BACON AND GREENS George Bagby, the 19th-century professional Virginian, when meditating on the ingredients that made up an authentic child of the Old Dominion, concluded that ultimately a Virginian could not be a Virginian without bacon and greens. Since eating is being, a Virginian came to be because of consuming the following: He must, of course, begin on pot-liquor, and keep it up until he sheds his milk-teeth. He must have fried chicken, stewed chicken, broiled chicken, and chicken-pie; old hare, butter-beans, new potatoes, squirrels, cymblins, snaps, barbecued shoat, roasn ears, buttermilk, hoe-cake, ash-cake, pancake, fritters, pot-pie, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, June apples, waffles, sweet milk, parsnips, artichokes, carrots, cracklin-bread, hominy, bonny-clabber, scrambled eggs, gooba-peas, fried apples, pop-corn, persimmon beer, apple-bread, milk and peaches, mutton-stew, dewberries, batter-cakes, musmelons, hickory nuts, partridges, honey in the honeycomb, snappin-turtle eggs, damsom-tarts, cat-fish, cider, hot lightbread, and cornfield peas all the time. But he must not intermit bacon and greens. Honoring my Chesopean heritage on Thanksgiving, I concluded that bacon & greens must be on the table. Fortunately Justin Dean recently supplied me with a superlative hickory smoked slab of Woodlands Bacon hailing from West Virginia. Look at the fat quality on that slice! Providence seems to have designed it to swap flavors with mustard, kale, cress and collard in the hot springs of almost heaven. It did not squeal when I slipped it into the warm bath with some well scrubbed foliage. Now there are always those who do not aspire to be Virginians, and for those worthy people I have prepared a vegan potlikker (see below). But they, alas, cannot know the sentiments expressed below by the bard of antebellum Tuscaloosa, Bakus T. Huntington: Bacon & Greens I have lived long enough to be rarely mistaken, And borne my full share of lifes changeable scenes, But my woes have been solaced by good greens and bacon, And my joys have been doubled by bacon and greens. What a thrill of remembrance een now they awaken, Of childhoods gay morning and youths merry scenes, When, one day, we had greens and a plate full of bacon, And, the next, we had bacon and a plate full of greens. Ah! well I remember when sad and forsaken, Heart-wrung by the scorn of a miss in her teens, How I rushed from her sight to my loved greens and bacon, And forgot my despair over bacon and greens. When the banks refused specie and credit was shaken, I shared in the wreck and was ruined in means; My friends all declared I had not saved my bacon, But they lied—for I still had my bacon and greens. Oh! there is a charm in this dish, rightly taken, That, from custards and jellies, an epicure weans: Stick your fork in the fat—wrap your greens round the bacon, And you will vow there is nothing like bacon and greens. If some fairy a grant of three wishes would make one So worthless as I, and so laden with sins, Id wish all the greens in the world—then the bacon— And then wish a little more bacon and greens. POSTSCRIPT. I return to confess that for once Im mistaken, As much as Ive known of this world and its scenes, Theres one thing thats equal to both greens and bacon, And that is a dish of—good bacon and greens.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 21:04:33 +0000
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