in the South, some of the most interesting stories are about some of our more, shall we say, colorful characters and the things they do. My grandmother did tell me one time when I was little about a divorce within the family “So and So was married before, and we do not discuss it!” And I think there were a lot of things my mother would have preferred I not discuss. 

Inside Voices/Robert: Of all the wonderful stories you tell within your latest book. Do you have a favorite?

I have lots of favorites, several of the stories are about not just my family but other friends who are no longer with us, and writing them down brought back really sweet memories of them.  But probably my favorite is the last one in the book, about the night my “perfect” older brother got my mother’s and his partner’s drinks mixed up, and got my Mother VERY intoxicated.  It was a rule in my father’s house that you had to pour from a jigger or you were on the road to being an alcoholic. My Mother and Aunt drank little one-ounce drinks, so the jigger was just filled half way.  My brother and his partner drank doubles, so the jigger was filled to two ounces, emptied into the glass and refilled with two more ounces. We were having a big family dinner to celebrate my Aunt Mary’s birthday, George handed Mother the wrong drink, and by the time we sat down to eat, Mother sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher – you know, “wah whoa wah, whoa wah wah.” I don’t think my brother ever fessed up to what he’d done, but my mother just wondered why she didn’t feel so good or make it to church the next morning. 

Inside Voices/Jeffrey: The book is organized by course and features 80 new recipes including delicious favorites like Shrimp Remoulade Deviled Eggs, Pride of the Pee Dee Chicken Bog, and Chatham Artillery Punch. For you, consummate cook that you are, this may be a nightmare scenario, but I must ask: If you could only make one dish for the rest of your life, what would it be? 

I think if you asked the rest of the world, they would say the cheese biscuits, but for me, it would probably be red rice.  The recipe is in my first book, The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells All.  It’s such a quintessentially Lowcountry dish that has it’s roots in the Gullah-Geechee culture, and a wonderful lady named Sara Seabrook taught me how to make it. It reminds me of her and of home.  There’s a certain late night talk show host who just published a cookbook along with his wife, and he talked about how much he loved red rice, but in their book, they substituted the bacon for anchovies because his wife doesn’t eat meat.  That’s a really sweet reason to do it, but if you’re not going to do it right and use the bacon, don’t call it red rice, call it rice with anchovies. Several friends asked me what I thought of their cookbook, and I told them I had to put the book down, I just couldn’t have any faith in the rest of the recipes.  You just don’t mess around with red rice – it is sacred. 

Inside Voices/Robert: You have confessed that throughout your career, you have shared your love of cooking, baking, and entertaining to aid you in making friends and influencing people in the legislative, political, and fundraising arenas. Can you share a time you were able to win over an obstinate so-and-so through your cooking?

That would have to be my last year that I was lobbying for the South Carolina Education Association – the teacher’s association.  I got into a knockdown, drag out fight with the chair of the employee benefits subcommittee – and we both let it get really personal.  We had a lot of mutual friends who tried to be the peacemakers, but neither of us were having it. He ended up not seeking re-election that year, and after sitting out a year, he joined us in the lobby.  I used to make cookies and take to the State House on Wednesday for my fellow lobbyists, and after a few years, he admitted he loved Oatmeal Raisin cookies, and that mine were his absolute favorite.  He’s retired now but I still consider him a friend.  (And I won the legislative fight we had that year by the way.) 

Inside Voices/Jeffrey: What does your writing horizon look like? Might there be a novel somewhere in your mental line-up of next books?

I’ve started a novel – very autobiographical – about a female lobbyist who inherits the family home.  I am also a Master Naturalist, and particularly love wading birds like herons and egrets. They each have different characteristics, so there might be some things that my main character would learn from observing the birds that she can use in her lobbying career. Since it’s about the legislature and politics there might have to be some vultures or other birds of prey in there. I could also tell some stories in the novel that I could claim were “fiction”, that I couldn’t tell in a cookbook that’s supposed to be “non-fiction!” You know, when you claim it’s fiction, you stand a lot less chance of getting sued for liable! Part of the subplot is also about that divorce that my grandmother told me not to discuss – 10 years after she died I finally got my Aunt Mimi to spill the beans about it. 

I’ll also probably write another cookbook or two.  I’m outlining one right now about parties and entertaining, and some other ideas. The tag line on some of the stories is “there might have been alcohol involved!” 

Inside Voices/Robert: You reference a quote by author Sue Monk Kidd: “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” What do you want your legacy to be?

I hope my legacy is that I always made people feel welcome in my home and at my table – I think that’s a legacy I got from my Grandmother, and that I’ve tried to live up to since I’m now the caretaker of her home.  I hope some of the food that people enjoy around my table, and some of the stories that are told encourage them to tell and cook and write down their family recipes and stories so that they will be handed down and preserved.  I think that would be a pretty great legacy to leave.  And the cheese biscuit recipe, of course!