Savoring Heritage: Stories of Southern and Texan Cuisine

Ever reminisce about that one dish your grandmother could whip up that instantly took you back to the simpler times of childhood? That's where Jeff and Melanie take us in this episode, guiding us through the kitchens of their past as we unpack the flavors and tales of Southern and Texan cuisine. They spin yarns of family cookouts and the sweet, smoky scent of home, while Melanie confesses her role as champion of cleanliness over culinary prowess. Jeff, on the other hand, shares his early experiments with a wok and a children's Chinese cookbook. Together, we laugh about the days when loving food didn't require the label 'foodie' and how their time in France has added a certain je ne sais quoi to their cooking philosophy.

But what happens when you leave those leisurely French lunches behind and find yourself back in the fast-paced American dining scene? Melanie and Jeff elaborate on the struggle of trading the freshness of international markets for the convenience of American grocery stores, and the bittersweet task of teaching their kids to readjust their palates. They also highlight the beauty of blending cultures at the dinner table, creating their own unique traditions. Wait until you hear about their Thanksgiving gatherings, where the humble pecan pie becomes a symbol of shared heritage and a feast that unites friends from all walks of life. We can't wait to continue this conversation next week, savoring the seasonal delights that showcase our cultural mosaic. Join us, Dave and Jen, as we relish these stories that are as rich and layered as the dishes that inspire them on Sweet Teen Tacos.

Transcript

Dave: 0:00

Just a note. The first minute or so we had a little sound quality issue this week, but hang in there, it gets better. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Sweet Tea and Tacos. I'm Dave.

Jen: 0:17

And I'm Jen.

Dave: 0:19

And we're coming to you from our kitchen again. We've got a Scotty over there the dishwasher going, since I've been here to stop washing dishes. But today we wanted to kind of talk about it's kind of related to our food histories and that's somewhat what the name Sweet Team Tacos came from was our backgrounds, and we talk a lot about how our food backgrounds and the different backgrounds kind of make our cooking interesting. So what is it like when you add in maybe living in another country and how does that?

Melanie: 0:51

So we brought out our friends Jeff and Melanie Welcome.

Jen: 0:53

Yes, well, that'll be here. Happy to be here.

Dave: 0:56

So kind of tell us a little bit before we delve into what it was like. Y'all lived in France for many, for several years. Before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about your food histories.

Jen: 1:08

Yeah, well, and I don't know. I was just kind of curious, more than anything. We've known y'all far well, but maybe we don't know kind of that side. Were y'all foodies. Before you moved to France, did you grow up cooking? Did you have a lot of good kind of culinary background within your families? What?

Jeff: 1:29

were you like as.

Jen: 1:30

Americans, before you went.

Melanie: 1:33

Wow, that is a great question, Because the term foodie I don't think really became a thing when we were younger.

Jen: 1:41

I know that's what we were.

Melanie: 1:42

but I can honestly tell you, I've been up there and my grandmother on her side wonderful, wonderful cook. I remember growing up eating fried chicken and biscuits and loving it. I mean that's just what I thought. That's just what you eat growing up in our culture in the South. It's just a way of loving somebody Heritage. I like that and my dad's grandmother was not a great cook, but she had a lot of love and we had a huge family, so she was always wanting everybody to come.

Melanie: 2:16

And of course we always brought a dish and it was wonderful to get together Christmas and Thanksgiving, easter and just whenever we could, but so grew up with wonderful role models. I will tell you, though, I do not enjoy cooking.

Jen: 2:30

Really.

Melanie: 2:31

Or I know I like to eat it. I do. And I want Jeff to share about his background too, because I'm blessed to have a wonderful mother-in-law who cooked like Betty Crocker. I mean, she was just wonderful. Literally she won the Betty Crocker Award. So she was a home-eck awesome star. I was a little intimidated by that, but I learned so much from her. But I wasn't a great cook. I was a better cleaner which is how mama sold me to Jeff.

