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Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Food Talk, Country Style

Last New Year's dinner. There were leftovers
then too.
We have so many leftovers in the fridge that these will be today's meals, except for breakfast. There's ham, green beans, corn, applesauce, turkey in gravy, mashed potatoes, pickles, pumpkin pie...

I have heard people call this kind of eating "piecing around."

As in, "What did you have for supper, Roy?"

"Oh, I just pieced around. Had some soup, some green beans, some pie."

Which might be followed with,

"Well, I'm feeling a mite peckish myself. Think I'll have a look-see and grab a bite of something."

"There's a little dab of that turkey left. You might fancy that."

And after the meal:

"Reckon we'd better redd up the table, for if we don't Mom will just rare."

"I was fixin' to do just that. We'd best wash up the dishes too."

"Okay, you wash and I'll wipe."

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Tipper over at Blind Pig and the Acorn calls this Appalachian vocabulary and often writes posts on the terms we use here that are a little different from what you might hear in other parts of the country. I got to thinking on this topic as I looked at the containers in the fridge, and thought, "we'll just piece around today." I'm not a native Appalachian, but after living here for 40+ years, and living with my mountain-born man for the past 32 years, it's rubbed off on me and I find it a comfortable fit.

I doubt we'll get all of our leftovers eaten, but that's okay because the chickens are willing recyclers of whatever we don't want. They don't mind piecing around one bit.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

2 comments:

  1. Nothing like a fridge full of leftovers. Everything tastes better the next day!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Most of these terms we didn't use much because there were never leftovers at our house growing up!

    Now with just my husband & me we call it a 'feed yourself' supper. We pull all the containers our & fill our plates like we're eating off a buffet.

    Another term is gotta-go soup. I'll make homemade soup & pull out all the leftover veggies & meats to cook in it.

    ReplyDelete

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