Bill Fleming

Retired teacher, coach and administrator Bill Fleming of Calhoun City “always tweaks recipes and loves it. I love to trade recipes and make things better.”
He made his first chocolate cake when he was about four, assisted by his mother, the late Ruth Ann Fleming. In the past, he has made pies, as many as 25 a week, for Cagni’s, which he also learned from her.

Once when they were making a pecan pie, she realized she was low on Karo, so they decided to improvise with a little pancake syrup, and they liked the way it turned out.
The best cook he was ever around, soul-food wise, was his grandmother, Louise Fleming. “She was the ultimate soul food cook,” and always told him, “When you cook, love what you’re cooking.”
And he does care about people liking the food he cooks.

He occasionally cooks for the Calhoun City Chamber of Commerce. A typical meal might be Boston butt, Crown Royal baked beans and horseradish slaw, or cream cheese, green onion and jalapeno stuffed pork loin.
Once as a youngster he was with his granddaddy, a farmer, at Sam and Frawnie’s (he can’t remember their last name) in Derma. While he was out playing with his Hot Wheels cars, Frawnie took him by the ear into the house and taught him to make cornbread and biscuits.
She told him the secret to good vegetables is fatback. So, salt pork is a main staple at his house.

He learned to make chicken teryaki from his aunt, Linda Patton, who “should have been a chef,” he said.
He describes Thanksgiving as a “casserole competition” for his family. Two of those include a Mediterranean and an Oriental, made by his aunts. He also said it’s not Thanksgiving without pistachio salad and mandarin orange salad.
He says his mother-in-law, June Sturdivant, makes the best dressing he’s ever had, so he uses her recipe now. Ruth Ann has made it before in the crockpot using June’s recipe and he likes that method, too.

While substitute teaching recently at Vardaman, he took them sweet pickles, sweet jalapenos, sugar-free pear preserves and sugar-free pear butter.
He taught his kids, Bryce, 19, and Kylie, 17, to cook, and they have helped him when he catered school athletic banquets. Kylie loves to make sweets and pastries, something she always did with her Grandmother Fleming. And since she loves fixing sweets, they buy sugar in 25 lb. bags.
He and Bryce competed in a chili cookoff in Vicksburg one time. “We sat on two Igloo coolers under a pop-up tent. We had a $39 fish cooker and a 15-gallon pot with broken handles,” Everybody else had all this high-dollar equipment, he said. “We had a good ole time, and we won the competition.”
For their chili recipe, they researched chuckwagon chili and used a “conglomerate” of turkey sausage, ground venison, cubed beef, brown beer and coffee. Instead of beans, they added peeled and diced yellow squash, at the end of the cooking.

He still makes this chili sometimes and with the leftovers, they might top it off with cream cheese, sour cream, white queso cheese and maybe even quail eggs.
His wife, Keely, “can compete with my cornbread and she makes the best poppyseed chicken.” She grows oregano, parsley, basil and garlic, which they use a lot.
They grill often,  including on their George Foreman, and they eat a lot of chicken. He likes seasonings and he is “all about sauces”, which he makes.
He also makes sugar free honey mustard dressing, ketchup and BBQ sauce. Sauer’s is his mayonnaise of choice.
Making chicken cacciatore was his introduction to making homemade marinara sauce.

“We love to stuff burgers.” They have used Portobello mushrooms, jalapenos, roasted red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and beer cheese in their hamburgers. And they also like a Greek version with onions and Feta cheese.
Fleming created a lasagna that is a combination of a corn dip recipe, sausage, and “several other recipes”. He makes grilled cheese sandwiches using mayonnaise, cream cheese, pimento olives, three-cheese Mexican blend and onion, which led to him grilling other kinds of sandwiches.
They are many times “all four in the kitchen together, dodging the dog.” Most recently, together they fixed fried deer meat, made homemade biscuits and white pepper gravy and fried potatoes. “That’s our life,” he said.

Coach’s Horseradish Cole Slaw
3 cups roughly chopped cabbage
1/4 cup chopped carrots
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped purple onion
1 diced Granny Smith apple
1 cup mayonnaise +/- to taste
2 Tbsp. brown spicy mustard
2 Tbsp. horseradish
3 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 Tbsp. black pepper +/- to taste
1 Tbsp. seasoned salt +/- to taste
Dash of tabasco sauce
Mix together all ingredients, cover and refrigerate overnight if possible.

Pecan Pie
(Ruth Ann Fleming)
3 eggs
2 Tbsp. melted butter
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup light Karo
1/3 cup Mrs. Butterworth’s pancake syrup
1-1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
Pinch of salt
1 deep dish pie crust
Melt butter. Add together butter, eggs, syrup, sugar and salt. Mix together. Pour pecans into pie crust and spread evenly. Slowly add wet mixture and wait until pecans rise through mixture to the top. Place onto cookie sheet and bake at 350° for one hour.

Chicken Carbonara
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 lb. chicken tenders
5 strips bacon
1 Tbsp. of butter
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 diced onion
3 garlic cloves
4 eggs yolks
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 lb. egg noodles (your choice of pasta)
1/2 Tbsp. basil
1/2 Tbsp. parsley
Cut up chicken tenders and pan sear. About half way, add onions and smashed up garlic cloves, diced up bacon and butter. When mixture is done, add whipping cream, three egg yolks, and half of the Parmesan cheese. When done, pour cooked pasta into large bowl. Pour mixture over noodles. While hot, add last yolk and cheese, and stir.

Nana’s Chess Pie
(Ruth Ann Fleming)
3 eggs
1 stick butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tbsp. vanilla flavoring (Mom used coconut or maple)
Pinch of salt
1 Pet Ritz pie crust or homemade crust

Homemade crust:
1 cup self-rising flour
1/2 cup Crisco
1/4 cup cold water
Work Crisco into flour. Slowly add water as you knead dough. When all combined, wrap in plastic wrap and let sit in refrigerator. Remove and roll out into thin crust Spray pie dish with Pam and put crust in.

Pie: Melt butter then add in with all ingredients into bowl and mix. Put into crust. Place pie/crust onto cookie sheet and place into 350° oven. Cook 20-30 minutes. (Pie will rise very high, but will go down as it cools.)