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Mimi's Myriad of Blackberry-Related Miracles

With Warm Appalachian Love Served á la Mode

By Hannah OranPublished 2 years ago 9 min read
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Some people accuse me of having old-fashioned sensibilities. In many ways, these accusations are correct. In my defense, I do come by it honestly. I was raised by my Mimi, (my Grandmother, for those unfamiliar with the term) who was also raised by hers in turn. Due to her upbringing, she was well acquainted with all the traditional Appalachian methods of making do. While I remain unfamiliar with certain elements of her country education like how to castrate hogs or make lye soap, I have the proud blessing of getting to carry on many of her ideals and traditions.

In order to understand the way my Mimi thinks, you have to understand the way mountain folk think. People in these hills are a laid-back kind of people. People don’t tend to know the South as such, but mountain folk are cut from a different cloth. We are family-oriented and loving to a fault. We take pride in strength and resourcefulness through what seems like never-ending hard times. And we believe that outside of family, the greatest joys in life are music and food. So just as the way to the heart is through the stomach, the head of food is the head of the family.

One of the ways that my Grandmother established and maintained her culinary dominance over the rest of my kin was through blackberries. Whenever school was out, my aunts, uncles, and cousins from all over Appalachia would hurry to Tennessee with their campers to get a taste of Mimi Jo’s cooking. While the grown folk pick and play a myriad of instruments, Mimi Jo would send the kids out to the blackberry bushes with oversized buckets to fill for our oversized family.

I’d say our little hands made quick work of the blackberry picking, but they could seldom keep up with our small, gluttonous mouths that consumed half the berries before they could even make it into the bucket. We paid the pricker bushes and thorns no mind while chowing down on the fattest berries we could find. Even still, we’d make sure to fill the buckets up nice and full for Mimi Jo because we knew better than to cross the chef and we knew our diligence as berry pickers would pay off in dividends.

When we brought the berries back to Mimi Jo, the very first thing she’d use them for was her cobbler. Southerners and mountain folk alike are well acquainted with cobblers of all sorts, but nothing was quite like Mimi Jo’s Blackberry Cobbler. I’d always stand expectantly nearby as she expertly made several cobblers, typically while cooking up an entire feast for supper. For those familiar with cobbler, it is a simple dessert as far as they go; they ain’t no macrons or croquembouche. But as omnipresent as cobbler is in these parts, I still have never managed to come across one made as well as Mimi Jo’s.

I know saying that food is made with love is an old and tired-out expression, but she did in fact make every single cobbler with love. What made her cooking great was not just love for her family, even if she had that in abundance. She also loved the mountains in which we lived and all they provided for us. She loved the blackberries themselves and respected them just as she did all the wonderful things the mountains gave to us. But most impressively, she even loved the painstaking process of cooking and baking for her army of kinfolk.

Her craft was nothing short of alchemy. She measured with her heart and razor-sharp instincts. Without the aid of measuring tools, you’d think that you’d never be able to get the same result twice, but she always managed to produce the same immaculate cobbler every single time just using her experience. One of the things that I appreciate about her cobbler that I find tends to be missing in other people’s recipes is that she always believed the blackberries could speak for themselves. The breading was only there to compliment the berries and should never drown them out or cover them up. Too often at potlucks, I see cobblers that could easily be mistaken for cake; there’d be tables lined with dishes that were nothin' but streaks of fruit buried in bread. But not Mimi Jo’s cobbler. Her cobbler always looked like a sticky blackish sea of sweet berries with pieces of bread emerging up from the depths like starchy, tan continents.

Mimi Jo would scoop out a heap of cobbler for every family member before serving herself. And with blackberry season being in the summer, she would also pile our bowl high with a scoop of homemade ice cream. There isn’t an earthly pleasure comparable to taking that first bite of hot fruit cobbler topped with sweet, cool ice cream. But blackberries in particular have a gentle tartness about them that divinely mingles with the simple elegance of cakey bread and vanilla ice cream. Neither science nor religion has yet to provide me with as ethereal of an experience as sitting at a hot, concrete picnic table with a bowl of Mimi Jo’s blackberry cobbler À la mode.

After the family finished stuffing their maw with the array of Mimi Jo’s vittles, they’d go back to joyously providing accompaniments for all the mountain's songs while Mimi Jo cleaned up her efforts and continued diligently with her work. As the night startled awake and fell on our gay little band, Mimi Jo would tuck herself away into the kitchen to start working on the final destination of the unused blackberries: preserves.

