The West Virginia summer brings many delights. It brings those rare June days when the sky turns deep blue and there is hardly a stir in the air. Most small towns in the Mountain State bring us festivals where we can hear good music without paying a fortune to get a seat, or peruse the many craft booths that line the streets for free. If you are like me and like to dance, the West Virginia summer brings a multitude of opportunities. But of all the wonderful things our state offers during the summer months, there is nothing quite like the dinner table when the gardens hit their stride.

Even though the word dinner has changed its meaning in the modern world, I can still use it because in West Virginia, it just changed positions. When I was growing up we had three meals; breakfast, dinner, and supper. Today, the word supper is fast disappearing here in the hills. Most folks now have breakfast, lunch, and dinner just like city folks. Both sets of my grandparents used the old traditional terms. Dinner was at noon and was usually the largest meal of the day. There were a couple of reasons for that I think. In the first place, the women could do the major cooking and baking during the morning hours when it wasn't so hot. In the second place, everyone ate breakfast early, worked hard all morning, and was ready for a big meal when noon rolled around. In July and August that noon meal was feast to behold.

There was always potatoes, half-runner beans, cabbage slaw, corn on the cob, fried squash, and sliced tomatoes. No store-bought bread ever made it to the table. It was either biscuits, corn bread, or homemade loaf bread. The meal did not end without dessert. Apple pie made from those early transparent apples usually graced the table during the summer months. No apples make better pies than those early transparents.

I've heard about southern cooking all of my life but having lived five years in South Carolina and sampling their cuisine, I can tell you that the best cooks on the planet live right here in the hills and hollows of West Virginia. Southern women don't know what a real biscuit looks like.

Those mountain cooks of old knew that you had to cook half-runners for two hours to get the best flavor out of them. They knew to fry that summer squash in generous amounts of butter. They didn't pull the corn and let it lie around for two hours before they boiled it. No, they put the water on to boil before they went and pulled the corn. And they knew just the right combination of mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, and salt to grace the top of the cabbage slaw. Finally, nobody, and I mean nobody, can bake biscuits like the old traditional West Virginia cooks.

At my house, we wait until evening to have that priceless West Virginia summer meal.

Everything mentioned above usually graces my table in late July and August. My wife, Thelma, can put that meal on the table just like her ancestors did.

I don't have much respect for the new world order so I still call it supper.