"Goomba" > wrote in message
...
> Wayne Boatwright wrote:
>
>> Oh, I couldn't agree more about vegetable cooking. Probably most here on rfc
>> would agree. Sometimes I think the overcooking was a "generational" thing.
>>
> My own hypothesis is that it might perhaps have been more a convenience issue? Hard
> farm workers (which the majority of the south was long ago) often put things on to
> cook while working and they let them simmer long and slow and they got so over
> cooked. Yet that was "home cooking" so it became much loved and passed down as the
> desired outcome? Or because they had been first dried and required re-hydrating, or
> canned which makes them softer..... ?
> I just think cooking so long takes so much of the flavor away that the addition of
> pork helped season and flavor it up again.

Interesting thoughts :-)

My grandparents were hard farm workers. She never overcooked any veggies, except for
green beans. They were simmered with a piece of pig belly until they had little
resemblance, color-wise, to the originals. Sometimes they would get a quick stir in a
hot skillet with some bacon grease.

She canned most of their vegetables, except for things like lettuce. She made
pickles, not just with cukes, but with watermelon rind, beets, and green tomatoes.
She prepared all of her food on a wood-burning stove, which amazes me to this day,
because it never seemed like anything was over or under cooked! No temperature gauge,
just good old fashioned experience :-)

Now me, I never ever prepare green beans that way. I like mine to bite back a little
bit when I bite into one ;-) But all of the family in my mom's generation and before
still like them that way.

kimberly