AlexSandra Lett "Lett's Set a Spell"

Country Cooking...Mama's Legacy

The enticing aroma of biscuits baking in the oven—a scent as inviting as bacon frying in the morning—filled the air many days in our farmhouse in Buckhorn community of Lee County. Whiffs of such delicious foods drifted from our kitchen often, as we young'uns got out of bed and eagerly sat down at the breakfast table.

Mama—better known as Ruby Knight Lett—learned about cooking and working hard at a very early age while growing up on a tobacco and cotton farm with her parents, Alex and Mary Yarborough Knight, and her two brothers and two sisters in Harnett County, only about 10 miles from the Lett homeplace. Like her mother before her, she followed in the tradition of country cooking—lots of lard or fatback—long before anyone heard of the word cholesterol.

Mama first mastered the art of bread baking. She had watched her mother make biscuits when she was only knee-high to a grasshopper. Grandma would pull out the hide-away shelf on the kitchen cabinet, use the built-in flour sifter, mix ingredients in a bowl, and roll out biscuits. We sampled firsthand the delights of "Miss Mary's" cooking and often went down to her house for Sunday dinner. We young'uns especially liked Grandma Knight's biscuits covered with molasses and fresh-from-the-cow butter.

As aspiring cooks, my sister Carolyn and I decided to bake some biscuits. Making them once was enough for me—my biscuits were jawbreakers, so hard that my brother Jimmy pretended they were balls and threw them against the wall, which led to a whipping from Dad. Jimmy never forgave me and teased me the rest of my childhood days about my fixin' the worst biscuits in the world.

While my calling has never been country cooking, our family is blessed with culinary wizards who have mastered their craft and continue to be excited about their creations. Mama has passed on various recipes to Carolyn, me, and other kinfolk, including this one for Grandma's biscuits.

Grandma's Biscuits

4 cups self-rising flour, sifted
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
6 tablespoons lard

Sift flour, and put it in bowl. Create a little well in the middle of the flour, cut in lard and mix together. Pour in buttermilk, and knead until the dough is soft but not sticky. Roll into biscuits, place on a greased pan, and pat with fingers. Bake at 375 to 400 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown.

This recipe yields about 24 medium-size biscuits.

Mama's family liked to eat their biscuits with red-eye gravy. This gravy was a traditional food at breakfast on most farms—since the womenfolk usually fried ham, it was easy to whip up the gravy, too. Exact measurements are hard to come by, because country cooks considered fixin' gravy as easy as boiling water. Here is Mama's recipe.

Red-Eye Gravy

Fry country ham. Leave the extra drippings in the skillet. Add water, let the mixture sizzle, stir the gravy, and then add about a cup of coffee.

Mama followed in her family's tradition and prepared this popular gravy most mornings. She said that it's called red eye gravy because the drops of ham fat in the gravy are reddish brown and usually form small circles.

Born in 1919, Mama first cooked on a woodstove and continued to do so for years after we young'uns were born. In 1960, she welcomed the arrival of her first electric stove with which she could control the temperatures and predict the baking time. With her "citified" stove, she could prepare and share even more mouth-watering dishes from our kitchen, fondly referred to as “Ruby's Restaurant.”

As Mother's Day became a popular holiday, Carolyn and I tried to convince Mama to let us help out more in the kitchen on this special Sunday each year, but she always insisted that she loved cooking and relished the opportunity to serve others with her culinary talents. When fixin' food for her family, farm workers, neighbors, and church members, Mama added the most important ingredient to all her recipes—love.