Eating out seems to be the new Southern tradition. When I was a child growing up in these foothills, we had big family dinners every Sunday, alternating between my mother's family one week, and my stepfather's the next. Oh, and for dessert, a churn of homemade ice cream or a big, banana pudding, with sweet iced tea to drink, and plenty of everything. That was standard fare on most Southern tables back then, especially country tables, and it still is today. Except now it is served in restaurants where people come in droves to sit in rocking chairs on a porch and talk on their cell phones while waiting an hour or so to get a table.
Nobody wants to cook much any more, it seems.
Maybe they never wanted to cook, but didn't have a Cracker Barrel up the road. Some claim it's because women are too tired to cook nowadays. What I remember best about those Sundays is not the cooking or the talking or even the homemade ice cream, though I well recall how quickly I would tire when I had to help turn the churn. It was helpful, of course, if you had a good rake, which I never did, because my cousins always beat me to the better ones, leaving me the rejects, or worse yet, the broom. Then, of course, we called it work, and it was not fun at all.