Question

My last post brought up this question: What's the deal about cooking vegetables all day?

Both my parents came from the Quitman, Mississippi, area, and mother cooked the vegetables all day long -- especially the green beans. I never understood that, or gave it much thought, until the following incident, because I just thought it was her way.

So when my first husband was drafted for Vietnam, and I moved to Laurel, Maryland, to be with him, my parents decided to come out and visit. At that time, we were dirt-poor (I learned to say that in the South!), living on 19¢ pot pies for dinner every evening, and we scrimped every penny in preparation for their visit, so that they would not know. The day they were to arrive, I went to the grocery store and bought a roast, fresh vegetables, and everything else we would need to keep all well-fed while they were there.

We'd been away all day their first day there, sight-seeing the historic battle grounds. Home again that evening, I quickly ran in to cook our meal, quickly steaming the fresh green beans. "Almost ready!" I shouted from the tiny kitchen of our little barely-furnished apartment.

Mother came in to see how things were and spotted the green beans on the stove, the burner already turned off. "You can't serve these!" she told me.

Puzzled, I asked, "Why not?"

She replied that they were poison! "Poison?" I asked, "Why are they poison?"

"You have to cook them all day, or they will kill you," she told me.

I just stood there, looking at her, trying to figure out if she was kidding. She wasn't. And she was firm: she was not going to eat them, and I was not to serve them to Father, either.

Dollar signs swam past my eyeballs, laughing at me, jeering. I wondered what I could put on the stove quickly to serve them, but we only had those pot pies and just enough food to feed them for three days. Those beans were certainly not poisonous, and that was what I had bought to cook that night. I decided to be firm with Mother.

"Okay," I told her. "You don't have to eat them, but Pat and I are going to eat them, they will be delicious, and we won't die."

She was silent through the meal, as we ate our green beans, and the next day, we went sight-seeing again, somehow living through the whole thing.

I later learned, through my travels, that some people from the South do cook green beans, corn, and some other vegetables all day. Now, I know that I am not much of a cook, but I barely cook my vegetables, except for potatoes (which I invariably prefer to have completely over-cooked). -- Oh, and any time I can serve my vegetables raw, I do. Furthermore, I refuse to cook either mustard greens or other greens: they just go in my salads.

So is this just another proof that I am a bad cook, or are the differing cooking practices truly regional? -- Or is it an age thing?