Headland native Patricia McAdams said she’s been cooking since before she could reach the kitchen counter.

"I’ve been cooking since I was about 5 or 6. Mama, Daddy and Granny, whoever was doing the cooking at the time, would pull up a chair to the counter so I could watch and cook with them," she said.

And apparently she had a knack for cooking from the beginning. "By the time I was 9, I could cook anything you wanted to put in your mouth, and by 10 or 12, I was making the pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mama still says I can cook better than she does, but I don’t believe her," said Patricia.

Patricia has worked for 9 years at Headland Farmers Co-op and peanut lab, and she enjoys the work. "Most of our customers are friends I’ve known most of my life. We love our customers, and we appreciate that they’re the reason we have our jobs," she said.

Patricia cooks dinner for her family just about every night and her family isn’t finicky about what she cooks. "We eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Most anything that grows in a garden, they’ll pretty well eat," Patricia said.

In fact, Patricia and her family grow in their own garden much of what they eat. "We have peas, butter beans, squash, okra, corn and cucumbers. We love fresh produce and that has a lot to do with growing up in Headland and buying seed, feed and fertilizer from the Co-op," she said.

Patricia and her husband Jessie have three children and a grandchild as well as milk goats, chickens, cattle, dogs, cats and a horse. "Life around our place is never quiet," Patricia said.

She adds that several of the recipes she shares with The Co-op Pantry are adaptations of recipes she grew up eating and cooking.

"Sweet Home Alabama Sweet Potatoes was inspired by the sweet potatoes I learned to make in Home Ec in high school and I added the topping from a Dutch Apple Pie recipe. The Bama Peach Cobbler is like my grandmother’s recipe with a little less sugar. Tuna Fish Casserole was also a dish of my grandmother’s," she said.

"My mother and I were talking one day about how much we liked chicken and dressing, and I came up with Easy Chicken and Dressing as a simplified version of what we had always made. I like it even better than the old-fashioned method, too," said Patricia.

Most of Patricia’s recipes are her originals.

"I created Pickled Cucumbers as a sort of quick and easy pickle. I experiment a good bit with things I think would be really good together in the kitchen," she stated.

And a staple of any truly southern cook, Patricia shares her recipe for Home Made Biscuits. "Biscuits were one of the first things I learned to cook. At 8-years-old I was making them by myself. It’s not as hard as people think," she said.

Kellie Henderson is a freelance writer from Troy.