Ellen new Cuisine

Ellen didn’t know anyone that was poorer than her family where most days it was a struggle to find food to put on the table. And her lifestyle was very different from Bobbys, even down to the food they ate. She had mostly been raised on vegetables and an occasional chicken or maybe some fish when her grandma caught some.
Bobby on the other hand didn’t count it as a meal if there weren’t several kinds of meat on the table. Between him and others in his family, they were always shooting or trapping rabbits, squirrels or some kind of wild animal. Ellen was learning to prepare and eat food she would never had thought she would eat. If they weren’t hunting, they were fishing or frog gigging. They had turtle, or frog legs, or coon, or all.
Bobbys mom had to teach her how to cook, especially these different meats, but she taught her a lot more than that. Mostly she taught her how to be strong. She encouraged her in everything that she did and they quickly grew to love each other. Ellen thought Bobby was the luckiest guy in the world to have a mama like his.
One evening after Ellen and Ruthie had spent all day washing all of the laundry and hanging it out to dry, the men came in from fishing just as it was time to start supper. Ellen was looking forward to having fish for dinner. It was her favorite and the different critters they had been eating were filling but didn’t sit well on a pregnant stomach.
She hurried outside to help clean the fish, so she could get started cooking but when she got to the boat she was so disheartened to see a huge snake curled up in the bow.
They ate pretty much anything and her eyes teared up at the thought of eating a snake. She was hungry but she just didn’t think she could choke it down. She looked at Bobby with tears in her eyes and asked, “Are we gonna have to eat that too?”
She was so relieved when he looked at her and laughed saying, “No, we don’t eat snake.”