Melanie: 3:01

My sister was the cook, but boy, she sure can clean. I'll never forget that the first time you came to eat at our house so I cooked out of necessity. And when we first married and had children and Jeff was busy pastoring and so much going on, I cooked basic. I mean I make meatloaf and pentobanes and cornbread and potatoes. I mean that's my favorite way to cook. I wasn't really well-versed in real high culinary arts so that wasn't really my thing. I'm just a good old hometown. Take it out the garden, put it in the pot and eat it kind of cooked.

Melanie: 3:44

But, Jeff, tell them about your background.

Jeff: 3:46

Yeah, definitely be the sweet tea side right.

Jen: 3:48

Right right.

Jeff: 3:50

The sweet tea and tacos. I've had a few good tacos too.

Melanie: 3:53

He's got that Texas background too, so I mean I definitely.

Jeff: 3:58

I mean my, my grand, both grandmothers, amazing cooks and just, you know, just solid food. I mean nothing fancy at all, sure.

Jen: 4:08

That's some of the best food. Yeah, I mean I could I could sit here.

Jeff: 4:11

I could walk through meal after meal after meal. And, and I mean, I'm an eater. There is no question about that.

Melanie: 4:17

And so, yes, we're foodies, yes, yes.

Jeff: 4:19

Foodies before foodies was cool. But yeah but West Texas country foodies, and so yeah, I mean you know pies and and you know my dad talks about my grandma making biscuits and bread and a pie or a cake every single day. They were farmers and my mom's mom was actually was the cafeteria cook at schools and little small towns in Texas and then, when I was a little kid, they ran a Stuckeys.

Jen: 4:48

You remember the Stuckeys?

Jeff: 4:49

stores and so I remember. So grandma made the grand pep all pump the gas and check the oil, and grandma made the sandwiches and ran the little diner part. I remember egg salad sandwiches. That's just remember that light yesterday and so. And then mom was a home egg major and so she, she had all the modern technology like this quick. You know those kind of things. And but a wonderful cook. She tried unique things at once. One time she brought lamb home and nobody would eat it.

Jeff: 5:26

So that was the one time. Yeah, so you know, just basic cooks, but wonderful cooks and my aunts, I mean everybody, just you know, really great cooks. So I've been eating a long time, but I do remember it's funny, you ask about cooking when I was I don't know how old, I was probably seven or eight my mom got a little kind of a kids cookbook about Chinese food Cause.

Jen: 5:47

I'd like to go with Chinese food in Memphis Tennessee.

Jeff: 5:50

So you know how that is. But and you know she she would I made fried rice and drop soup and that's really probably the first time I remember I would help her make gravy sometimes, you know, and stuff like that.

Melanie: 6:04

But, that's really where it started. She encouraged you, yeah.

Jeff: 6:07

And then camping. I was in Scouts.

Jen: 6:09

Yeah.

Jeff: 6:10

So camping, you know all that. So see, I've always enjoyed cooking, but really it was.

Melanie: 6:16

When did we make the transition, jeff, where, instead of me cooking, primarily was it in the frame?

Jeff: 6:24

Yeah, definitely, definitely when we lived in France. But like I remember when we, when we were, lived in Auburn, alabama, we bought a Bon Appetit magazine for the first time and we made this lasagna that probably cost a thousand dollars, cause we had no money Buying this stuff and had no idea, you know all these different things. That's right and that you know that was probably our first foray into it.

Melanie: 6:50

That was it.

Jeff: 6:51

I do remember that you know I'd be a French teacher and and and I again I just love to eat. We would try things here and there, but really until we moved to France we just kind of ate good old stuff.

Dave: 7:03

So what was that like being from the South, being with the food heritage or you you've talked about, and then you go to France? Wow, what was that like from a?

Melanie: 7:12

I mean oh, wow, that was really well. The term culture shock is real. I mean that is a definite thing. We thought we were ready.

