GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE NOVEMBER 7, 2025

I have done these "GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS," columns so often, I think I can do it in my sleep, let us see! Oh, but please do not attempt to emulate me by reading it in your sleep, as there could be known unknowns, or even unknown known hazards...(ala Donald Rumsfeld)...and you could awake with even more brain damage than usual. Lord knows, you don't want that.

Do you realize that the "Christmas season," is almost upon us? Thanksgiving Day is twenty days hence. I really enjoy Thanksgiving. All you have to do is show in baggy clothes, and eat, eat, and eat again, then have supper. I enjoy all of the traditional Christmas and Thanksgiving foods, but most of all, I love turkey and dressing.

Dressing is the one thing I can never get right, I can't make dressing worth a poot...literally. I love good cornbread and buttermilk dressing, with sage, with a moist texture and that wonderful flavor of so many good things together. I know you hate sage, but I love it. I do not like dressing made from mixes, because they all have seasoning that make them taste like "Stove Top Stuffing."

That ain't dressing by any stretch of the imagination. I want dressing made from buttermilk cornbread, no substitutes. Granny and Mama made the best, Caroline Price makes the best I have had since they passed away, it was the highlight of any Sunday dinner that she made it for, at Westside Baptist Church in Statesboro where I attended.

I do believe I could eat and enjoy good dressing everyday. Mama would make cush, and it was good too. Some folks made cush with sugar and milk as a breakfast food. But most, like mama, made it savory with salt, black pepper, softened minced onions, sage and small bits of leftover pork. She made it in an iron skillet, and the consistency was between cornmeal mush and dressing.

Oh, and you better not have called it dressing, because mama would say, all exasperated, "IT AIN'T DRESSING, IT'S CUSH!" I wondered, as a boy, why she was so adamant about that, and years later I understood it. Cush was good, but it was a barebones, and simple dish using what was at hand. In fact, it was known as "Confederate Cush," during and after the "late unpleasantness."

It was something to be made in a single iron skillet from meal, onions of available, pork scraps if any were to be had, water, pepper, and almost anything those starving men could scrounge. So, remember, mama made great dressing, and she made good cush, but as a proud southern Baptist woman, she would not stand for her cush to be called dressing, or her dressing to be called cush.

Lest some think she did not know the one from the other. Yes, some called it Confederate cush, some just referred to it as cush, or cush cush, even couche couche. So, "always remember, and never forget," dressing is dressing, and cush cush is cush, and don't even mention "haslet," in the middle of a discussion of either of them. Haslet? Yes, haslet.

"Now you hush, chile, we will talk about haslet another day." Well, I will say this, "haslet sure was good." Okay, okay, we will speak now about haslet, gimme a break, stop jumping up and down like a three year old that has to pee. Southern haslet was different from English haslet, or Scottish haggis, in that it was not made in a loaf, it was made in a skillet and was made too wet to set up in a loaf.

Haslet was made with chopped pork scraps and innards, and again, sage and black pepper. Speaking of haggis, have you ever eaten a haggis? It is a dish made inside of a cleaned cow bung or sheep stomach, tied on the ends, filled with sheep, lamb, or even pork scraps, liver, lights, or other diced organ meats, hearts, lights (lungs), liver, oatmeal rather than cornmeal, pepper, sage and the odd bits and pieces available.

It is unlawful to sell or prepare animal lungs in the US, and has been since 1971, due to concerns of spreading diseases. So, if you order a haggis these days, sadly it will not contain lights (lungs), tuberculosis, anthrax and other traditional diseases. If you want to experience the true, ole timey rural United Kingdom haggis death, you will need to get some diseased lungs from the black market.

Otherwise, you would have to raise them yourself, the hogs I mean, not the lungs, as you know you can't just raise diseased hog lungs without a diseased hog. It gets pretty complicated so I hope I have made it as clear as mud. Thank you for being her, now o enjoy your breakfast. Huhuh!

..... NUMBERS 6: 24-26, KJV

..... we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me