We have beautiful weather again, and the temperature is rising each day, but the soil is still cold. We must wait until the soil is a little warm so your seeds will sprout and start to grow.

I am thinking about a salad with wilted greens, spinach, kale, lettue, radishes, green onions and bacon with a honey and oil dressing and cheese on top. It does not get any better than this. Sometimes Mother would cook country ham and save the drippings and mix them with honey for the dressing.

I remember the first picking of English peas and fresh potatoes. They were so good with green onions, cornbread and Southern tea. Mother would cook the potatoes sliced, and when they were almost done, she would add the English peas and thicken it with flour. That was some good eating. At the time I would just roll my eyes and want to know where the rest of the food was, and now thinking back, they should have popped me off the bench. I was sitting looking like I knew everything in the world.

Coming home from school, they would have a platter of tea cakes, sometimes warm, with a big glass of milk. I was always tasting first to be sure there was not an onion taste in the milk because early in the spring, the cows would eat wild onions, and the milk would have a tang to it. But most of the time it was cold and delicious with the tea cakes.

Mama’s Tea Cakes

2 cups sugar

½ cup butter

½ cup shortening – I use pure lard

½ cup buttermilk

3 eggs

½ tsp. soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup flour

Flour sufficient to make soft dough

Cream butter and shortening. Add sugar, then beaten eggs, into one cup flour sifted with soda and baking powder. Add this to the sugar mixture, then add milk, vanilla and enough flour to make a soft dough. Turn the dough onto a floured board and knead until smooth. Roll out ¼ inch thick. Cut in any shape. Bake about 10 minutes in a 350-degree oven or until brown. Yields six dozen cookies.

Chicken Salad

1 cup of white grapes, cut in half

4 whole chicken breasts

1 cup of celery, diced small

½ cup of diced sweet pickle

1 cup of finely chopped pecans

1 1/2 cups of mayonnaise – depends on how moist you want it

Pepper, celery, salt and onion to taste

Cook breasts in salted water until meat begins to fall off the bones. Cool, remove skin and bones and cut chicken with scissors into small pieces. Add celery, sweet pickles, pecans and mayonnaise to desired consistency and mix. Add white grapes when you want (we would leave them out until serving) or apples chopped or even fresh pineapple, about a cup. Finely chopped almonds may be substituted for pecans. Serve on bread, on a green leaf, in a pineapple half or a cantaloupe.

We always had some good snacks after school.