Exceedingly Mundane

Yes, an odd name for a blog post.

I was reading our local paper earlier today. On Wednesdays, we get the grocery circulars and a small “Food” section. One of the local columnists today was talking about how Southern cooks make several things from scratch. Like biscuits (check, I do that, haven’t bought a tube of biscuits in almost a decade), cornbread (check, Tim likes one recipe I make), iced tea (duh, can you actually buy this premade?), and pimento cheese. Now, pimento cheese I have probably never made. Or maybe I have tried once or twice, but mine never tastes like my mom’s. I think I have tried it before, probably when I was single or first married, but it just paled in comparison to my mother’s.

Now, any of you who know me, know that any memories I have of growing up are spotty at best. And perhaps this is a memory from later in life, when I was older and my mom was getting on in age and her health starting to decline. But, I do remember the last 10 or 15 years of her life, her making pimento cheese.

When my parents moved to Hattiesburg, I would often go down for the weekend, and Dodie would inevitably make pimento cheese for me, if she didn’t already have a batch made up. Later on in life, after my parents retired, my mom got in the habit of fixing a big meal at lunch and they would just nibble or have a sandwich at night. My dad still does this now, without her. When I would go visit for the weekend, I’d either have a pimento cheese sandwich on Friday or Saturday night. I have very warm memories of sitting in the kitchen with Dodie and eating my sandwich, or sitting on the floor in her bedroom, watching TV while she watched it (we’d watch Wheel of Fortune or something on FoodTV or HGTV), or she would be playing cards on the computer. Fond memories.

Anyway, she would make up pimento cheese, mostly for herself, I think, and I just remember it being really good. Maybe she used full-fat mayo (where as today I would use low-fat), or maybe she used a different kind of cheese. Whatever she did, it just always tasted better. Maybe it was just because she made it for me. I don’t remember much about her cooking, and I find that the older I get and the longer she’s gone, I really want to remember all these things, and to have answers to the questions she is no longer here to answer. Cooking questions, questions on how to do things, questions about things from my childhood that I can’t remember, all sorts of things. What’s up with that?

Here’s an excerpt from the article (since the link won’t work for long, the Clarion Ledger takes their content offline pretty frequently to put up current stuff), on how to make it. I think if my mom was here, she’d probably say that hers was very similar. I wish she were here to tell me how she made it.

Open a 2-cup package of shredded sharp cheddar cheese and pour it into the bowl. Drain 1 (4-ounce) jar of chopped pimientos. Add them to a bowl along with 6 tablespoons of mayonnaise (store-bought Hellman’s or Dukes; I reserve my homemade for peeled tomato slices), a dash of yellow mustard, a pinch of sugar, salt and black pepper to taste. Stir it until it’s well mixed, adding more mayonnaise if it seems too dry. Cover it and let it sit for at least an hour in the refrigerator before spreading it on a cracker.