What you will need:

A large cast iron pot

Ingredients:

2 pounds of butter beans

Mom makes a call to Uncle John, says, we are plannin’ on makin’ a pot of succotash. He says, ya’ll need butter beans, to which she lies, we can’t get those up here in the north, that’s why I’m callin’ you.

John makes a trip to his local farm stand then to the Fed Ex office and sends out three pounds of fresh-from-the-farm butter beans. He always sends extra in case he should happen to drive up from Virginia to Connecticut that night for dinner.

For several days Mom watches the Fed Ex driver making other deliveries in the neighborhood, finally he stops and hands her a gunny sack. She carries it to the deck holding the sack in her arms like it’s a brand new puppy. We shuck the beans. This is cause to call up stories from her southern childhood.

12 farm-fresh-ears of yellow corn on the cob, use 6

The next day we go to the local farm stand to buy twelve ears of corn opening each and every one to make sure they were picked that morning. We will not be using all twelve ears but we need enough to have corn on the cob and then fried corn during the week, which takes care of most of this week’s meals, the starchy part anyway. We also buy sunflowers for the table.

Other ingredients and accouterments:

To the grocery store for a slab of fat back, onions, real butter and whole milk then to the bakery for an unsliced loaf of brown bread with molasses.

Back at home she takes the corn out on the deck and we shuck it.

Once finished, she’s at the kitchen counter and with a sharp knife shedding the kernels off the cob while I fry up the fat back ’til crispy, cut it into small pieces then fry up the onions.

Into a big black pot it all goes: butter beans, corn, onions, fried fatback and water simmering ’til the vegetables are done, then into the fridge to give the fat time to settle on top to be spooned off. At dinner time milk is added and the succotash reheated.

The table is set with big soup bowls inherited from her family (and only used for these occasions), bread and butter on matching plates, the biggest soup spoons set next to the bowls and tall glasses of ice tea. A vase filled with suns graces the table. As we eat, more childhood stories are called up from the south and the long lost relatives take their places ’round the table.

After several bowls of succotash, slices of brown bread and glasses of iced tea, we sit on the deck and complain about being full, ecstatically full.

Or, instead:

We make a quick trip to the grocery store where we buy four packages of frozen corn, two packages of frozen lima beans, onions and fat free milk, walk on by the butter and fat back, grab some margarine and a loaf of sliced brown bread.

But we would most certainly never do that! Most certainly never ever!

—Bonnie Thompson Enes