Appalachian Word of the Week -- JEET YIT?

How many of you have heard this term used? If you’ve been anywhere near the mountains of Kentucky, I’m sure you have. Know what it means?

JEET YIT? Is the question one person asks another when it’s near meal time. Usually, it means you would be right willing to join the person for a meal. Sometimes it means you would be right pleased to join them at their house for some vittles. Other times, you’re offering a meal to the person from the spread you have cooked up at your own house. Nowadays, it might mean you’d be open to taking a trip out to KFC or Rax for a bite to eat.

Know what JEET YIT? means yet? It means DID YOU EAT YET?

A little bit of breakfast

That meal might be breakfast, dinner, or supper. We don’t have lunch in the mountains. We have dinner. In the evening, we have supper.

If you’re having a meal together at somebody’s house, expect quite the spread. Breakfast from my daddy included bacon or sausage, eggs, fried potatoes, cathead biscuits with apple butter or creamed honey and butter. On special days, he also made buttermilk gravy.

Dinner usually included something quick like fried baloney sandwiches and fresh sliced tomatoes. In the winter, we might have a big pot of homemade beef vegetable soup and cornbread.

Fried baloney with mayo on white bread

Supper usually had a lot more choices than any other meal. We could have fried chicken (fresh from the back yard), frog legs, or a fried fish somebody caught that day. Then we had soup beans, onions, tomatoes, cornbread, cucumbers, corn on the cob, fried potatoes and onions, and anything else we could pick or pluck from the garden.

I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. Hey, friend, JEET YIT?

What's your favorite mountain food that makes you drool to think about it?

*Special thanks to Harlan County friend, Ken Hensley, for the food photos.

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A few more food photos:

Sliced tomatoes and onions go with anything

A pot of soup or stew can feed a lot of mouths

Gotta have a pone of cornbread 

Breakfast of fried baloney and biscuits and gravy

More breakfast options of fried potatoes and scrambled eggs