A King James Bible KJV and /Casserole Dish

Baptists in Alabama are known for preaching and teaching the Holy Bible, spring and summer revivals, homecomings, Southern Gospel singing, and “dinner on the ground.”  My good friend Kelly from Demopolis said that when he “got saved,” that he was told he had to get two things.  First he had to purchase a King James Holy Bible and a large casserole dish to be a Bono Fide Baptist.  Baptist folks love good preaching.  Most are disappointed and discouraged if you don’t “step on their toes.”

Sunday dinners are prominent times in the church.  When my home church, Union Springs Baptist Church Randolph, Alabama, had dinner on the ground it was outside under the big oak trees on homemade concrete tables. 
There would be meats of fried chicken, beef roast, pork barbeque, fried pork chops, pork ribs, and meatloaf to name a few. Salads were potato salad, congealed salad, poke salad, pear salad green bean salad, and green salad.  The list continues with mashed potatoes and gravy, fried taters and onions, baked potatoes and the fixings, and French-fried potatoes.

Every spread had green peas and butterbeans, bacon topped baked beans, and green beans.  The table always had turnip greens and collard greens, both cooked with lard and/or bacon with homemade pepper sauce to doctor them up.  There had to be cornbread for them too.

The bread table had yeast rolls, homemade and handmade biscuits, brown and serve rolls which were faithfully burned on top, sour dough bread, Mexican cornbread, and usually broccoli cornbread.  Some poor soul would have white loaf bread.  Finally, there had to be buns for the barbeque and possibly hamburger patties.

The dessert table was place of delicious beauty and gluttonous debauchery.  Some brought store bought cake mix cakes and store-bought icing that semi qualified for homemade, made from scratch cakes with homemade icing, again some poor soul would bring a Wal-Mart or Winn Dixie grocery store bought cake.  There would be Italian Cream cake, frozen coconut cake, carrot cake, chocolate cake, banana cake, strawberry cake, and the good old yellow cake.  My sister Diane makes the best homemade from scratch red velvet cake.  One Sunday I ate strictly from the dessert table.

Pies included home peach and apple cobblers, homemade lemon meringue pie and lemon no meringue pie, cherry pie, pear pie, ham and egg pie (Not a desert), mince pie, and those out of this world diabetic overload pecan pies made with Golden Eagle sopping syrup.  My sister-law makes the best million-dollar pie. Boy those were days.  Most ladies today bring Sunday dinner to church in a bucket or box.

When I think of yesteryear, most of the good cooks have passed away.  I can say that my sister is one of the few church women that continues to cook the old fashion way.  At her church, her dishes are the first consumed with all the envious women wanted to know what makes my sister Diane’s dishes better.  They all cringe and turn up their noses when she says she still cooks with lard.  No one in my sister’s family is fat!  in good old Chiton County vernacular, Ain’t nothing no better than French fried taters cooked in lard.  Ump, ump, ump!

When I reminisce about the cooks at Union Springs there is Ms. Betty Joe Pate’s fried chicken.  Eat your heart out KFC.  There was Ms. Nola Dutton’s chicken and dumplings.  Ms. Deenie Smith cooked the best homemade macaroni and cheese.  My Aunt Annie and Aunt Katherine made the best biscuits that the Pillsbury Dough Boy envied.  It is sad.  All these delicious cooks are gone.  Some futuristic ladies did acquire their recipes but in Chiltonian words, “It ain’t the same.”

My friend Kelly received some very wise council when he was told to purchase a large King James Holy Bible and casserole dish.  Baptists love Koinonia, the Greek word for Sunday dinner on the ground.

 

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship (Koinonia) to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Acts 2:42 KJV

 

Before I forget it, there are several men at Union Springs Baptist Church that are great cooks.  Heedy, James, and my brother David have their world-famous barbeque chicken halves and quarters made with a secret special sauce over a fire of hickory wood.  As they say in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, “The secret is in the sauce.”  My brothers David and Glenn have perfected the cooking of a whole hog which happens at Union Springs Baptist Church each year.  Ya’ll come!