"I'm sorry about the cornbread," Ruthie said in her deep Southern accent, placing a basket of steamy bread on the table. "My stuff hasn't come from home yet." By "stuff" she meant the particular brand of cornmeal that cannot be found on Martha's Vineyard, which is where Ruthie has, for the past 17 summers, cooked and cared for my mother.
My mother, actress Patricia Neal, changed both her accent and her palate when she left Kentucky for Hollywood in 1945 at the age of 19. But she'd grown up on Southern fare, and with the introduction of Ruthie into her life, came to love it again.
I first encountered Ruthie Parks nearly 18 years ago while visiting my in-laws in a small town in southern Georgia. A 40-year-old single mother (her son was already 21), she was the cook at a small restaurant called The Country Corner. After polishing off my plate of delicious soul food, I -- almost jokingly -- offered her a job cooking and keeping house for my mother on Martha's Vineyard.
She accepted on the spot. In no time, it seemed, she boarded a northbound bus, leaving her family and the state of Georgia for the first time. Since then Ruthie has spent six of the summer months of the year on the Vineyard and the others back at her home in Georgia.
In my mother's house, Ruthie is the boss. She exudes an extraordinary sense of strength and wisdom that has earned the respect of our family, friends and even people in the little preppy town. When Ruthie walks down the street, people yell from their cars, "Hello Ruthie." She waves back and recently confessed to me, "I holler right back at them. I don't know who some of them is, but I still wave." And then she bends over, as she always does when she laughs, then she comes back up and finishes the chuckle with a "Ummm-humm."
Ruthie is simply a master of Southern cooking. She has, I'm certain, never even glimpsed at a cookbook. If you were to ask her how she became so skilled she'd reply, "Everything I knows, I learned from Mama." And she knows how to cook.
Ruthie doesn't fry her chicken in a deep fryer. She puts about three inches of oil in a skillet and tends to the pieces continuously. She likes the wings, and it is an unspoken rule that we always leave the wings for the cook.
She peels her potatoes with a small paring knife, cuts them in to uniform size chunks and after boiling, mashes them by hand, first with a fork and finishing with a hand whisk after adding the perfect amount of butter, cream salt and pepper.
Spare ribs are slow-boiled before slowly cooking them in the oven, covered with her homemade BBQ sauce. Pork chops are pounded until thin and then fried to crispy perfection.
Ruthie uses salt pork in all of her greens. The furthest Ruthie will stray from collard, mustard and turnip greens are green beans. Other than those, she will touch no other vegetables except an artichoke. Why an artichoke? Because my mother insisted that she try it, and she loved it, I suspect because the tender leaves were drenched in salty butter.
The healing power of Ruthie's Southern cooking
There's an undeniable "Driving Miss Daisy" aspect to her and my mother. The two women are great friends and know every secret and detail of each other's life. They often squabble, which inevitably ends with Ruthie tutting and making clucking noises as she wipes down the kitchen counters, and my mother announcing to herself that, "Ruth doesn't love me," to which Ruthie always replies, "You know I do."
In February of this year, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She spent two months in the hospital in Los Angeles, where I live, and I watched her become very weak, her appetite and energy nearly gone. All she wanted to do was to get home to Martha's Vineyard. I called Ruthie to ask whether she could come early this year. Knowing Mum was very ill, she said, "I'll be on the next bus," and she was. (Ruthie is terrified of flying.)
When I arrived with my mother a week or so later, I explained to Ruthie that Mum wasn't eating much and seemed to have lost interest in food altogether.
Ruthie began to cook. First the cornbread, my mother's favorite. Then fried chicken. Pork chops. Spare ribs. Mashed potatoes. Greens. Baked beans. Sausage patties. Bacon. Biscuits and gravy.
To my amazement, my mother began to eat. She got stronger with every day and every meal. For a few days after the trip back east, my mother rested in bed, but she always got up for all of her meals. She knew Ruthie had been cooking for hours, and I think just the smell of all that good cooking gave her something to look forward to throughout the day. Ruthie would set the table as if for the queen.
That was two months ago. I just went back to visit my mother and I couldn't believe it. My mother was as she was before her diagnosis. She and Ruthie are bickering and laughing. My mother is up, walking about, living her life. Her cancer is still there, and she has opted not to have any treatment, because her quality of life is just perfect for her, just the way it is.
"Ruthie," I said, "It's amazing!" she just looked at me wistfully and said, "Umm-humm."
Then she picked up the car keys and said, "I'm going to the post office to see if more of my stuff has arrived."
Lucy Dahl is an author and screenwriter in Los Angeles. Her other articles about food, memory and family can be found here.
Photo: Ruthie Parks. Credit: Lucy Dahl
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From café cortado to smoked fish to paella, the Spanish capital is a trove of exceptional food.
much love,
Brenda and Tanya