Breakfast
My parents were up early, as there was a lot to be done in the day. We had a wood cookstove that Mother had to heat up in order to cook breakfast. Coffee, the first priority, was set to perk on the stove. After his coffee, Daddy went outside to do chores, such as milking, feeding the hens, and cleaning out pens. Mother baked biscuits, and cooked one of the breakfast staples, such as fried streaky meat, sawmill gravy, sausage, bacon, fried eggs, cheese omelets, grits, fried ham, red eye gravy, sausage gravy, and, in the winter, oatmeal. On the weekends we might have pancakes, waffles, or dried chipped beef in milk gravy. It all depended on how the chickens were laying and what meat, if any, we had.
We prepared fried eggs in the old-timey manner. If we had fried bacon, its grease was left in the skillet and an egg broken in; then whilst the egg was cooking, the grease was spooned on top. This cooked the egg just enough, so it was perfect in looks and taste.
— Mountain Born written by Jean Boone Benfield
On weekdays we mostly fend for ourselves for breakfast. Sometimes I’ll make a big pot of oatmeal and we’ll all share it it. Saturday is the day of the week that I typically make a big breakfast. Most recently it was pancakes and hog jowls.
I grew up eating all the things Benfield mentioned and still enjoy them today.
Last night’s video: The First Planting of the Year.
Tipper
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Yummy to all the foods for breakfast mentioned. I can say I have had most all those one time or more. With nine in the family you ate what you got or probably did without. LOL. Cold and windy after the cold front a few days ago. Unbelievable weather, but that’s spring time as I’ve always known it. Have a great St. Patty’s Day everyone. “Erin Go Braugh” to all. J
Hi Tipper,
Here in the Blue Ridge it is cold. Last night we had high winds and heavy rain. Late this afternoon the rain turned to sleet and then to snow. It covered the grass and is really pretty to see. It is still windy and about 30F.
For breakfast growing up during the week we had pop tarts and milk or toast and milk. Mommy always made sure we had money to buy breakfast at school so we really had two breakfasts. We had to get up and get out of the house by 6:30 AM and off to our grandparents to catch the bus at 8 AM. She felt that every bit of food she could get in us was a good thing. During the weekend we had biscuits gravy, cooked apples or canned apples and some kind of fried meat either bacon or shoulder/ham. Mommy and Daddy always had coffee and we always had milk. Our cooked apples were frozen apples we fixed during the summer from the early apple trees. Just thinking about it makes me hungry!! Kathy Patterson
Last night I spent alot of my time holding my younger cat in the pantry. The tornado sirens going on and off too many times. Tornados go north and south of us and across the river in Tennessee. But we get warnings, the firemen alarms, (our towns fire truck is parked behind us). Even though the tornados don’t get that close, our firemen and police go to the areas that might need help. Our firemen are all volunteers, they are angels. My son and the other employees spent time in the walk in freezer. A very unnerving night. Today is only 39 degrees, but all the trees are blooming, everything is green. I really don’t remember my mom making breakfast. I think she only made it for her and my dad. She did make pancakes on Friday nights sometimes. My son laughed and said “Omi never got up before noon. “I’m glad you got snow. Enjoy it. Anna from Arkansas.
Anna, I’m so thankful you were all okay!
It’s snowing in Anderson County, Tennessee. Not laying but its coming down hard!!
I love days like this..cold outside, warm inside, cup of hot tea and a good book to read.
Some people really enjoy cooking and eating a big hearty breakfast.
As for me, I’m a bran flake/cheerio with 1% milk kind of girl!
Richard
I did’nt get to watch your channel last nite . we had several weather warnings so we kept the weather on ,but I most certainly will watch it this morning.
all that good breakfast food sounds good and my family ate all that when I was growing up but I ate chocolate and biscuits with my coffee. emmm good.
speaking of weather it sure has cooled down and spitting snow ! yesterday was very windy and in the 70s.
I pray my lil seedlings do well tonight because we’r suppose to get down in the 20s. hope the heat lamp keeps from freezing.
Breakfast has always been important for me. Growing up as a kid in the 50s during the week we usually had cold cereal during the Spring, Summer, and Fall and definitely hot oatmeal during the winter. Now the weekends were different. My dad would cook either a big cheese omelet, pancakes or crepes. We loved my father’s crepes and we filled them with maple syrup jam, or as my grandmother use to do molasses. Both my mother and father worked six days a week so Sundays were the best day for breakfasts. Of course these wonderful breakfasts had to be eaten before we attended our 8:00 AM church service. In my first marriage I cooked all of the breakfasts and I was a short order cook. To satisfy the desires of my three sons and their mother I cooked eggs shiny side up, over easy, hard, and poached. Now a days I still cook breakfast for Diane and I and thus morning I cooked a hash made up of pork roast from yesterday’s meal diced fresh potatoes, and red onions. On top of the hash I put over easy eggs for Diane and me. A great way to start the day. Very good memories. Have a blessed day.
