Gena Edmondson

Gena Edmondson of Vardaman cooks a big lunch every Sunday. Her husband, James Carl’s, grandmother, Estelle Reedy, taught her a lot of “soul food cooking” and that’s what her kids (Carla Lucius and Toby Edmondson) and families like.

She makes her cornbread using half Jiffy mix and half meal, saying it makes it light. She usually makes two pans of cornbread, “and they eat it all,” along with peas, butterbeans, corn, fried okra, pork loin or chicken, and one dessert. She also has six grandchildren, so she makes somebody’s favorite dessert each Sunday.

Gena learned to cook after she married, and a neighbor, Betty Carol Edmondson, taught her to make biscuits. Fried chicken is her favorite food and she makes it a lot, saying it was her mother, Rachel Denton’s, specialty.

Sweet potato casserole is another favorite of her family, and when she candies sweet potatoes she uses part white and part brown sugar. Her mother also taught her to make sweet potato fried pies, and peach, too, by baking them in the oven.

She sometimes takes the pies to the family of someone who has lost a loved one, and to the annual Bible Conference.
This Christmas, her dinner plans included the grilled pork loin and boiled shrimp.The Sour Cream Coconut Cake is her mother’s recipe, who said, “The longer it sits, the better it is.” Gena says it’s easy to make and a favorite of her son and son-in-law. The lemon pie recipe came from a former preacher’s wife, Carol Poss, and the chocolate pie tastes like Mrs. Estelle’s.

Oven Baked Pork Loin
Brown pork loin in small amount of oil on both sides. Place in oven on 350°. Pour one can cream of mushroom soup, and one can water over the loin. Cook about one hour on 350°, then turn down to 250° for about two hours. (Works well to leave in oven while you’re in church on Sunday.)

Lemon Four Layer Pie
2 tubs Cool Whip
2-8 oz. bars cream cheese
2 cans condensed milk
2 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups flour
2 sticks margarine
3/4 cups nuts
Mix flour, melted butter and pecans, and press into pyrex dish. Put in 350° oven about 20 minutes until brown. Cream one cool whip and cream cheese, add powdered sugar, and spread on crust. Mix condensed milk and lemon juice and pour over first layer. Top with cool whip.

Sour Cream Coconut Cake
1 Duncan Hines butter cake mix (baked as directed)
2 pkgs. frozen coconut
1 cup powdered sugar
1 container Cool Whip
1 container (16 oz.) sour cream
Mix together and spread on cake. (I bake mine in two thick layers and split layers to make four.)

Marcella Sykes’ Chocolate Pie
5 eggs, separated
2 cups sugar
3 cups sweet milk
3 heaping Tbsp. cocoa
3 1/2 Tbsp. flour
1 tsp. vanilla
Mix egg yolks and sugar, then add flour and cocoa. Add milk and cook on stovetop until it thickens. Pour into baked pie crusts.
Meringue:
5 egg whites
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
4 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
Beat egg whites, add cream of tartar and sugar. Spread on top of pies. Put in 325° oven until meringue begins to brown.