BY KYLE LOVERN

My wife Vicki and I had what I like to call our Appalachian or hillbilly dinner one evening last week. It included pinto beans and cornbread. I had recently gotten a new iron skillet and seasoned it correctly so I could make that crisp, brown cornbread like we grew up with.

It included pork chops, fresh sliced onions and tomatoes, and some greens. It doesn’t get any better than that. (Green onions right out of the garden are good in the springtime.)

Like many in this area of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, we both grew up eating this type of cuisine. We still enjoy it from time to time.

My dad didn’t think it was a meal if there weren’t beans and cornbread when I was growing up. Vicki said she and her family were the same way. She said that if she and her mom were visiting another home and they didn’t have beans and cornbread, despite a huge spread of food on the table, she would say, “There is nothing here to eat.”

“Soup” beans, as many call them, have been a fixture in this region for a long time.

I once had a coach who said that soup bean juice and the beans were a source of good protein and were great to eat before playing a game. Who am I to argue this wisdom?

Something I do to my beans that I got from my mother was putting a spoonful of mayonnaise in them and mixing it up with the soup and beans. Don’t knock it until you try it. I did that with my recent meal.

It got me to thinking about some other Appalachian traditions like that.

Many of these food ideas came from necessity by the early settlers and were handed down through the years. Scotch-Irish, German and Italian immigrant populations, along with Native Americans Indians and African Americans, as well as other descendants in the Appalachia Mountain region always had a way to survive in tough times and feed their families.

They learned to can and preserve vegetables from the garden and didn’t waste anything.

I remember one of my nighttime snacks was breaking up leftover cornbread in a cold glass of “sweet” milk. For my dad, it was buttermilk, which I did not like! I think many of your parents and grandparents probably did this too.

Chow chow was born out of an effort to preserve the bounty of summer produce growing in the garden, including tomatoes, bell peppers, onions and more. It is a type of relish that can be made hot or with a sweeter taste, which is what I prefer. The types of chow chow you may be acquainted with are probably because of your family or where you live in Appalachia.

How about a mess of leather britches?

These dried string beans were often strung through with a needle and thread and hung from the rafters in the olden days. Cooked up with bacon these dried beans come back to life for a tasty side.

Frying is an important way to cook in the country.

We fry green tomatoes, zucchini, squash, just to name a few. Rolled in meal, salt and pepper and thrown in some hot grease, it has a great taste and is something many enjoy in our area. Some like to dip the slices in a beaten egg before rolling them in the meal, flour or a mixture of both. Either way, they are pretty tasty.

If you don’t like biscuits and gravy then you should be sent out of Appalachia. Homemade biscuits with self-rising flour and gravy made from the grease of a fresh pan of sausage or bacon are simply divine. I’m sure most of you were raised with this country delicacy prepared by your mother or grandmothers.

If you can cook country-style, you can whip up a meal with about anything left in the garden, refrigerator and cabinet. That is just how we roll.

I recently picked a couple of cabbage heads that had not grown very big in my backyard. But after trimming and washing them, I cooked up a pan of cabbage in the frying pan. With the other I made a small container of slaw, which I ate on for a couple of days.

I like to cook and have surprised Vicki in the past by whipping up a meal when she thought there was not much left in the cupboard.

I’m sure your moms and grandmaws could cook up a storm. My mom loved to cook and things were done from scratch back then. She could make homemade pies, cakes and candy to die for. I sure would love to have some of her freshly baked goods today.

I learned to cook by hanging out in the kitchen and watching my mom. I’m glad I soaked up some of that knowledge.

So the next time you’re hungry and your mate asks you what you’re going to eat today, think about some good old pinto beans and cornbread with a slice of onion on the side. Trust me, you can’t go wrong.

(Kyle Lovern is a longtime journalist in the Tug Valley. He is now a retired freelance writer and columnist for the Mountain Citizen.)