We’d play and dance to mountain music well into the darkest hours of the night while she’d can jars of her preserves for our kin to take back home with them.

When the sun came up, we’d sleepily drag ourselves to the picnic tables and lawn chairs to grab a helping of Mimi Jo’s breakfast spread. A typical breakfast would include country-style hash browns, hog jowl, country ham, bacon, eggs, grits, coffee, orange juice, and drop biscuits that were typically paired with sausage gravy, apple butter, or blackberry preserves. But looking back on those sleepy mountain mornings I can never recall seeing an ounce of weariness in her. I’m not sure if it was her love for performing culinary miracles that fueled her seemingly unending well of energy or if she was simply a professional at hiding her weaknesses, but she became my picture of strength and love that I always held tightly onto.

Now, she has been forced by time and old age to put away her wooden cooking spoon and cast-iron skillets. Many of the people I knew from those cherished family reunions have passed away. Despite her being the oldest of her siblings and cousins, death has claimed all but her alone. She now spends her well-earned days of quiet in a blue cozy chair next to a fireplace.

The ideals and traditions of our family are largely left to me to carry on. And while I love the ways of my grandmother and her grandparents, I am proud to say that I am the new old-fashioned. People that aren’t from around here tend to think of southerners and mountain folk as a hateful breed and that is, unfortunately, becoming more common than I’d like. It’s not as if I don’t know where that comes from; growing up as a gay female around East Tennessee will make the bigotry of the Bible Belt as obvious as a splinter in your eye. But the mountain folk I know are a diverse and loving group. We always accepted each other and loved each other for who we are. I'm not sure they would have expected me to be anyone else other than myself, even if they had the choice.

People who truly understand the roots of the culture we hold so dear know of its diverse roots, as well as our own. There should be no room for hatred or bigotry in Appalachia. I am proud to say that many of the folks that are carrying on these traditions are queer or POC, just like many of the people that began them. My trans friends are some of the only twenty-somethings I know who are concerned with preserving the old-fashioned way of making and canning jams and jellies. The best chow-chow I’ve ever had was grown, made, and canned by lesbians. African American groups are writing cookbooks and recording folk tales that the Gullah-Geechee people and other POC brought to these mountains so that people can learn about their major impact on our culture. The Appalachian Mountains have a rich, colorful history that deserves to be celebrated rather than mocked, ridiculed, or reduced.

There is so much to our culture that is worth preserving and honoring, but even more important than passing on the best ways to pickle peppers is preserving the tradition of love that folks like Mimi Jo shared with us. So, if you are ever in my neck of the woods and need a place to rest your feet, don’t be scared to holler at me. No matter who you are or where you came from, I will have a smile on my face as I labor over a hot pot of chicken and dumplings or soup beans for my guest. Just know the table is always full, and there will never be any room for hatred at it.

And if I really like you, I’ll make sure to finish our supper up with a nice bowl of Mimi Jo’s Blackberry Cobbler À la Mode.

...

While I can’t exactly replicate how my Mimi made her cobbler, the recipe I am including is the closest I can get to making sense of her methods:

Mimi Jo’s Blackberry Cobbler

Ingredients:

9x13 casserole dish or large cast-iron skillet

4-5 cups of blackberries

1 1/4 cups of sugar

1 cup of milk (preferably whole)

1 cup of all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)

1 1/3 stick of butter

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Fill a mixing bowl with the blackberries. With a fork, gently press on the berries. Try to break their skin without mashing them.

3. Pour ¼ of sugar on top of the berries and stir. Let them sit in the sugar while you prepare your other ingredients.

4. In a separate mixing bowl, mix all your remaining dry ingredients.

5. Melt one stick of butter either in the skillet, pan, or separate container.

6. Mix all your wet ingredients into the bowl that contains your dry ingredients.

7. Pour your batter into a greased baking dish or skillet of choice. If using a skillet, you can heat up the skillet first and grease it with butter for an extra crispy cobbler.

8. Pour your berries on top of the batter

9. Cut the remainder of your butter and place over the top of the cobbler in spread-out pats.

10. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour. The bready parts should be golden brown.

Serve with ice cream on top, though whipped cream will do in a pinch!

Enjoy yal!

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About the Creator

Hannah Oran

Hi! My name is Hannah. I am a 22-year-old LGBTQIA+ writer from Tennessee. I grew up in an impoverished family in Appalachia and while I had a rough upbringing, there is nothing I love more than sharing my experiences through my writing.

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  • Yuley Burrow2 years ago

    I would die if I spent my summer with you, that's just because I'm deathly allergic to blackberries.

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