(Editor’s note: If Grandma / Momma / Bee’s kitchen had come with a printed menu, this would have been it.)
ROUND O
Boiled Peanuts
Pickles
Watermelon Pickles and Watermelon Pickles
Watermelon Preserves
Butterbeans
Cheese grits (secondary post HERE)
Collards a la New Bern (secondary post HERE)
Low Country Gumbo
Home-Made Soup
Shrimp Gumbo
Country ham & red-eye gravy (secondary post HERE)
Fried chicken
Opossum (if treed by Trixie and given to Edymus Campbell)
Sausage
Shrimp & grits (Charleston style) (secondary post HERE)
Fried bread (secondary post HERE)
Buttermilk Biscuits (Minnie Anna Dodd Garris)
Fresh strawberry pie (secondary post HERE)
Lemon meringue pie (secondary post HERE)
Malasses Peanut Candy (Floy Garris)
Johnny cakes & a slab of cheese
Coca-cola
Milk
NEW YEAR’S
Black-eyed peas or Hop-in-John (for health)
Collards (for wealth)
Country ham & red-eye gravy
EASTER
Ham
Deviled eggs
Cream Cheese Braid
SUMMER/BEACH
Out to eat:
Sundays at Tony’s, including hushpuppies and Dee Gee’s candy sticks
Thursdays at the Ramada
At King of the Sea:
Cheese grits
Shrimp & grits (Charleston style)
Egg & sausage casserole
Pimiento-cheese sandwiches
Chicken-salad sandwiches
Fresh tomato sandwiches
Sourdough bread
Soft-shell crabs
Fresh corn-on-the-cob
Country Time lemonade
Crystal Light
Dessert:
Linda’s Get Fat
Birthday cake
LOTS of store-bought ice cream
Homemade ice cream
Fresh strawberries
Morris Brothers blueberries, or Nelson Brothers blueberries
Fresh peaches
Fresh watermelon
THANKSGIVING
Relish table:
Pickled peaches
Celery & pimiento cheese
Sweet pickles
Cranberry sauce
Olives
Cheese biscuits
Buffet:
Turkey
Giblet gravy
Oyster dressing
Bread dressing
Rice
Sweet potato souffle or sweet potato casserole
Green beans
Cranberry congealed salad
Dessert:
Pumpkin bread or Aunt Julie’s Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin pie
Pecan pie
Pound cake, or pound cake, or pound cake, or pound cake
Store-bought ice cream
CHRISTMAS
Relish table:
Pickled peaches
Celery & pimiento cheese
Sweet pickles
Cranberry sauce
Olives
Cheese ball & Ritz crackers
Buffet:
Turkey
Giblet gravy
Macaroni & cheese
Sweet potato souffle or sweet potato casserole
Green beans
Cranberry congealed salad
Dessert:
Sour cream coconut cake
Peppermint stick ice cream
Ambrosia
Fruitcake
Spiced tea or spiced tea mix
Fudge or fudge
Peanut brittle
SUNDAYS IN NEW BERN
Breakfast:
Scrambled eggs
Cheese grits
Bacon or sausage
Country ham & red-eye gravy
Pancakes
Waffles
Corn fritters
Syrup, honey or jam
Dinner:
T-bone steaks
Fried chicken
Fish
Deviled crab
Shrimp
Scallops
Rice & butterbeans
Green beans
Spinach
Collards
Hand-cut French fries
WEEKDAYS IN NEW BERN
Breakfast:
Cold cereal & milk
Oatmeal
Lunch & snacks:
Peanut-butter sandwich
Pimiento-cheese sandwich
Tomato sandwich
Ham sandwich
Crackers & peanut butter
Slug of cake
Bowl of ice cream
Supper:
Fried chicken
Baked ham
Meatloaf
Pork chops
Spaghetti & meatballs
Fish
Deviled crab
Shrimp
Scallops
Rice and butterbeans
Green beans
Spinach
Collards
Baked potatoes
New potatoes
Hand-cut French fries
Grits
King Kitchen 
About the summer/beach menu: Do you know what I love? I love technology and gadgetry and the internet. And one other thing I love is cross-referencing. And I tell you, Carey, the fact that Tony’s has a link, and that Cheese Grits is cross-reference linked to its page makes my heart beat wildly.
