Never had any better since. Same goes for her iced tea, which she used to make and put on the windowsill for a few hours in a big glass jar. There there was her fried okra, fried chicken, fried catfish...
Something about southern cooking that just can't be duplicated north of the Mason/Dixon line.
My wife and I were reflecting the other day on the amount of cooking folks had to do in the not-so-distant past. Wife grew up on a farm in the Carolinas, with her parents, along with six brothers and sisters. The girls and their mom rose before dawn to cook breakfast for the family, plus a couple of farm hands. If it was big event, like the tobacco harvest or a hog killing, the number of people at the table would be even greater.
After breakfast, the younger kids went to school, while the older ones worked in the fields. At noon, a smaller meal, but you still had 4-7 people at the table. Then, after a brief break, more farm work, followed by supper, clean-up and getting ready for the next day. That’s a lot of food, and it was prepared and served six or seven days a week.
My late mother-in-law would laugh at the idea of paying $4 for a frozen biscuit, when she cranked out a sheet each morning, faster and far better than anything Joanna Gaines’ bakery could come up with.