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3 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 bay leaves

1 teaspoon fresh chopped parsley

1 onion, cut into large pieces

2 turnips, peeled and cut into large pieces

1 rutabaga, peeled and cut into large pieces

2 white potatoes, peeled and cut into large pieces

1 parsnip, peeled and cut into large pieces

3 carrots, peeled and cut into large pieces

1 green bell pepper, cut into large pieces

Season beef with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour. Pour oil in large pot over medium heat. Add beef, and brown all sides in oil. Add water, salt and pepper, bay leaves, and parsley, and cook simmering for 1 hour.

Add vegetables. Check seasoning, and bring vegetables and meat back to boil. Cover stew, and cook on medium. When meat and vegetables are tender, take stew off heat and let rest for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve with good Italian bread or Crackling Corn Bread (p. 27).

Collard Greens

SERVES 4

2 smoked turkey wings

3 bunches tender collards (the greens are better if they are picked after the first frost)

1 sweet onion, chopped

2 hot red peppers

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 tablespoon sugar

In large pot, boil turkey wings in water to cover for 1 hour.

Pick and wash greens, and discard large stems. Chop leaves coarsely.

Add all ingredients to pot. Simmer for 1½ hours, adding water if needed. When greens are done, they can be served with Crackling Corn Bread (p. 27).

WE WERE MEMBERS of the CME Church and for years I thought the initials stood for Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Then I was told that the letters described the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Later I discovered I had been right the first time. But in Arkansas, and possibly in all the states, there were Presiding Elders, who were the crème de la crème, and they wouldn’t have it otherwise.

The pompous Presiding Elder who served our region would arrive in town on horseback or, on the rare occasion, in a car, always with someone else driving. He would stay with other parishioners, but at every three-month visit he told Bailey and me that until our arrival he was always put up by Mother Henderson and Superintendent Johnson. (Uncle Willie was superintendent of the Sunday school.) We never knew what to say. Did he think we should get back on the train and return to parents who obviously had no place for us in their lives?

To say Bailey and I hated the Presiding Elder could not describe our bitter loathing for the puffed-up man who had no sensitivity to two wayfaring motherless and fatherless children.

He didn’t sleep at Momma’s house, but he took every meal there, and took is the correct word. Because of him, Bailey and I spent the most embarrassing hour of our lives, and to add insult to injury we became very sick.

Piss Ant, as Bailey called him, came round as usual after Sunday services. I brought him a face basin with water from the well so he could wash, but he hardly dipped his hand in the water, nor did he say thank you. I turned to go in the kitchen to help Momma, but I saw Bailey had seen Piss Ant’s behavior.

Momma sent me to the garden to pick and wash lettuce. She had made her delicious potato salad. She chipped off a corner from a block of ice and pulverized it with a hammer. She put the lettuce in a pretty dish and laid crushed ice between the leaves.

When Momma called everyone in for Sunday dinner, the table was powerful with her delectables spread from end to end. There was the most golden-brown fried chicken, string beans with little potatoes, dark green turnip leaves with snow-white turnips, pickled peaches, and a platter of her buttermilk biscuits called cat heads because of their size. But the star of that show was the potato salad. Momma had mixed all the ingredients, then mounded the salad high above the top of the bowl. She had hard-boiled four double-yolk eggs and cut them in half and pushed them down into the potato mixture; then she placed crisp cucumber circles around the inside edges of the bowl.

Each person was