10/04/2025
So my book is running behind but here’s chapter one! A little preview! 30 years of cooking and 20 years of funeral service work all rolled up in one book. Stories of services and recipes that will surely keep you reading.
Chapter 1: Death Comes in Sunday Clothes
The first funeral I ever remember clearly was my grandmother’s. I was just a boy, ten or eleven, and the biggest thing on my mind was how much I hated the stiff white shirt my mama made me wear. The tie was borrowed, the shoes were borrowed, and I felt like I was being strangled while walking on hot coals.
But I’ll tell you what I noticed even more than the suit, the food.
It wasn’t long after the preacher gave the benediction that folks started lining the tables in the fellowship hall. To a child, that table seemed a mile long, covered in mismatched bowls, aluminum foil pans, and casseroles baked with love and a little too much cream of mushroom soup.
I remember Aunt Joy’s fried chicken sitting there, golden brown, piled so high you had to wonder how many birds gave their lives for that funeral. Joy was my dad’s baby sister, we’ll talk more about that in another chapter. There was a bowl of potato salad the color of sunshine, banana pudding with Nilla wafers poking out like gravestones, and at least two chocolate pies with meringue peaks that leaned a little to one side.
As a child, it confused me. Weren’t we supposed to be sad? Wasn’t this supposed to be about death? And yet, in the middle of grief, there was laughter. Cousins I hadn’t seen in years were hugging necks, uncles were telling jokes too loud for the occasion, and my mama was wiping my tears, not just of sadness, but of joy in seeing all my people gathered in honor of my Maw Maw Peggy.
That was the day I learned a truth about southern funerals: the clothes might be stiff, the sermons might be long, but the food will always soften the blow. Death comes in Sunday clothes, but comfort comes in casseroles and biscuits.
And speaking of biscuits, no funeral table was complete without a basket of them, hot, wrapped in a towel, steam rising as you pulled one open. Around here, the biscuits were so big they called them cathead biscuits. Because really, that’s about the size of them.
Recipe: Cathead Biscuits
They say you can measure the love in a southern home by the size of the biscuits. If that’s true, then cathead biscuits are proof of a mighty big love. These biscuits don’t aim for fancy, they aim for hearty, comforting, and big enough to hold a slice of country ham or sop up sawmill gravy.
Ingredients:
• 2 cups self-rising flour
• ½ cup cold shortening or lard
• 1 cup buttermilk
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
2. In a large bowl, cut the shortening into the flour using a fork or pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly.
3. Stir in buttermilk just until dough forms, don’t overwork it.
4. Drop large spoonfuls of dough onto a greased baking sheet. No shaping necessary; rough edges make them perfect.
5. Bake 12–15 minutes, or until golden brown on top.
To Serve:
• Split open and butter while hot.
• Perfect with fried chicken, ham, or even just a drizzle of honey or sorghum syrup.
Well, here is a little of chapter two.
Chapter 2: Covered Dishes and Covered Tears
In the South, you can measure how loved a person was by the number of covered dishes that show up after they pass…….
It’s going to be a great book y’all!
