Are You A Country Cook??
I grew up on down home country cooking!! My mother was the best and she taught me well! Summers in the south, back in the day, meant my brothers and me going to the garden with my dad first thing in the morning. To call it a garden was a disservice. He was a farmer and never did things on a small scale! His garden was big enough to feed the town! I always looked down that long, long row of squash or beans with dread. I couldn’t stop until I reached the end. It would be so hot and humid and some of the plants had prickly leaves that would leave little fine, hair-like splinters in your fingers. And there were bugs and bees; even saw a snake every now and again! I was always afraid of what I would find in the field. Afterwards, Dad always treated us to a Pepsi Cola and a pack of nabs.
Once we were finished in the garden, the day had not ended. We then had to go home and put up the vegetables that we had picked! The corn had to be shucked and cut off the cob, the beans snapped, peas shelled, and all of the other vegetable had to be prepped for either canning or freezing. It was an all day job to get the vegetables put away. We had two freezers. One for the meat and one for the vegetables. We only had a few weeks in the summer to fill that freezer to the brim so that we would have frozen vegetables for the year.
If you know anything about country cooking, all peas and beans are cooked with a spoonful of bacon grease as a seasoning and all the greens are boiled with ham hock, a fatty piece of pork for those that don’t know. A typical dinner would include maybe some new potatoes, creamed corn, butter beans and a fried meat, either fried chicken or country style steak and gravy, and don’t forget the biscuits! Wasn’t a meal without homemade biscuits served with apple butter or honey! We’d have hoe cake (thin cornmeal dough cooked in a cast iron pan with oil) with the boiled greens and we would drink the pot liquor! Oh, and don’t forget the Sweet Tea with lemon, the Southern beverage of choice!!!
My favorite comfort meal was Mom’s chicken and pastry! She would cut up a whole chicken into pieces and boil the pieces. She would make a simple pastry with flour, eggs and water and salt and pepper. Then she would roll the dough out on the counter in a very thin layer. She would put a fan on it to dry if we were going to eat this after church on Sunday. When the pastry was dry, she would cut it up into pieces and put the pieces one at a time into the pot with the boiling chicken. We would have this with a side of peas or beans and hushpuppies. The best meal ever!!! I’m making myself hungry just thinking about it! Everything was made with love!!
Country salads are never simple! It was either a pasta salad, potato salad, coleslaw, bean salad, congealed salads, or rarely a green salad unless we were grilling steak. And then, it would be made with iceberg lettuce. Fried fish was accompanied by French fries, coleslaw and hushpuppies!
And I can’t forget the desserts!!! Country desserts were always in the house! Lemon pound cake, pig picking cake, strawberry shortcake, banana pudding and blueberry, peach or apple cobbler depending on which fruit was in season topped with homemade ice cream! And certainly can’t forget Mom’s chocolate pie at Christmas!! Doesn’t feel like Christmas unless several are made. My grandmother always had a butler’s pantry filled with cakes and pies! I loved to go into her pantry and just smell the aroma of all of these freshly baked goods!
When we moved to the Piedmont area of North Carolina, and Anna had been diagnosed with Hypothyroidism, my cooking style started to change. I started researching everything I could about diet. Her endocrinologist said diet didn’t matter to eat normal food (I sure hope he has changed his tune today). It wasn’t until we went to a homeopathic doctor in Asheville that we begin to really dig deep into nutrition and the problem with the way I was preparing meals. It was a completely new way of thinking about food. When I analyzed a typical meal I prepared; pan fried meat, potatoes and butter beans and bread, I started to realize this was way too many carbs. I thought the beans were a vegetable but now know they are best described as a starch. With Hypothyroidism there is usually some degree of insulin resistance associated with it (as does anyone with a sluggish metabolism) so the amount of carbs had to be reduced and they types of carbs had to be reexamined. The fried meat was usually battered in flour and the oil, once heated, caused lots of free radicals. This was a very inflammatory way of eating. Delicious?? Most definitely!! Good for my family’s health? Not so much! It was a learning process! It didn’t happen overnight. Our taste buds had to adjust. I cut out all of the sugar! No more soda or sweet tea! Sugary snacks and cookies were occasional treats but not every day. Once we adjusted to our new way of eating, when we would go home for a visit, eating the old way made us all feel bloated and lethargic. I would actually put on a couple of pounds after the visit.
Learning a new way of looking at food, a new way of cooking, and trying different types of food was the turning point in our health. I originally started this as a way to help Anna but it was the best for all of us! We all benefited from this new way of eating. I developed such a love for nutrition that I went back to school after retiring from teaching high school science to become a health coach, graduating from The Institute of Integrative Nutrition. I believe that our health is based in our nutrition, using a very individualized approach. Neal always says if I had not changed the way we were eating he would be a very large man and would have suffered from all of the health problems his parents had. He loves to eat!
When I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism in my early 40’s I knew how to help myself. So many of the women we talk to are struggling despite being on medication. The diet is a must!! You must examine the way you are eating and make changes! It’s the place to start. Without proper nutrition for a person with Hypothyroidism, you will continue to have symptoms and struggle with weight gain. That is where our 20 years of experience in getting to the root cause of our own Hypothyroidism can help you. If you would like to schedule a consultation with us to see if we are a good fit, fill out the questionnaire!