I love making a big breakfast on the weekend. Biscuits and gravy is one of my family’s favorites. Nothing like a hot cup of coffee to start the day! I look forward to that every morning. You’ve also gotten me into golden milk, Tipper, and I very much enjoy a mug of that wonderful hot drink on a cold winter day as well!
Have you seen any snow yet?
Only rain as usual 🙂 Do you have snow?
No snow here either. I don’t think it will make it to this end of the county.
**Update: We now have snow 🙂 I doubt it will amount to anything but it’s pretty!
Oops! I hit the wrong reply button!
“Saturday is the day of the week that I typically make a big breakfast. Most recently it was pancakes and hog jowls….”
Don’t you like how foodies can take something common that everyone calls by an English name, call it by its name in another language, and then make a big gourmet deal out of it? “Hog jowls”? Au contraire– they’re “guanciale” now! (“Gwonch-YAH-leh”) That’s the Italian name for it– foodies did the same with good old rocket and turned it into “arugula,” the joke about which is that that name is a rustic-dialect version of the actual standard Italian word “rucola” (“ROO-co-la”).
Anyhow, foreign or English names to one side, I’m with Richard Farnsworth in The Natural, introducing Robert Redford to French haute cuisine: “You can’t spell it, but it sure eats good, don’t it?”
I’m glad you get to at least see it!
Well, well, it sure brought a smile to my face when I read the breakfast Benfield wrote about. That breakfast was exactly like my Grandparents in NE MS always made and my Mother was the greatest cook ever and she made the best MILK GRAVY I’ve ever tasted. I thought she just made that name up for it so it warmed my heart to see it actually was called by that name.
Good to see your garden getting planted. It is to get up to 70 here today in SC PA with bad storms rolling in this afternoon and we may end up with a skiff of snow and temps below 30 tomorrow morning. I’m staying in and working on sewing walker bags for our church’s sewing servants. Praying for everyone to be safe and warm in their homes.
My dad always joked that he never had a fried egg until after he got married, before that they were all “boiled in grease”. He had the best stories and I miss him every day.
I love a big breakfast every day, but I only cook one after church each Sunday and occasionally during the week. Everyone comes to Grammy’s house after church and I cook whatever they want. I always keep hard-boiled eggs for during the week. Hubby loves to have one each morning…along with a homemade protein ball or a banana and a cup of coffee. I would rather go out to breakfast than any other meal. We do that every now and then…not too often. I hope everyone had a good breakfast this morning and a wonderful rest of your day!!
Breakfast is also my favorite meal to go out for as well, Brenda
I miss my grandmother’s buckwheat cakes. She used an overnight recipe for the batter and then made them up the next morning. So good! But I think the best breakfast I remember at her house was one year when my dad took my brother and me fishing at a neighbor’s pond and we caught a bunch of catfish. Grandma fried them for breakfast the next morning and that was the best catfish I have ever eaten, partly because I caught more fish than my brother did, lol!
The post today reminds me of my childhood breakfasts. Dad grew a pig in those years and my favorite breakfast was pork tenderloin, biscuits, “Belgian lace” eggs and gravy. The term “Belgian lace” is from Robert Ruark’s “The Old Man and the Boy” and refers to eggs fried so hot the edges turn a bit crispy while the center is just beginning to get hard. I had a road job with TVA once and used to describe how I wanted my eggs until a waitress said, “You mean over medium.” I’ve used that ever since (but there is no guarantee!). Now I want some but if I had them it wouldn’t take me back.
Ron, I like fried or scrambled eggs and though different good deviled eggs. If in a restaurant I have learned to say “ I want my “eggs well done, “ do not bring me runny yolk half raw eggs. I have learned the trick to good scrambled eggs – you beat the devil or h**l out of them before cooking!
Breakfast has never been my favorite meal of the day but while growing up my mother made most of the foods mentioned above. She made biscuits, gravy, fried eggs, oatmeal, chocolate gravy, sausage or bacon and occasionally fried bologna. I ate these until high school when my eating habits changed. My favorite breakfast then was toast and cocoa. Sometimes I would eat pancakes or French toast on the weekends. Today I will sometimes eat toast with jam, or a muffin and every Tuesday when I take medication for rheumatoid arthritis, I have a small bowl of oatmeal with coffee.
