http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/... That Emril just can not keep out of the news.

people are missing out on this blog..its history you can reach out and touch..I knew you would be here Sage..kinda wondering where alice witters and nancy are though..must be out enjoying the sunshine

Hey Sioux.  : )   I learned how to cook that way from my mother, who learned how to cook that way from her mother, who learned how to cook that way from her mother.  It's all Okie cooking.  She was making fried potatoes, just the same way we do.  Well, we don't put hot dogs in it.  Even after the depression my family was poor.  They were field workers in the 50s.  They lived on beans and cornbread and fried potatoes, just like those, day after day.  They picked cotton all day--back-breaking work my Mom says, then went back to the migrant camps and cooked these kinds of food.  There was also mustard greens, boiled in salted water and drizzled with butter, snap peas, buttermilk with cornbread crumbled in it (yuck, but my Grandma still does it haha) and always produce that was in season, because it was prohibitively expensive otherwise.  

My Grandma and Grandpa took me to Oklahoma once when I was 15.  My Grandma was from McAlester.  She showed me the tiny cabin she grew up in with her 7 (or 8) brothers and sisters.  She showed me the blackberry bramble where she would pick blackberries for supper and they actually ate squirrel back then.  That was a neat trip.  She also showed me the little cafe where she was working when she met my Grandpa (the only guy in the place that didn't order coffee, she said, which made him unique.)

I'm glad I know how to make stuff from scratch, and I'm glad I know how to cook the same way my Grandma and Great-Grandma did, and I'm going to teach my kids how to do it.  I think it's becoming a lost art. 

I'd love to respond t the video but I can't hear it..  The laptop have tiny speakers and my hearing right now is poor to none.

That's not all poor Okie cooking.  The only meat we could afford when we lived in Oklahoma in the 30's was salt pork.  Mostly we lived on beans, fried potatos, cornbread, Oats for breakfast with biscuits and canned milk.  Part of the year we would have Lambs quarter and wild mustard greens.  Those could be picked wild.  In season we could pick persimmons  wild down by the river. For Christmas we would get an orange, an apple and a hand full of nuts in a sock. We took biscuit sandwiches to school with salt pork.  We did not realize we were poor because most of the people around us were in the same boat.  I enjoyed growing up and really think we were better off than most kids today