Melanie: 7:21

We thought we were prepared and I had taught French so I thought I knew all about French culture. We had actually taken some teenagers. We had taken them from the school where I taught. So we had been to France and experienced a little bit of the food, but it was more touristy so that wasn't as authentic as what we came to love later. But when we first arrived there I remember I had jet lag pretty badly.

Melanie: 7:46

And I was you know, just, I mean, I'm talking like the day or two that we got there and I was like I just can't, I can't end this up. Missionary family that welcomed us said well, you have to feed your family, and she said so, we're going to the grocery. I'm like she wasn't extremely nice To take that first step into a French grocery store and get over the fear of it because I knew it would be different.

Melanie: 8:13

And she, I scored it me there. And first thing I noticed you had to pay for your cart. I mean you had to put a euro really slot to get the card out.

Melanie: 8:21

I hope that was you knew you got it never seen, yeah, and I was like this is gonna be good. The first thing is different. But Peggy was real kind. She carried me through the store and told me you know, this is what you do. You go to the produce and you have to select, and then you have to weigh it and you have to be sure that you weigh the right thing, okay, and that you get the labels and everything that you had to print out made me so nervous.

Jeff: 8:47

I.

Melanie: 8:48

Can't tell you how many times I forgot to do so they wouldn't weigh it for you right at the grocery store Right, right, this little market. Karen, which one? That was From free? Probably it was just a basic grocery store similar to the states. But completely different you know if you can just imagine everything looking so familiar, but yet the packaging is on different and even the variety and the Availability of different things. I mean, there were three aisles of yogurt.

Jen: 9:23

I mean you.

Melanie: 9:26

Remember, peggy finally decided okay, I will help you pick out what you need. I had studied French. I had taught French, but I couldn't pronounce, I couldn't speak. I did not yet converse and ask questions and some of the words on the packages were strange, you know I think.

Jeff: 9:44

I think we had, we were excited about it and wanted. I mean, we were really excited about trying.

Dave: 9:51

And we're to do that, and what was?

Jeff: 9:53

funny is that the people around, like certainly the people when we left the states and the people who met us there, all kind of assumed we weren't. So you know they had. You know they sent us with peanut butter. Right and all these kind of things, because they're just like they won't.

Dave: 10:10

You know how are you gonna live?

Jeff: 10:15

How do you live without peanut butter?

Melanie: 10:17

Granted it was, you couldn't.

Jeff: 10:24

But we, I mean, I would say, we embraced it pretty quick trying new things and going to the village markets and Trying to you know, cook French things and French cooking is always with the season, you know you just what's available with fresh what's good, and so we learn pretty quickly.

Melanie: 10:47

Jeff, you remember that Cooperative that we ordered from the I can't.

Jeff: 10:52

It's like a CSA basket. Okay, we did that, yeah.

Melanie: 10:56

Yeah, I'm in love with it. We fell in love with oh wow, this is here, this is available, its first time you ever tried Jerusalem artichokes. And didn't know what they were, how to fix them, but we figured that out. So I was, I was learning to speak French.

Jeff: 11:09

I didn't know anyone. We got there and so I would go and pick up the basket and there was always, and it was at a farm, and there was always this older grandma out there and I would look in the basket and you know half of it I wouldn't have any idea what it was right, or how to say it, or small-time grocery stores, right, and? And so I would always just ask her what is that and what do I do with it?

Melanie: 11:33

We would go on the drive, and that's that really Expands your horizons pretty fast, yeah, very quickly we learn to ask yeah, our neighbors To find you know, find ways to incorporate that into our language learning. That was part of the way we got to know people and we when they discovered that we love food. We had lots of volunteers who wanted to tell us their favorite dish or what their favorite Vegetable of the season or strawberries were better than those are you know, we know quickly that the market, the supermarket, is a good place to go to get what you need.