I remember those mornings at Granny’s house when I could smell the gravy and ” biskits” and the sausage or bakon from grandads hog , before I even got out of bed. She always gave me double portions because she thought I was so skinny. Grandad fried the eggs because he had his own skillet and cooked them his own way . Which was the same way granny cooked them. I would always clean my plate. It sure beat the oatmeal I had at home . Just the memory makes my mouth water.
I ate just about the same as Jane Boone Benefield most days of my life till I left home. Our kitchen was electric and thank goodness we were able to skip the “woodstove” steps. Almost always we had pork to break the fast. We killed our own hogs early in my life. Later, we took fattened pigs to the slaughterhouse. After picking up the cut-up meat, we took it back to my granddaddy’s smokehouse where we salt/smoke cured hams, bacon and sausage. It was the best. My wife and I both worked and when our kids came along it was usually cereal in the mornings and a “log rolling” breakfast on weekends at my home or at my folks place.
I noticed Tipper used the word fend when referring to eating/food. My mother would occasionally use that on rare occasion when something interrupted the usual “supper”. She would say something like “tonight, ya’ll are just going to have to fend for yourselves”. We still say it around my house.
Have a great week everyone.
been a lot of tornadoes yesterday and during the night, we’re under a tornado watch in North Georgia, experience a severe thunderstorm, the freezee warning is coming next, very strange weather, God bless us with love care and protection in Jesus name, trying to get to see another doctor today, God help, thank you for praying for my brother
Good morning Tipper and Acorns. TY for the video last evening. I really enjoyed that. It reminds me of when I was a kid and walked to the country store with my Paw. I would listen to all the old men sitting on the porch tell stories while they ate bologna and cheese on Sunbeam bread or big square saltine crackers. I see on the weather map that Brasstown is getting thunderstorms right now. We are expecting snow after midnight tonight. That picture of Biscuits n Gravy looks mighty nice. I may fix some for lunch today if Charles feels up to eating it. We usually have meals around whatever his stomach is doing. We didn’t have supper; we usually don’t anymore. I heard him up at 2am and he had a tiny bowl of raisin bran with almond milk and went back to bed. He has to lay down after he eats for at least an hour. I can’t taste it, but I’d still like to have some gravy. I hope he feels up to it. I keep everyone here and up Wilson Hollow in my prayers. I love y’all.
We didn’t walk to the country store but I remember real well the men sitting around and doing the things you mentioned. Remember when the men would sit inside during the winter around a large pot bellied stove on turned up wooden Coke Cola crates? One of my favorite memories from my youth is of going to Honea Path, SC on Saturday afternoon, going to the Western Auto store and the men sitting in the back service/repair room drinking small 6 oz bottle Coke Colas, some eating a pack of Lance crackers or pouring a pack of peanuts in the drinks watching a baseball game while their wives shopped. One other thing I also remember, the respect these same men showed for ladies and children if they were around and could hear them. I wonder what it would be like in today’s world.
Is there a recipe for the hog jowls? I never had them for breakfast.
Brenda we buy it sliced from our local grocery store and fry it like bacon 🙂
Brenda,
We just slice it and fry it like bacon or use it to season Black-eyed peas or other things you season with pork. It is absolutely delicious sliced and deep fried.
Hope this helps. God bless
When growing up we always ate a big breakfast of biscuits, eggs, grits and pork meat excluding bacon. We did not cure any of our meat into bacon. Even today my favorite breakfast is homemade biscuits, fried fatback/sidemeat/streak of lean and gravy made from this meat. I guess it was a family name , we called the gravy hunky doo gravy. Having a good sweet homegrown cantaloupe to eat with this was icing on the cake, mother and daddy would get up early enough and work together to cook these breakfast before daddy left for work and we left for school. We NEVER ate toast or cereal- cornflakes. Even in my married adult life we never ate toast and very little cereal. Your strength don’t hold up for long when working hard labor blue collar jobs after only eating toast or a bowl of cornflakes. This morning I plan on eating a “breakfast bowl” of grits, crumbled up leftover sausage from yesterday and shredded cheese, coffee and maybe a couple of eggs no bread. I will not eat any dinner, or only a snack and then a meal for supper.
Ammons, I didn’t see your question or comment until late yesterday, about prefab roof truss. Around here most house roofs are being built from stick lumber, very few from prefab roof truss. A lot of roofs are steep, probably 12/12 pitch or 45 degrees. Some homes are now being built with something called a bonus room in the attic. Doing this requires a steep roof.