Last Bite

Greenville City Councilwoman Lillian Brock Flemming remembers this recipe for Seafoam Salad was written down Christmas 1982, by her mother-in-law, Teomie Chapman Flemming. “We were always at her house Christmas Day,” she says, “And she loved salads. Any kind of salad.” Christmas Eve, the family was at work feeding the homeless at the Southernside Community Center, founded by her husband and mother, where her mother-in-law sometimes cooked. “People loved it,” Lillian says. “She made real live food, like pinto beans and cornbread.” Like Jello salad, a standard on the Southern holiday table long after its technicolor spell wore off for the rest of the country. This recipe has come from safekeeping in the Flemming’s family Bible. Lillian studies the particular smear across the bottom of the paper, a smudge of something in the corner, remembering which baby was born that year, another way to mark time. “No matter what she fixed,” she says, “it was wonderful.”