Melanie: 12:11

You know, cereal, milk, things like that to kind of stock up right yeah. I, to take care of your family, to feed your children. And then we discovered the mache or the market. That's where you go to get the real food and it's fresh, and you don't buy for a month at a time. Right, you buy what you're gonna need for the next few days. Right, and part of that's because your refrigerator is about my height, maybe yeah, yeah not a very big thing.

Melanie: 12:41

Preserve things for a long, long time. Yeah, yeah, so we learned very quickly, which what we loved, mm-hmm that, lots of.

Jeff: 12:50

Good memories, a few things we didn't love.

Melanie: 12:53

Yeah, our children, didn't? Jeff made his famous vegetable pancakes for them and they cry. Because it was really creative you way of using your vegetables in your CS a CS a basket. But Jeffrey just Cry. But I will say by the time we left France they would eat anything, that's awesome. You know, I think.

Jeff: 13:18

I mean you know, just thinking about it. That's why I mean what y'all even do is your podcast gets right to the heart of it is that you know, when you're trying to know people and trying to know a place. Food is just a great route to that.

Dave: 13:33

Yeah, and so often when we travel, unless you live there or have access to a kitchen, you don't get to experience like you can eat at restaurants. But then cooking it yourself with that stuff is a whole different experience. Yeah, I mean, I was a Spain on a business trip and I remember I was about two days into it and half the group was like I got to find an American fast food restaurant or something.

Jen: 13:59

And that just blew his mind.

Dave: 14:02

Are you crazy? It blew my mind. Oh, I know, and I think there was about four of us that had a group of 30 that ended up just keep. We'd go down to the concierge tell us where we need to go eat tonight.

Melanie: 14:13

Because we need to eat, you know. Take out, yes, take advantage of that opportunity that's for sure.

Dave: 14:19

So, coming back to the States, how did that experience then affect you when you moved back?

Jeff: 14:27

Yeah, was it kind of culture shock in reverse and I think even some of the things Millie described getting used to access to certain things that are really hard to hear and things that they are so Like leaks- the example of that is that leaks are everywhere there and they're in so many different things.

Dave: 14:50

They're not expensive.

Jeff: 14:51

You come here and they're expensive, they're hard to find.

Dave: 14:54

They're not fresh.

Jeff: 14:55

And so that's a big part. So just the variety and then getting back into kind of the supermarket world.

Jen: 15:05

Right.

Jeff: 15:07

That's here where you can just tell the difference, which I never would have known before. So I go to the farmers market every week now to try to get that back. So that was a big part of it, I think, for us coming back without spagets fresh down the street, that's for sure. I'm going to cry for a minute now.

Jeff: 15:32

Yeah, I think just the different things having access to things. We love that we didn't have there, for sure, but just not being able to get some of the things that we got really used to was hard. And then, honestly, another part of that was that there were certain things we could eat over there that were just wonderful and amazing and delicious, but we walked every day.

Dave: 16:02

Yeah.

Jeff: 16:04

You eat less because it's more expensive. And it's more of the culture. I came back here and I would fix something that we had over there with lots of butter and cream and all that, and then I feel good yeah so that's not directly related to the cooking, but that was a switch because we were able to eat differently there, because we lived differently.

Melanie: 16:26

I can give you some examples from your children's perspective. Our children have three. And whenever we returned to the States, daniel was going into kindergarten, jeffrey was going into fifth and Rachel eighth. No, seventh, fifth and seventh, that's right, and for them the adjustment was quite stark because, for example, milk. They had gotten so used to? Is it sterilized milk?

Jeff: 16:54

Yeah.

Melanie: 16:54

Okay, it's a shell milk that you don't have to refrigerate, yeah, and it would come in just regular bottles and it was relatively inexpensive and they loved it. I did not really care for it. I didn't like the taste.

Jeff: 17:07

Yeah, that's something that's upside down right. So we talked about how we missed all the fresh stuff. When we came home and the kids were getting fresh milk and they're like ugh, I don't love it.