About the breakfasts menu: Aunt Penny’s blue berry muffins have to be listed here… they are really a favorite. Aunt Julie makes some great ones too.
About the summer/beach menu: Then there was that Summer that “the boys” had a gigantic slow roaster and spent the entire day cooking a pig. It was delicious, but I guess too much work to become a tradition.
I thought cooking the pig was great fun, the only drawback being my stepping on a hot coal and having a big blister on the bottom of my foot the rest of the week. It just seemed to me that Daddy and I had all the fun – nobody else enjoyed it that much. We didn’t own a cooker – I borrowed the depot’s – which increased the level of difficulty for tradition-building.
About the summer/beach menu: I remember this! It was my first introduction to a pig-pickin, and I thought it was terrifying that there was a giant pig smushed inside a big black box thing.
About the summer/beach menu: In later years, Momma/Grandma’s favorite place was The Crab Shack over on the sound side in Salterpath. She even took a group of friends there from HomePlace.
About the summer/beach menu: We used to go Peppertree on Tuesday nights when they served barbeque…
About the summer/beach menu: Do you remember shelling butterbeans on the porch at the beach. I’ll never forget the summer that I brought a bushel of butterbeans as a gift to Grandma and she already had a bushel! That was a lot of bean shelling. Grandma loved these cooked with a piece of ham and served over white steamed rice.
About the summer/beach menu: Does explosions of diet coke on the porch count?
About the weekdays menu: When we were little and Momma/Grandma wanted a really special breakfast, we would have grits and canned salmon. I remember it like it was yesterday.
About the weekdays menu: I remember Grandma making a special snack of a glass of milk with about a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla added. We drank a lot of milk because Momma bought it by the gallon from the Munns who owned the cow.
About the Thanksgiving menu: I am thinking that we also had collards and tiny little butterbeans cooked to go over the rice.
oh my goodness, it’s practically impossible to read that list of food without my mouth watering.
About Thanksgiving and Christmas: I’ll take a turn! T is for Thanksgiving and Turkey … Leaving Ham for Christmas! We always had rice both days, especially when we had butter beans. thanks!
About Thanksgiving and Christmas: I agree with Bill on the turkey/ham thing. As far as rice and butterbeans go, Momma would have them whenever she could. Boyd always had this thing about stewed tomatoes on rice, but I preferred butterbeans on rice. I never remember tomatoes at either Thanksgiving or Christmas.
It is funny about what we remember. I guess we might have had ham for Christmas at sometime, but I mostly remember turkey for the holidays and ham at the beach. I did like it when Momma cooked up some stewed tomatoes for the rice, but that always went with ham. I am thinking that she started with frying bacon, but I am not quite sure her recipe.
About Thanksgiving and Christmas: Butter Beans and rice for us was always a side dish at Thanksgiving. Grandma always made us the same Thanksgiving Dinner each year and Aunt Dorothy and Caroline would bring in side dishes to supplement that included butter beans. Ham was a Christmas thing, but that was a supplement to the Turkey and cornbread dressing that Grandma would make for Christmas dinner.
About the butterbeans: Where did Grandma/Momma/Bee get them? I can’t seem to find her recipe. Would she start with dried or fresh?
I remember shelling butterbeans for fresh ones, and I think later on Grandma found someone with a sheller who would shell them for her. So mostly fresh butterbeans. I never remember her starting with dried ones ever. I think maybe later on, she might have used some frozen ones, but we grew up on fresh shelled.
And about one more rice topping: Does anyone know the origins of Grandma/Momma/Bee making that gravy out of mushroom soup? Was that an everyday dish, or was it served at certain holidays?
We definitely grew up on gravy made from meat stock… Mushroom soup as a gravy came later (like after I was grown) as a quick time saver for an everyday dinner – never for the holidays. Although I do think mushroom soup was always an ingredient for her famous chicken chow mein – but that is not really gravy.
No, gravy has been an off and on thing for a long time. Momma taught me to make gravy when I was a teen, so it’s been around for a long time. She never said, but I think she considered it not as healthy as butterbeans or tomatoes, so didn’t use it often. Now if we had country ham, she’d always make red-eye gravy for the grits.
