Fried chicken does not remind me of my mother. My family has lots of cooking traditions, but frying chicken is not one of them. Shake ‘n’ Bake doesn’t count. Therefore my boyhood experiences with fried chicken involved the occasional KFC. 

Some comfort foods come to us later in life. The first time I had homemade fried chicken, it was cooked for me by a wonderful elderly lady who was hosting me at her house in Glen Rose, Texas. I lived with her and her husband for several months during PA school. Their home was within literal walking distance of the hospital, which made nights, weekends and emergency calls much better for me. Her husband was in poor health, and I think having young, healthy, medically knowledgeable guests made her feel safer. 

Not long after I arrived, she served me a meal that I still savor. She fried some chicken strips in a cast iron pan on her stove top, which is kind of like saying Michelangelo painted a ceiling one time. I don’t know how to describe it except in antonym: once I cooked a steak by stabbing a bunch of holes in it with a fork, and sticking it under the broiler for ten minutes. It was like eating part of a scuba suit. So whatever the opposite of that is, is what eating her chicken was. It tasted like fifty plus years of experience and love improving a technique learned at the elbow of someone named “meemaw.”

For those culminating months of learning before I graduated, my job was to eat and sleep medicine at this small hospital. I literally knew every doctor and surgeon in the town, and I had the opportunity to participate in every interesting thing that happened there. It was exhausting in the best way, but it was exhausting. That mid-century house, with the nice lady in the housecoat, was the place for a few hours to sleep, and shower, and recharge. Her chicken, and oh my g-d her okra(!), were a refuel to both spirit and body.