Food, in our family, didn't mean gourmet or fancy, it meant food that tasted good.  And Mama made everything taste good.  (Well, there were those dandelion greens that we all agreed did not bear repeating.)  She always had a garden so we enjoyed fresh produce all summer and fall.  One of my most memorable meals was a breakfast fish fry for neighbors when we lived in Nebraska.  It consisted of crisp fried perch and catfish, caught that morning--moist and flakey inside, hot buttermilk biscuits dripping with butter and home made chokecherry jelly or apple butter and steaming hot coffee (milk for the kids).  Simple but no five star restaurant could make a meal that surpassed it in flavor. 

Mama was a Southerner who was transplanted a few times but she always had a way of taking whatever was available and turning it into some of her favorite southern dishes as well as including new foods and recipes from whatever part of the US we lived in.  One example was Brunswick Stew. Traditionally squirrel and chicken are used in the stew.  Well, in the panhandle of Nebraska jackrabbit was what we had, so Mama made Brunswick stew with the older jackrabbits that my Dad shot. 

I can't imagine it could have been any better made the traditional way... 

 (continued)