Snack--Back to my Roots

photo: Southern Living Magazine

I grew up eating something I believed to be called "paminna cheese." We ate it on sandwiches, celery sticks, crackers. Most of the time we bought the ready-made kind in the deli section of the grocery store. (now that I think about that stuff...ick!) When I got braces as an adult and was in great pain, unable to bite into anything, this stuff sustained me.

My grandmother used to make a batch of it at Thanksgiving, where we'd see it displayed atop the celery sticks. This was probably the one time a year I could devour several stalks of celery in a single day.

I honestly did not know that its true name was pimiento cheese until I was much older and had started studying the Spanish language. You know, pimiento means "pepper," which made it quite clear that the red stuff in a tiny jar my mother used to buy and put into the mixture was actually the pimiento part of the spread. If you are not from the southern part of the United States, you have not yet experienced the way southerners can take a simple looking word and turn it into something completely different. Case in point: pimiento=paminna. Say them aloud. Are they remotely related? You decide.

I made a big bowl of it on Friday and put it with our Friday breakfast. If you've never attended an Arabic-style breakfast, the utensils we use are loaves of bread. The only spoons I ever put on the breakfast table are the ones for stirring tea. We are scoopers and dippers.

Anyway, my kids went nuts for it. My husband likes it, too. If you've never made it, give it a try. It's a true comfort food and makes a great summertime lunch; it's also a big hit at those potluck luncheons when you do not have lots of time to prepare anything.

Pimiento-Cheese Spread

• 1 nice-sized block (8 oz.) of sharp cheddar cheese--the sharper, the better--finely shredded


• 3 tbsp. mayonnaise, Hellmann's if it is available, but others may substitute (adjust mayo according to your liking)


• 2 to 8 dashes of Tabasco or other hot sauce, depending on your preference


• 1 beautiful sweet red pepper, diced--I do this the day before, sprinkle a little salt on the diced-up pepper and cover to allow the lovely sweetness to come out


• dash or two of black pepper

Mix until the mayonnaise no longer looks like mayo; the final product will be bright orange with red specks all throughout, and it is a thickish consistency. For the perfect sandwich, choose a thick bread you can toast lightly. Sahtain wa a'afiyah.