Come and get it: Beaufort food, Beaufort people help tell it all

George Greene would love nothing better than to spend eternity in a Duke’s mayonnaise jar.

So says his sister, Beaufort native Mary Martha Greene, in her lovely new book, “The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells All.”

It’s a cookbook — and, of course, its 100-plus recipes include her Aunt Mimi famous cheese biscuits (with sifted Rice Krispies, but that’s not the secret to success).

But then there’s the dessert, which I did not choose to eat first, but I couldn’t put it down. That would be Greene’s stories that accompany the recipes.

Many are about Beaufort, where Mary Martha and George Greene grew up with “the run of Bay Street.”

Many swirl around the human drama we call the state legislature, where Mary Martha Greene has spent 40 years in the entertainment-heavy business of political action, lobbying, business development and consulting.

She handled education and health care policy on Gov. Dick Riley’s staff during his second term, when the landmark Education Improvement Act was passed.

“The title of the book made some of my Columbia friends nervous,” Greene said. “But I told them ‘The Cheese Biscuit Queen Tells Most’ didn’t have quite the same ring to it.”

Which gets us to George and the Duke’s mayonnaise jars.

The story she links to “Miss Kitty’s Shrimp and Wild Rice Casserole” recipe takes us to the funeral home after George died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 50. He had told his sister he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread in the majestic sweep of the Beaufort River, near the sandbar.

But he didn’t tell their mother. She immediately cried no, but was persuaded to go along with a half-and-half plan. There would be ashes for a proper burial in the family plot in the Upstate, and some for his beloved Beaufort River.

This led the cremation novices sitting in a muted Dunbar Funeral Home office to wonder how many ashes they were talking about for the Lowcountry half, to which the funeral home man, bless his heart, piped: “Well, it’s about the size of two Duke’s mayonnaise jars!”

A strobe light went off in Greene’s fertile mind.

That’s not the whole story, but it tells a lot about this new keepsake for life as we love it in Beaufort. Greene, who has spent much of her adult life as a caregiver to the stars of her book — her mother, two aunts and her grandmother — knows the value of humor, and food, to the soul.

The University of South Carolina Press published the book, which will get its local launch this Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. at the University of South Carolina Beaufort Performing Arts Center on Carteret Street.

Stirring the pot will be this tantalizing recipe of Beaufort characters: Greene in an onstage discussion with Terry Sweeney.

BEAUFORT

Greene was born and bred in Beaufort, and now spends about half her time here in the home she inherited from her grandmother, Gran-Gran.

Her parents moved to town in 1956, when Felix B. Greene Jr. took a job practicing law with Jimmy Thomas. He later opened his own practice in the ground floor of the Verdier House on Bay Street, and became Beaufort County’s first family court judge.

Her mother, Jean Dobson Greene, taught school for 20 years at Laurel Bay. She was a home-ec major and Fannie Farmer fan who loved precise and exacting recipes for candy. She thought her daughter’s greatest achievement in life was getting a recipe for Shrimp and Grits Tarts published in Southern Living magazine. (It’s in the book.)

Her father cooked breakfast, and his recipe for French toast, which was taped inside a cabinet door, is now framed.

On Greene’s sixth birthday, her life’s entourage showed up: Her grandmother moved to Beaufort, and they were joined by her mother’s two sisters, Aunt Mimi (Martha Alice Dobson, the original Cheese Biscuit Queen and longtime administrator in the kitchen at the Naval Hospital) and her aunt “Mary Dob.”

They liked to write down recipes, which were lost but found on their way to becoming the backbone for a book.

In it, we learn that “all obligations can be paid with cheese biscuits.”

We learn how one properly handles the “flavoring” when sharing a recipe with bourbon in it with the Baptist preacher’s wife.

We get to tag along on the day Greene was assigned to “Drive Miss Hillary,” yes, that Hillary, around Columbia.

But closer to home, we learn about the pot (as in weed) incident at the Garden Club, the voting “right” escapade, the ghost that ate the pot roast at “The Castle,” and the salad dressing recipe at Tidalholm (the “Big Chill” house).

Familiar pieces of Beaufort lore float through like reeds on the water. Hilda Gay Upton’s Shrimp Shack, Dottie McDaniel’s “Sky Room,” a Blue Channel recipe, Frogmore Stew, and the Gold Eagle.

And Greene does something that most never do: she credits Black cooks for their delicacies.

That includes the peach and blackberry cobblers of Odessa “Dessie” Williams Jenkins, who worked in the Greene home and kept Mary Martha and George in line with a fly swatter on top of the refrigerator.

And it includes the magic recipe from Sarah Seabrook, the “Red Rice Queen.”

PAT CONROY AND THEM

Beaufort can cook.

We know that from its classic cookbooks.

The bible is “Sea Island Seasons,” published by the Beaufort County Land Trust, now celebrating 50 years of saving the Lowcountry one square inch at a time.

I treasure “The Beaufort Cookbook” published in 1965 by Dee Hryharrow and Isabel M. Hoogenboom, “Fripp Island Fare” (1975), and “The Pat Conroy Cookbook,” also ladled with great stories.

“Celebrate Beaufort” by caterer and Lowcountry Weekly food columnist Debbi Covington is must. She also has contributed “Celebrate Everything!” and “Dining Under the Carolina Moon.”

“Penn School & Sea Islands Heritage Cookbook,” published in 1978 by the Penn Heritage Celebration Committee, and other local books show our good taste.

But Greene said her mission was not to produce a classic. It was simply to keep alive the spirits that raised her and formed her.

She introduces her book this way:

“At the funeral of my dear friend Shirley Mills’ mother, Queen Isabella Mills, the minister quoted an African proverb: ‘As long as your story is being told, you never really die.’

“I would amend that to read, ‘As long as your story is being told, and your recipes are being passed down, you never really die.’ ”

And she passes this along, like a warm cheese biscuit:

“I hope it will inspire people to write down their stories.”

David Lauderdale may be contacted at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.

This story was originally published May 2, 2021 at 6:10 AM.