On dried or fresh butterbeans, the answer is ‘yes’, either she had at hand, but fresh if at all possible. She never used canned that I can remember.
Question on the butterbeans: Aren’t they only available fresh in the summertime? Where would she have gotten them around Thanksgiving- or Christmas-time? I don’t remember ever seeing dried beans soaking in a bowl in the kitchen.
That would be when the frozen came in. Just never canned.
The frozen butterbeans that Grandma had for the holidays would have been ones she had selled fresh and froze herself in a ziplock bag.
Aunt Boyd: A-ha! Butterbeans in a ziploc bag. That makes total sense. (The frozen-from-the-store idea just wasn’t matching up with my memories, but I couldn’t come up with a better solution.) Thank you.
About Thanksgiving/Christmas: I agree with everyone. I’m pretty happy with what’s been said, but I want to know: where’s the collard greens? Love, Michaela
You know I love collard greens! Maybe I’ll cook some for Thanksgiving since I have my own recipe. The debate at home was about what to put on your collards – Granddaddy always used sweet pickle relish on his, and I adopted that as the “best practice”. Grandma usually had some ham to put in hers!
About collards: We always had those on New Year’s. When Grandma was cooking, our Thanksgiving Menu always looked like this: Turkey & Gravy, Rice, Butter Beans, Sweet Potato Souffle, Macaroni Pie, Cornbread Dressing, Cranberry Relish, Green Salad, Strawberry Salad, Pecan Pie, Ambrosia, Caramel Cake, Tea (other side dishes supplemented by the family included green beans, and various casseroles). Christmas looked exactly the same, only we added Ham, Gingerbread, and Christmas Cookies into the mix. New Year’s: Hoppin John and Collard Greens.
Had I actually made it home for Thanksgiving this year, I was planning the following (although, I have been told I must now prepare this for Christmas instead) … so COME ON DOWN FOR DINNER! SALADS & APPETIZERS: Cheese Ball and crackers for people to snack on while I’m cookin’, Hickory-Bacon and Roasted-Corn Gougeres, Red-Leaf and Celery Salad with Caraway-Seed Dressing – OR – Stuffed celery (cream cheese stuffing with pecans and herbs), Lime Congealed Salad, Parsley-Root Soup with Truffled Chestnuts, Lemon Tarragon stuffed eggs. MAIN DISHES: Herbed Turkey with Mushroom Gravy, Herbed Bacon and Cornbread Dressing, Spiced Cranberry Sauce with Port and Orange, Sweet Potato Soufflé with candied pineapple pecan topping, Cider-Glazed Carrots, Gratineed Mustard Creamed Onions, Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Garlic and Parsnips – OR — plain mashed potatoes, Haricots Verts with Herb Butter, Deluxe Macaroni Pie. DESSERTS: Pumpkin Plum Tart, Pumpkin Pie, Deep Dish Winter Fruit Pie with Walnut Crumb, Southern Pecan Pie, Gingerbread (Great Grandma’s recipe) with Lemon Sauce – OR – White and Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding with Bailey’s Irish Cream Sauce.
Grandma/Momma/Bee always indoctrinated me with “collards for New Years” — you know, so you’d be wealthy in the year to come. I know she sometimes slipped them in to Christmas or Thanksgiving meals, but y’all are just going to have to hold your horses until New Years for me to post the recipe.
Mary, who comes (or has come in the past) to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years in St. Matthews? I hope an army’s-worth! 🙂
Carey: The Culclasure Family (Grandma’s side) usually comes, but that’s only 2 people. Mom usually invites folks that I don’t alway know about, so I plan ahead :). Also, the workers that help Grandma and have to work on that day, we cook for them as well. I make extra desserts as a thank you for all of the work they do for my family each year. Then, sometimes the Worsencroft family will come up the next day for leftovers :). I can feed an army, though…so…come on down!
About Butter Beans….Grandaddy would grow a ton of these things and I can remember he would give bags full to Aunt Bea and Uncle Bob when they would come to visit. Either that, or Grandma would give them already shelled butter beans from the garden in little plastic bags that had been frozen. My fingers were usually green all summer long from shelling these things…so fresh at one time from the Garris garden, frozen to be used at Thanksgiving and Christmas and throughout the year (with little bits of ham in them for flavor).