By RILEY R. READ

Special to the Times-Leader

My mother and dad, Bertha and Hobart (Tobe) Read, lived and did things the old-fashioned way.

Dad was one of the last farmers to convert to tractor power about 1950. Even after Dad bought a tractor, he still planted the corn with a horse-drawn planter.

Mom was able to provide a variety of cooked food, and almost none of it was purchased in the store. Mom canned everything in the garden; we picked and canned blackberries, and Mom and her pressure canner canned “poke greens.”

About once a year, Mom would pick a time when the weather was getting warm and the snow and nasty weather were almost gone, but it was too early to start spring plowing. At that time, she would announce, “I think I will start a batch of hominy today.”

Of all the things I’ve seen my mother undertake, this was probably the most laborious and tedious of them all. The process goes like this:

First, I was dispatched to the barn to secure a burlap bag of large pristine ears of corn from the corn crib. Next, I had to shell the corn, taking care not to get any of the grains near the end of the cob; the grains had to be perfect.

While I was shelling corn, Dad got out the old 20-gallon iron kettle and filled it with water. This kettle of water had an old piece of tin roofing for a top; the corn was placed in the water, covered and allowed to soak for about 24 hours.

The next day, the water was changed and a big fire built under it; the water was brought to a hard boil.

Somewhere about this time, a large can or two of Merry War Lye was added to the water. (In previous times, Mom would make her own lye by soaking wood ashes in rain water, draining off the water and adding this water to the batch of corn.)

When the water had boiled and the lye was added, the fire was removed and allowed to soak for another 24 hours.

Now the tedious process began. After soaking in this lye water, the grains of corn were washed with fresh water several times; during this process, each grain was rubbed between your fingers to remove the skin (or hull) covering the grain and the little black germ portion of the grain.

My mother’s hands would turn white from handling this lye-soaked corn. Back then, whoever heard of plastic or rubber gloves — or had the money to buy them?

After the last wash of the grains, the kernels were placed into sterile glass jars with a teaspoon of salt and fresh water. Lids were attached, placed into the pressure canner and processed, to be used during the next year or so.

Mom always said she was going to dry some of the corn and grind them to make her own grits; however, I do not ever remember her doing so. Our family was not too fond of grits. But we did like hominy.

This two- or three-day process was most time-consuming and tedious. Today, we can go to the local grocery store and purchase canned hominy to be used as a side dish or in soups.

Recently, I was thinking about Mom and making hominy, so I trotted (actually drove my new car) down to the local neighborhood store, found a can of hominy and fixed up a dish much like my mom’s dish of hominy. I hope I made you hungry and influence you to give this old dish a try.



MOM'S HOMINY

Fry several pieces of bacon (seven or eight), or if you have a jar of bacon drippings sitting on the back of the stove, put 3 or 4 tablespoons of it in an iron skillet.

Chop up about half of a yellow onion and cook in the bacon fat until slightly soft. It must be bacon fat; it won't taste right with Smart Balance Oil. Just tell your doctor that you use Uncle Riley's Smart Bacon Fat.

Now drain one can of Bushes Best White Hominy and add it to the onions. Crumble bacon and add that also.

Add one can of diced tomatoes.

Add 1 teaspoon of sugar, more or less.

Add one bay leaf (or if you have it, one dried peach tree leaf; Mom dried her own spices and used peach tree leaves instead of bay leaves.)

Options that I do not use: Add green peppers, chili peppers, hot sauce or anything else you desire.

Salt and pepper to your hearts content.

Let simmer until most of the moisture is gone. Now sit down to a nice slice of ham and a side of hominy.

Recently, I used hominy as a replacement for macaroni in mac and cheese, and baked it in the oven with three kinds of cheese. That's good, too.

I’m sure glad I did not have to shell corn, soak it in lye water, hull each grain by hand, just to have a dish of hominy.

• Riley R. Read is a Hamilton County native now living in Houston. You may contact him via e-mail at rread3@comcast.net.