My mother isn’t at all a terrible cook. It’s just that to her, and to her mother who taught her on up the line, meat that is the least bit “raw” is a bad thing, possibly unhealthy and even dangerous. She has a point, up to a point. Undercooked chicken (salmonella) or pork (trichinosis) actually is problematic. So is much of what passes for hamburger (e. coli) these days.
There are ways to cook meat to a pulp that are delicious though, all involving a crock pot, lol. Pot roast is one, she’s a master at that, fork tender. Southern country style steak is another. It’s cube steak, which was once a cheap cut, cooked for hours with homemade brown gravy. All trace of toughness for which cubE steak is known are gone. Done right it’ll fall apart on your fork, no need to really even use the edge of the fork.
There’s a world of food outside traditional southern fare though. I’d never put her in charge of grilling steaks. Neither did my dad, lol. He grew up on a farm and love old fashioned cooking but he was also very well travelled. He’d “bring back” foods from his travels in his head and try them out himself, sometimes to great effect, sometimes not, lol.
Cooking on fire outside was men’s territory. Inside was women’s other than special occasions like breakfast for dinner on a weekend, unusual stuff like that.
My mother’s fried chicken was delicious and that’s about the only meat dish that was. However, her baked goods were absolutely the best things you ever tasted. Cakes, cookies, pies, bread...all super. I couldn’t figure it out. Why did she ruin the meat dishes but bake such incredible goodies? I finally theorized that she made dinner to satisfy my father who had rather plebian tastes in food. Like a lot of men from his generation, he disliked most meals that weren’t meat and potatoes.
Five year period between 1997 and 2001, there were a whopping total of 12 cases of trichinosis from commercial pork products.
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/PREVIEW/mmwrhtml/ss5206a1.htm
Go ahead and leave that pork a little pinkish, no harm will come and it is so much better than a tough chop.