Pea likker is supposed to be brown. And, the peas you make it with are supposed to cook up brown, too.
End of story. For the record, potlikker is to be spelled with two k’s, because that’s how you say it. Besides, who really wants to call it pea juice or pea water? That makes it sound bad and the creation that is pot likker most certainly is not bad.
In fact, the pea likker, or more importantly, the peas found it in are delicious and nutritious and did I mention delicious?
So there. I don’t know who makes up these rules or where it is written down, but surely it must be codified somewhere in the law. Maybe even the Supremes have ruled on it.
I come from a long line of field pea eaters.
We wouldn’t dare eat English peas, because we revolted from the mother country — and their peas were green, like lime green, which is not acceptable when your pea likker is supposed to be brown.
I remember many hot summer days when we were out in the garden at the crack of dawn picking peas. That was technically because it was the only bearable part of the day when you wouldn’t slap, flat fall out in the rows from heat stroke. Most of the time, these days the temperature would peak at 100 degrees with humidity at 100 percent and a heat index of 150 degrees or that’s what it felt like anyways.
Then, we went inside to the “den” at my grandparents house and shelled and shelled and shelled some more and shelled and shelled and shelled until our fingers were sore.
Early on, a Galaxy box fan provided the only cooling. Later, a window unit cooled down the den and then finally, central air conditioning came along and made the shelling much better than the picking and cooled off the hot job of blanching, too.
We put them up for the fall and especially for New Year’s Day.
In the meantime, they were staples at Sunday dinner, regular dinner and about anytime other than dessert, and they may have been eaten then, too, if they were available.
They were cooked for rice, to compliment vegetables or to be pushed up on your spoon by a corn dodger or a hoecake wedge. And not just any one of those. The cornbread would never originate from something called jiffy or a mix. It had to be Alabama King and it had to be stirred up right, with just the right rhythm in your hips before the mixture was spread out in a popping hot skillet of grease for a hoe cake or spoon dropped into a frying pan for corn dodgers.
One year a friendly neighbor dropped by some peas for us because our garden either didn’t make or was late coming in.
We shelled them and put them in a pot and Grandma began to cook them.
She put in some bacon to flavor them and we sat back waiting on our time honored delicacy of field peas in brown likker.
Except that it never happened. Not this time.
The peas didn’t turn brown.
Grandma stirred them, more and more often, in between glances at the Showcase Showdown on The Price is Right.
She stirred, but they stayed green. Then she fretted. And then, the smoke alarm started going off. But the peas still didn’t turn brown. No, they turned black and smelled of acrid smoke.
“Lord help!” Grandma said, which was her standard combination exclamation and prayer.
Only the Lord could help such a horrendous predicament of having burned up a pot full of field peas in brown likker.
Only upon further interrogation did the neighbor confess they had supplied us with a new variety of green field peas — meaning they cooked up green and not brown.
Again, I’m not sure when the law passed or when the Supreme Court ruling was handed down, but that occasion might actually have been when it happened.
Grandma declared field peas are supposed to have brown likker.
And so it was. That became the law.
And, we never ate green field peas again and everyone lived happily ever after.
• Jason Deal is News Editor for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at [email protected] ws.
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