Bena Mae’s Kitchen: Potions and Elixirs

There was a time when potions and elixirs were common to every mother who guarded the health of her family. Antibiotics were yet to be developed and doctor visits were few and far between, so they had to rely on common sense and motherly intuition.
My mother relied heavily on this motherly intuition upon which she dosed her children during all their childhood diseases. And there were many of them, many which we did not know the names of and many that would have cured themselves because we were a resilient lot in those days of measles, mumps, whooping cough, croup and stomach ailments. Oh, how I remember some of those home remedies that were worse than the illness. But our mothers meant well.
I guess you could call my mother a medicine “junkie,” although the term was not a familiar one in those days. Her motto was “Be Prepared.” And prepared she was.
When I was growing up, the shelf in the kitchen looked like a drug store pharmacy. If you could ingest it, swallow it, sniff it, or rub it on, Mama had it and stuck it on that shelf.
I remember some of the old herbal medicines she bought from a partially blind woman named Aunt Lizzie who came by our house once a month. When it was time for her to come by, Mama could hardly wait.
The two of them would sit in the front porch swing and talk about the latest illness going around and a new medicine Aunt Lizzie had to show her. As they talked, Mama would go through the black satchel bag of miracle cures the old lady carried–she was like a kid in a candy store.
 No matter what the ailment was…boils, croup, constipation, diarrhea, fatigue, loss of appetite, fever, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, rashes, vomiting… you name it, Aunt Lizzie had the cure and Mama bought it. And stuck it on that shelf in the kitchen.
 That shelf got mighty crowded at times There was Paragoric (illegal today but widely used back then), Castoria, Hadacol, Geritol, Dr. Lydia E. Pinkhams, Indian River Tonic, Epsom Salts, Castor Oil, Cloverine Salve, and many more too numerous to mention.
It’s ironic and funny that ours was an alcohol free house, Daddy being a Baptist deacon who never let Demon Rum pass his lips while all the time the kitchen was full of bottles laced with alcohol. But this was unbeknownst to my mother, who, when we told her years later was horrified.
 It was remindful of one of the Andy Griffith shows when Aunt Bea and the ladies of the town were enthralled with a traveling medicine man who sold them bottles of highly laced spirits that made them “tiddly.” It was more than mortifying to Aunt Bea who would never serve rum cake at Christmas time. Mama was just as mortified. But she was never tiddly, considering that she had to have her “nerve” medicine every day which was supplied, after all, by Dr. Lydia E. Pinkhams.
Mama lived to be almost 102 years of age so it may be that the “miracle drugs” she relied upon proved to be a miracle after all. She was completely lucid when she died, so maybe they enhanced her brain cells rather than destroying them. Who is to say?
She spent the last two years of her life in a nursing home where she pestered the nurses every day to give her her “nerve” pill before it was due.
My sisters and I thought of a plan to offset this by bringing in a bottle of Tic-Tacs and making her think they were tranquilizers. Whenever she would insist on her afternoon nerve pill before it was due, we would say, “Here Mama, take one of mine.” She would take it and be asleep in five minutes.
We told the doctor about it and he just grinned and said it was okay.
We had been buying the white Tic-Tacs and one day we messed up and started giving her the green ones instead. “I don’t like these green ones,” she said. “They’re not as strong as the white ones.”

Broccoli-Cheddar Cobbler

2 cups whole wheat flour (can use all-purpose if you don’t have whole wheat)
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup buttermilk
1 small onion (chopped)
8oz cremini mushrooms (quartered)
4 tablespoons flour
1 cup chicken stock (unsalted or homemade)
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
6oz cheddar cheese (grated)
3-4 cups broccoli (chopped)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Make the biscuit topping: combine the whole wheat flour, the baking powder and baking soda, and the salt in a large mixing bowl. Use a pastry blender or your fingertips to blend 6 tablespoons of the butter (cut into cubes) into the flour mixture until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Gradually mix the buttermilk into the flour-butter mixture until a slightly sticky dough forms. Cover with plastic and refrigerate until ready to use.
In a medium saucepan, melt one tablespoon of the butter over medium heat. Sauté the onion until it starts to soften. Add in the remaining tablespoon of butter and the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are softened.
Sprinkle the four tablespoons of flour over the onion-mushroom mixture. Cook for about a minute. Gradually stir in the chicken stock and milk. Cook until thickened then add the broccoli and cook for a few minutes more. Add four ounces of the cheese and stir in until melted. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Pour the mushroom-broccoli mixture into an 8-inch square baking pan. Roll the biscuit dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead and turn the dough a few times then pat into a rectangle about 2 inches thick. Cut the dough into 12 pieces and evenly distribute on top of the broccoli mixture. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.
Bake the casserole for about 25-30 minutes, until bubbly and browned on top. Serve immediately.