Familiar Flavors

Grandma Madie and me with the day's catch.
Kannapolis, N.C., c. 1972.

When I moved to Sapelo Island, Ga., in 2005, my new husband began trying to teach me about the old ways of hunting and cooking and eating. I had to let him know that, although I was a city girl, I grew up fishing with my dad, and I watched him and my uncles go hunting early in the morning in North Carolina, and bring back sacks of rabbits and what-not. I looked on as my grandmothers battered and fried fresh fish and cooked possum, rabbit and squirrel. My grandparents had large gardens with greens and tomatoes, beans and peas, and they cooked from scratch. These experiences, these flavors and foodways made Sapelo feel like home to me.