Recipe(tried): Granny's Cymling's..And A Story! :-)

Hello Friends;
I found a recipe by accident today, and it brought back some memories.

I found myself in an antique shop near where I live this morning, and their was a big shelf of old cookbooks. I instantly started to look through the shelves and found some real treasures from the 20's and 30's. I bought a cookbook called "The Way To A Man's Heart", it was published in 1936. When I got home I read through the pages and saw something that was a flashback to my youth. It was a memory from long ago, from my childhood, from my Grannies garden, and from my Aunt Tourmalines heart.

To start off with. Granny Church lived in rural West Virginia, in a little town called Hinton. The Appalachian Mountains surrounded that little town with hugs of love. Below the town and mountains, the Greenbrier River ran by those hills like a ribbon on top of a present. It curled softly through the hills and by the towns and families and history and life itself.

"David Darlin"..David! This is your Auntie Torm callin' ya honey, where are you!". I kept quiet..I was hideing behind the big leaves of the squash plants, and was waiting to give Tourmaline a big ole scare when she came by me. No sooner than I thought I was going to give her a big "BOO", then I got grabbed by my ribs in a big tickle by Tourmaline, and she fell down and yelled "I gotcha I gotcha"...and we fell in a bit of a hug and laughed liked the hyenna's we read about in the National Geographic Magazine. I remember that I giggled and giggled over that for ever! Indeed, I giggle right now thinking of it. We both kind of tired of the laugh for a minute, and we both layed back on the soil of Grannies garden, and Tourmaline just said to me...David darlin' life is just a step away from heaven.

Granny Church soon made an appearance in her garden asking what in "Heaven and Earth" were we doin' down here in the garden. We giggled and Tourm said that we were fixin' to pick a mess of squash. We started to pick crookneck yellow's when Granny said not to mess with 'em... Them "Cymlings" gettin' way too big, we gotta fix 'em up ta'day or they will go to ruin... So..we started to twist the cymlings off the vine, and we all knew the "Special" dish that Granny had in store for us when we harvested this wonderful squash....

Granny, Tourmaline and I were busy twistin' the cymlings off the vines and Granny soon spied her most dreaded enemy in her world! The GROUNDHOG who had been rootin up soil for years and years. She flew up the back steps of the porch and was back in a flash...I can see her now with her summer straw hat half hanging off her head and a look of determination to the battle between her and "Herman"..(My gang of cousins and I had nicknamed that ole groundhog ages ago).
Granny was armed with red pepper and sulfur powders. "Herman" took off in a frenzy, knowing that he was up against "Big Gun's" when it came to Granny Church. Granny started pouring pepper and sulfur powder everywhere, the groundhog was long gone and all that was left was Granny sneezing and wheezing in a cloud of "stuff"! Tourmaline and I were just kind of standing there watching this spectacle and laughing oursleves silly. Torm was one of those people who likes to kinda hit you when she laughs, in a silly way! I kept giving her little slaps back, but we laughed and laughed so hard. "Herman" had won, once again! Herman would continue to win the battle...Granny never did win the battle with that old groundhog...

But..Now, back to the cymlings. Cymlings is a type of squash, not seen often in the grocery trade, but a vegetable from the old days. You may see it from time to time at roadside stands. I think they are marketed today as "Patty Pan" squash. I always called them "Flying Saucer" squash when I was a kid because of the shape of them. They are white, eliptical, scalloped.

Ok, ya'll have suffered long enough.. so here is the recipe that Granny Church did with them cymlings ages and ages ago! It's not an exacting recipe, but rather a "sorta" recipe, one of those you do on your own as you see fit. Granny's Cymling's

4 Large cymlings (patty pan squash) sliced length wise 1/4 inch thick
1 egg (beaten)
1 cup cornmeal, salted and peppered
1 cup oil
5 slices of country ham (Smithfield), or any ham you have available.
2 Cups of white gravy (from your family recipes).

Dip the sliced cymlings in the egg and them quickly toss with the cornmeal
and fry in the oil. Brown these off on both sides, then set aside.

When all cymlings are done, you drain the oil off of the skillet and then
quickly brown off the ham slices (best to be cut to fit on top of the
sliced cymlings). Remove from the heat.

Prepare the white gravy, then assemble the cymblings on a platter,
top with the cooked ham, and top with the milk gravy. This can be served
with fresh sliced homegrown tomatoes and if you have the time, a nice
big pan of cornbread and a mess of greens makes it all the better!
A batch of biscuits makes it good too!

Thank you all for reading this very long post! Hope it wasn't too boaring!

Peace to all on TKL!...Ummmm now I do think fall is in the air, I saw a
pumpking starting to turn orange in the field the other day! :-)

David In Virginia