Our story starts with Grandmaw Matilda, a country girl born in the nineteen aughts in a small town in Mississippi. Her childhood was one of bucolic innocence – fabled days of yesteryear, full of home baked bread, chicken and dumplings, fresh fruit and vegetables from the kitchen garden, pies cooling on the windowsill, and candy apples at Halloween and secret family recipe cookies and fudge at Christmas.

Then came the war to end all wars – double-ya double-ya one (WWI). Grandmaw’s family headed north where great-grandpap got work in a shipyard right outside Philadelphia. Their new life in a northern city was quite a change, but family dinners with chicken pot pie or meatloaf or the newly found Yankee pot roast gave the family comfort during their readjustment.

At the shipyard, great-grandpap worked with many young men at loose ends. He was convinced that all they needed was a good meal to give them “purpose and cheer”. He brought home a fella named Edmund, and, what do you know, he liked our family cooking so much, he asked Grandmaw Matilda for her hand.

Matilda and Edmund married in 1928. They stayed together through fat times and thin times. They raised 5 children through the Great Depression, the next several wars to end all wars, political upheaval, and social unrest. They loved their children and their children’s children – they loved everyone whose path they crossed, in fact. And, through it all, they provided love and comfort with rib-sticking warm-you-to-the-tips-of-your-toes food.

It is with this family history and legacy that we bring you Matilda’s Country Kitchen. May you find comfort in every bite.