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Today, I went to visit Mom and Dad. They expected me, and Dad had made a gallon of iced tea that was chilling in the freezer and I could smell the pot of white beans that be had cooking on the stove. I knew we were gonna have a wonderful lunch!
He mentioned that the onions that he had sat out in his raised planters were ready to pick. Their lettuce wasn’t ready and they only had a little salt pork and we wanted to make some lettuce and onions. Some folks call this wilted salad and others call it kilt salad. Some folks mix a bit of sugar and vinegar with hot bacon grease to make their salads. We have always called it lettuce and onions. We just fry up some good bacon or salt pork, crumble it up on top of some green leaf lettuce and sliced green onions, then pour the hot bacon grease over it and toss with a little salt.
Well, since we were wanting lettuce and onions but we needed lettuce and salt pork, Mom and I made a run to Kroger.
When we hot back, the beans were about done. Mom fried up the salt pork, Dad mixed up the cornbread and put it in the oven, and I sliced up the lettuce and onions. When the salt pork was done, I sliced off the hard skin from the salt pork slices and put them aside for “dessert”. I chopped up the salt pork, and topped the lettuce and onions with it. Dad poured the hot grease over the mixture as I tossed it all together!
We hadn’t had lettuce and onions in decades and I was worried that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered. Thankfully, I was wrong. We were all three yumming as we ate. Mom asked Dad if he liked it and he said, “I don’t like it; I love it!”
Hopefully, we won’t wait decades to have lettuce and onions again.
While we were eating, I mentioned that our lunch was a perfect ancestor meal. I marveled at how our ancestors could know that some hot bacon grease tossed over fresh greens from the garden could be so good. I also marveled at how they figured out that on the one hand, mixing flour, grease, and milk together could make delicious gravy; and on the other hand, mixing them made great biscuits!
Our ancestors were some epicurean Einsteins to begin with such simple ingredients and end up with such mouth-watering deliciousness!
And as we ate, Mom said, “April, I think that your dad really babies you.”
I asked what she meant and she answered, “Well, when he knows you’re coming, he makes beans and cornbread for you. He got the raised garden beds so we could grow greens, and lettuce and onions because he knows you like them. Yes, I think that he babies you.”
I answered, “Well, as long as I can get beans, cornbread, mustard greens, and lettuce and onions, I reckon that I will just stay a baby!”
A week later; Lettuce and Onions, The Sequel, the producers were Dad, Mom, and me!