Melanie: 17:14

I want that other stuff on the shelf, but they loved it. They loved it and, I'll be very honest, some of the milk products here in the United States at that time the year 2007 and 2008,.

Melanie: 17:27

I'm positive there were growth hormones or things that perhaps had been just accepted into the production of fresh milk, and our children, I mean their bodies, could tell. I mean it was difficult for them to readjust to that. Also, for lunch I mean the children had at school. They had an hour and a half for lunch. Oh wow, that's awesome Right. They could eat at the cafeteria, the canteen, if they wanted to, and then they would have recess time after that to play for an hour.

Melanie: 17:56

Wow, they had a really nice time, although Rachel and Jeff were things. They often want to come home because they didn't want to eat the cauliflower or the broccoli. They can't tell them. Oh well, she can.

Dave: 18:07

Celery root puree.

Jen: 18:09

Celery root puree yeah they were just we said oh she's not going to eat that, but so they would come home and have time.

Melanie: 18:16

The main thing, even more so than the food, was just the time that they that was invested in the meal. Yeah, I mean even going to dinner at a neighbor's home. You'll be the first out. I mean starting at seven, Mike. I sit down for dinner at eight and then it carries on until almost midnight.

Jeff: 18:36

It was a different the whole time.

Jen: 18:37

Yeah, I remember when I was in college you know, I took French, I took two years, but my teacher told me about that when you would go into a restaurant and I don't know if this is the case everywhere, but this was her experience that when you got the table, you could expect to be there all night, like you know how in America they're so concerned with turning tables. Oh yes, a rush, it's just this rush, rush, rush, like get them out the door so we can, you know, make more money.

Dave: 19:06

Well, like that trip to Spain, so we had landed and then we all went to work and just a group of 30 of us worked all day and picked up a hotel at night and then going out to dinner and it's like eight o'clock, right, man, we're all starting. It's like, I guess like we'll find some place open, you know, and we go to this place around the corner and he's like, yeah, we're not open yet for dinner Exactly, isn't that different?

Dave: 19:28

You know. So yeah, that was. It's a very different, even more so in Spain. You know.

Melanie: 19:33

Yeah, I think they have a different schedule too.

Jeff: 19:35

Yeah, you know now there's much more. You know there's a lot more fast food in Europe than there used to be. Yeah, there's a lot more like that kind of mid-level, you know, not really fast, but not the kind of traditional, but you do find all of it. I mean it's, but yeah, I mean some of the restaurants. You would go and you would just be there and that was the idea, you know, because it's an event.

Melanie: 19:57

Right, yes, it's an experience. Yes, it's not just a sustenance exercise. You're gonna experience culture and the people around you and even with you know the noise or the. You know. It's just so unique. Yeah, and I remember some of our first experiences with the restaurants. I can remember the kids not enjoying the food at first. You know Rachel's first experience with a creme brûlée. She didn't like it and she was really disappointed when she first tasted it.

Melanie: 20:27

And now, oh, it's just a joy, it's a treasure, something to look forward to. So we, our tastes developed and our love for it grew and grew and grew and grew, and the bread and the cheese.

Dave: 20:42

Yeah, the quality of the ingredients.

Melanie: 20:44

Yeah, so fresh. Yeah, everything's close.

Jeff: 20:47

Right, that's the difference. Yeah, it's just where we are. Transportation was good.

Dave: 20:51

I mean it's okay yeah.

Jeff: 20:53

But there, you know, the sea is not far and the mountains are not far, the mountains where the cows are with the cheese, and then you add on top of that just the traditions and just the pride in it. Yeah, and that, just that's something that certain regions have here for sure, yeah, definitely think so, but they're not in the, you know? I mean, I'm from Memphis, so like barbecue for me would be that right, yeah. You know, you just thought this is Memphis and nowhere's as good.

