You folks rocking on your front porch sure do have a pretty view
today, with all the colors of the rainbow showing in the woods and along the roadsides. We got to see some awfully pretty leaves , bushes and hardy little flowers when we drove over in KY yesterday so "Bear " could play guitar and sing at the homecoming the little town of Beech Creek has been enjoying for 20 years . A goodly crowd of people shared a lot of happy memories . Good friends, good music and good food....that's hard to beat.Nothing takes ME back down memory lane like a big pot of chicken and
dumplins' on a cool Fall day , so that's what I cooked for our Sunday dinner. As I rinsed the store bought chicken pieces off and put them in the pot to cook I remembered that Mama did it a mite differently back in the 'Good old days" .First , call all the youngens to catch the chicken , unless you could
take a pan of scraps out there and tole the chosen victim in close enoughto grab. Sometimes it was an anemic looking hen that she didn't consider was doing the job--not sick, you understand, just not as sleek and healthy as some with bright red combs and wattles.[ I found out later, the reason they look so darn healthy is because they arent doing any egg laying, just loafing and eating a lot.] Since more roosters always seemed to hatch out under the mean old setting hens, we might eat a rooster that was crowing too early for his own good. OR , a hen that crowed--there was only one sure cure for that cursed hen....off with her head !She had to kill that bird somehow, so it was either wring the head off
or use a hatchet and the chopping block. Meanwhile ,water was heating , and the chicken was dipped into the big pot of water till it's feathers were loose enough to pull out easily. I can remember us kids crowding around to watch Mom cut up chickens...she didn't appreciate it very much, but we thought the process fascinating.[ Saves me money now, as I can buy chickens and cut them up myself.]After the chicken had cooked tender in the old black iron dinner
kittle, Mama would take the meat out,let it cool, then remove bones , skin and fat .Then she'd stir up some dumplins' out of self rising flour, a few tablespoonful of fat she'd skimmed from the broth , and some top milk .She would dip the spoon in broth before dropping a dumplin about the size of a small egg into the simmering broth and chicken ..A chunk of the dough [ about the size of an egg ] was saved back and mixed it with some broth out of the kittle and then she poured the slurry back in with the chicken and broth so the "Gravy" would be nice and thickened.After the lid was put on the kettle and it was moved to the back of
the old wood stove so it would barely simmer , we had only 20 more minutes to wait, then we could dig into some of the finest eating on Earth !. Mama always told us to give it time to cool, but we just kept on nibbling around the edges of those lovely, fluffy dumplins !.I still use Mama's recipe , but I sprinkle McCormicks Salt n Spice on
top of the dumplins before I put the lid on the pot and sometimes I add a couple of bouillon cubes to the simmering chicken, but theres no way it can be made to taste like the chicken and dumplins that Mama made so long ago ! ......Jeannie Travis.....Clarksville , TN.