This past weekend was a bit of a nutritional challenge for me, but man was it good.  I went to visit my Grandmother – and being a good Southern family, we call her MaMa instead of Grandma or whatever other more generic grandmotherly names you might imagine.  Though in the South, MaMa is a pretty common term for grandmother.  It’s a little more casual and down home than the more formal “Grandmother” (though my other Grandmother, was always, well, “Grandmother,” and she was the warmest, most casual person you’d ever meet – a far cry from the steely soap opera “Grandmother”), but not straight up country like Mee-Maw.  Please.  We do have a little class.  ;-)

Anyhow, MaMa is an AMAZING Southern cook.  She measures nothing, even when baking cornbread and biscuits, but everything comes out perfectly.  This woman’s cornbread is to die for.  I actually imagine that when I do die, I’ll pass through the Pearly Gates and someone will hand me a pan of MaMa’s cornbread and tell me the calories no longer matter!  When we used to go visit when I was a kid, MaMa always had a huge meal waiting for us on the kitchen table of the farmhouse she and my PaPa lived in until I was a teenager.  They weren’t actually on a farm, but their property backed up to one, and my summers consisted of feeding the cows next door, helping PaPa in the garden, and helping MaMa shuck peas.  This was quite the adventure for the city kid, and I still long for it every now and then, even though I’m a dyed in the wool East Coast city type.  Anyway, the meal on that farmhouse kitchen table usually had anywhere from 5-7 vegetables, cooked with bacon fat, and always including fried okra, mashed potatoes, biscuits, cornbread, fresh sliced tomatoes, and 1-2 meats (either fried chicken, ham, or roast beef).  Did I mention the woman weighs all of maybe 120 pounds?  Further proof that life is not fair. » Read more: Nutrition Monday: Grandmother’s Goodies