Jen: 21:26

That's how they are. I mean, every little small town has that.

Jeff: 21:29

And it's fun so fun to explore. It's fun to explore and experience it and it's been fun coming back to adapt and find to say, hey, here's something I learned there that I do here now. You know, making a sauce which is not complicated it's gravy, but you see, yeah, it is Exactly.

Dave: 21:51

It's gravy yeah.

Melanie: 21:53

Been doing that forever.

Dave: 21:56

We just use a different yeah, yeah, yeah, Because we were watching a cooking show from Europe last night and it's like you know, they just get this wonderful puff pastry at your local grocery like yeah, no.

Melanie: 22:07

That's right it doesn't work here.

Dave: 22:08

It doesn't look like that it's. It's very different, yeah.

Jen: 22:12

I mean not to not to slam, being American.

Dave: 22:14

No American food.

Jen: 22:16

But I do think there's a lot more accessibility to fresh and even if it's not maybe like organic all the way or something it's it's organic by its design.

Melanie: 22:26

I mean yeah.

Jen: 22:27

I mean, maybe it didn't have that, that certification, but somebody's just going to care enough to grow it that way, or it's going to be grass fed beef or grass fed milk and because that's just. Nobody has the government doesn't have to make you do it a certain way, they just care about it. You know, and I think I think we lack that sometimes.

Melanie: 22:46

A lot of pride in it. In America they had labels or categories for things like their chicken. If you purchase chicken in the grocery store or at a a from a rotisserie on the street. It had to be a certain AOC, aoc Right. What does that stand for? Aoc A credit, no appellate.

Jeff: 23:08

Anyways, it's their, it's how they recognize, so that's why, like you, can't call anything that's not from Champagne or Champagne.

Dave: 23:16

Correct, right, yeah, it's a lake. The region is just like a trade park.

Jeff: 23:22

There was a cheese or a meal. There was a particular breed of chicken related to what I said which there was like it had to come from. It only came from that place, and there's cheeses that you know it's this. It has to be this season, this type of cow on the side of this mountain.

Jeff: 23:41

At this altitude and this way and that's the only thing you can call whatever that is Gotcha and so again, it's a combination of the pride and his business, I mean there's that too. But then there's also just a confidence in those. When you go and buy that, you see that, and so that was interesting.

Melanie: 24:03

That was educational something to learn. But Jeff and I both came from backgrounds where there were farmers and definite pride in that and then how many canned vegetables you could get put up.

Dave: 24:18

How'd you?

Melanie: 24:18

explain to my students today at school what putting up vegetables meant.

Jen: 24:23

It was so funny.

Melanie: 24:25

We started a food unit and they were like oh. So, yeah, it's fun to share the things that we value too, and it's been so fun to see how we can blend and we love about our own background and our culture here and our heritage and recipes that make you cry Seriously you get your grandmother's handwriting and it gets you right in their heart because it matters to you, and then to blend that with things from a place that we loved or we grew up in, we introduced our friends to a few things.

Jeff: 25:03

I mean we turkey and dressing.

Jen: 25:05

We did.

Melanie: 25:06

We did and we talked a lot about how to make up a con pie, but you couldn't get cons.

Jen: 25:12

You had to use walnuts.

Melanie: 25:13

Interesting. Yes, so Thanksgiving was always a great time.

Jen: 25:17

Yeah, I would say.

Melanie: 25:18

Talk about what we love and what we value and traditionally have in the United States. It was a great conversation Starter.

Jen: 25:25

Cool.

Dave: 25:26

Well, cool, well thanks, and this is very interesting.

Melanie: 25:30

Not a good information. Thank you so much. I love talking about it.

Dave: 25:33

So we're going to continue with Jeff and Melanie about some seasonal favorites next week. So for Sweet Teen Tacos, I'm Dave.

Jen: 25:41

And I'm Jen, and thank you, melanie and Jeff. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.