Depression Cooking: Poor Man's Feast

Say what you want, but this woman can beat all the fancy-schmancy cooks - including me - when it comes to putting love on the table in the face of hardship.

Clara is the exact same age as my own mother. Clara cooks way better than my own mother, which is why I learned to cook at such a young age. Ma learned to cook in Kansas, which may explain her inability to do anything more than incinerate okra, and generally ruin every other vegetable she encountered.

My mother would take one look at this woman’s cooking, and immediately tell me that Clara must have come from money. Everything was harder in Kansas, you know. That became my mother’s religion - the dust bowl. Everything being hard. Bitter disappointment.

Ma is devout.

I love Clara.