Sunday lunch at a country buffet

I ate Sunday lunch at a genuine, honest-to-God country restaurant today. How do you know you're in a genuine, honest-to-God country restaurant? The fried fatback on the buffet is a dead giveaway.

As I dug into my second helpings of sweet white corn and pork-seasoned field peas, I told my wife it was appropriate that we'd be enjoying these delicacies on Carolyn Carter's birthday. Carolyn was my mother's younger sister. After my grandparents died, Carolyn and another aunt volunteered to host the family Christmas breakfast and dinner each year. Their small houses, next door to each other, were jammed with people every Christmas from sunrise to mid-afternoon for around 30 years. As new generations, including my own children, were added, my aunts steadfastly continued the family tradition that had begun with my grandparents before I was born.

The cuisine on those wondrous Christmas days were distinctively country. Breakfast included country ham, sausage, eggs, grits and homemade biscuits. Dinner would include turkey and ham with pork-flavored green beans, dressing, rice and gravy and more desserts than a glutton could ever consume at once.

Today's lunch took me back to those meals that would leave me feeling about to burst but still eager for one more morsel of food so delectable that its flavor is still distinct on my tongue so many years later.