Forgotten Side Dishes Every Appalachian Sunday Table Had (We Want Every One Back)

On my grandmother's Sunday table there was one platter of meat, and there were eleven bowls. The meat was the smallest thing on that table. I grew up at the head of a hollow in Letcher County, Kentucky, at a long plank table where eleven people sat down three times a day. Every bowl on that table came out of the garden, the cellar, or the cow. Not one of them came out of a can of soup. So open your cupboard and count your serving bowls, and then sit down with me, because I am going to put every one of those side dishes back on the table. The stewed tomatoes with the cold biscuit torn in. The cucumbers and onions that had to sit up all Saturday night. The creamed corn scraped off the cob, where the cream comes from the corn itself. Macaroni and tomatoes, fried green tomatoes before the frost, pickled beets and purple eggs, fried cabbage with the brown edges, slaw with no mayonnaise, potato salad dressed warm, candied sweet potatoes, and a spoon bread so soft the new preacher tried to cut it with a knife. And I will tell you about the one bowl that left our table every Sunday before anybody took a bite, wrapped in a flour sack towel, and walked a mile down the road in my two hands. I thought my grandmother was giving away the best dish on the table. Then came the winter the mine shut down, and there was a knock at our back door. Some of you still make two or three of these every Thanksgiving. Tell me which ones, and what year you got married.