Bena Mae’s Kitchen: Heating up the Stove

This was an early morning ritual in the house I lived in during the 1930’s and 40’s as it was in the houses up and down the street.
It began about 5:30 a.m. in the living room and kitchen with Daddy stirring up the banked coals in the big warm-morning stove in the living room while Mama did the same in the kitchen, getting the cook stove ready to make breakfast. I never could understand how her meals always turned out so good cooking on a stove with no temperature regulator, but I guess housewives back then had the feel for when the stove was ready for cooking.
She started by making biscuits — if I could count the biscuits she made they would be in the thousands because we had them every morning.
She never measured the ingredients. She would put an egg-sized lump of lard into the bread bowl of flour, add buttermilk and baking powder and they came out light and fluffy every time.
We would eat them with gravy made from the drippings of sausage, pork chops, sometimes fried chicken, and if Daddy had a lucky day of hunting, fried quail. I remember Daddy’s hunting dogs which he loved, Maggie and Kate, a red pointer and an Irish setter. We fed them table scraps because there wasn’t such a thing as dog food back then, and every night he made sure they got fed as soon as supper was over. “Sis, did you feed the dogs,” was a common phrase we heard every night as we washed the supper dishes. But I digress.
We lit into Mama’s sumptuous breakfast like pigs every morning, sopping our biscuits into the delicious gravy made from whatever meat she had on hand, fried eggs, fried sweet potatoes, fried apples, (people were big on fried foods back then) and oatmeal, always oatmeal. Dietitians today would choke on the amount of calories and fat we took in, but back then breakfast was the most important meal of the day, making sure that the man of the house and children going off to school were prepared to face the day.
I think about that today when I see the skimpy breakfasts people are eating that have no nutritional value whatsoever. A donut, a bran muffin, a glass of orange juice and out the door.
And I wish, oh, how I wish that my microwave could turn out the wonderful breakfasts Mama cooked up on that big kitchen range that never let her down.

Banana Split Cake

9 HONEY MAID Honey Grahams, crushed (about 1-1/2 cups)
1 cup sugar, divided
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 pkg. (8 oz. each) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
1 can (20 oz.) crushed pineapple in juice, drained
6 bananas, divided
2 pkg. (3.4 oz. each) JELL-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding
2 cups cold milk
2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, divided
1 cup chopped PLANTERS Pecans

MIX graham crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar and butter; press onto bottom of 13×9-inch pan. Freeze 10 min.
BEAT cream cheese and remaining sugar with mixer until blended. Spread carefully over crust; top with pineapple. Slice 4 bananas; arrange over pineapple.
BEAT pudding mixes and milk with whisk 2 min. Stir in 1 cup COOL WHIP; spread over banana layer in pan. Top with remaining COOL WHIP. Refrigerate 5 hours. Slice remaining bananas just before serving; arrange over dessert. Top with nuts.