Old Fashioned Food

Old Fashioned Food

I like old fashioned food, salt risin' bread

A batch of cookies in a covered crock,

Sweet cakes with currants in and caraway

Cabbage and carrots and a piece of hock

Simmered to bring the hidden flavor out,

A bit of pork smothered in sauerkraut.

I like an apple pie baked to a turn

Flavored with nutmeg and a pinch of clove

Brown crusted bread sweet as a hazel nut

Baked slowly in a big old fashioned stove,

'Er buckwheat pancakes sizzling from the pan

Enough to warm the heart of any man.

Johnny cake...gingerbread and chili sauce

Fried potatoes done to a golden brown,

And jelly roll whose crumbling sides drip jam

(My mother was the best cook in the town)

Oh yes - I had forgotten pumpkin pie

Thinking of Maw's, I could sit down and cry.

I might as well give up, for what's the use

Loving these things I never could reduce.

Poem by Edna Jaques

Photo by Jacklyn Waronek