Introduction

     I was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, during the Great Depression. My father, Chester Crow, and mother, Blanche Vines Crow had three children: Chester, Jr., me, and Mary Jo.  We lived out of El Dorado on a street named Marrable Hill. Many relatives lived along that street. In fact at that time it was predicted that we were related to 80% of the citizens of Union County by blood or marriage.

     In those days, things were simpler and easy going. We had no televisions, no computers, no electronic games. We did have telephones, radios and movies. There was no Wal-Mart. We bought our groceries at Mr. Mumford's Store, up the street from where we lived.

     We had a garden each summer. Mama had chickens and an old cow called Bossy. The cow kicked Mama one day, so she got rid of her. Then we bought our milk and butter from our neighbor, Mrs. Julia Bryant.

      Food played a big part of Mama's day. She cooked everything from scratch and it took time. It seems every holiday and event such as cemetery cleanings, dinner on the ground after church and family reunions centered around food.

     The 1930s and 1940s were days before the words fast food, TV dinners, polyunsaturated, or cholesterol were in our vocabularies. We just enjoyed good home cooking.

I've included some of Mama's recipes together with some  old sayings I grew up with.

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