Cookin' Breakfast

I do have memories of my mother in the kitchen. We had a big, black wood-burning cook stove at which she always seemed to be standing. She would be frying, stirring, putting in wood, taking out large pans of beautifully browned fluffy biscuits, skillets of corn bread, and sometimes even pans of baked meats.

The memory of my mother making breakfast is particularly vivid. It was a mystery to me how she managed what she did. The meat she cooked varied by the season of the year and what was available. Sometimes it would be chicken.  She would get up early, start her fire in the stove, put water on to heat, go out to the chicken pen, catch a fryer, wring it’s neck and when dead, dip it in that very hot water, pluck the feathers and prepare it for cooking. She would fry the chicken, fry some eggs, and make biscuits and gravy!!

I know none of this was an earth shaking event, but to do all of that early in the morning before the men of the house got off to work, to me, was astounding. It would have taken me at least until noon.