Pimento cheese is a classic for a reason: sandwich spread, party dip, all-around cheesy delight

My step-mother, Carolyn, is a gifted cook and hostess. She is warm and welcoming and her food tastes as good as it looks. Her kitchen often smells of fresh baked bread and her dining table is a work of art, set to perfection with one of her many, enviable collections of fine China, chosen to match the season, dotted with vases of fresh flowers.

Born and raised in Hattiesburg, Miss., where she and my dad still reside, she comes from quite a long line of exceptional cooks. In fact, her family owned and operated a very popular restaurant in the Hattiesburg area for many years. Although retired now, she never entered into the restaurant business, but rather chose a career in public education, one for which she excelled as precious few do. She received numerous national recognitions and awards for excellence, not only as a teacher but also as a principal and later a supervising principal. She is an impressive lady, but she won my sister and me over with her amazing food pretty much as soon as we met her in 1990 after marrying our dad.    

As the years have gone by, we don't do as many sit down lunches at Dad and Carolyn's as we once did, but it's Carolyn's "snacky things" — as she calls them — that I love most. Her trays of nibbles and dips and spreads are wonderful. She humbly downplays many of my favorites: her homemade Thousand Island dressing (into which I believe I could dip cardboard and find it amazing), her bread and butter pickles, her deviled eggs and, as you may have guessed, her pimento cheese.

Growing up, we didn't make homemade pimento cheese. Like most every family we knew, there was always a tub of puh-minnah in our refrigerator, but I never thought much about it. It wasn't until Carolyn came into our lives that my sister and I began making it ourselves, using her recipe of course and serving it (also as she does) primarily as a dip with crackers and raw vegetables. 

Her homemade version is so good that once you make a batch, you'll come up with all sorts of ways to eat it—on baked potatoes, burgers or even melted over French fries. One of my favorite creations is to have it on a piece of pumpernickel bread, topped with thinly sliced cucumbers and toasted until piping hot. 

Most people associate Pimento Cheese with the South and for good reason: We claimed it and made it our own after World War II. But Robert Moss, a food writer for numerous publications, did a deep dive into the history of pimento cheese, explaining in detail that pimento cheese is actually not Southern by birth. 

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Moss explains that Pimento Cheese actually originated in New York in the 1870s, when local farmers started making what would eventually be known as cream cheese, an American version of Neufchatel. This creamy cheese was mixed with Spanish-grown, imported pimentos and that constituted the first pimento cheese. 

It wasn't until around 1911 when farmers in Georgia began growing pimentos (primarily because importing them from Spain had become too expensive) that this New York version of pimento cheese became popular and available commercially. From the 1920s through the 40s, people couldn't get enough of it, but sales waned soon after to the point that it disappeared from store shelves.

After World War II, though, Southerners began making their own homemade pimento cheese from hoop cheese, a soft, pale, neutral-tasting cheese, also known as Bakers, Rat or Red Ring cheese because of the red wax ring. It was made by draining the whey from cow's milk then placing it in a round mold called a hoop. 

Once cheddar cheese became more readily available, however, it became the cheese of choice for Southern pimento cheese. 

In my family's opinion — Carolyn's pimento cheese is the best. Carolyn will tell you that she puts either onion or sweet pickle relish in hers, but I generally put both because I didn't pay attention to the or in the recipe she wrote for me. My husband likes an added dash of Worcestershire; my brother-in-law likes a dash (or two . . . or three) of hot sauce. 

There is a restaurant in Pensacola, Fl., not far from where I live. It's a good restaurant; a very nice restaurant, in fact. And they serve pimento cheese as an appetizer. Theirs has jalapeños and pecans in it and is predominantly white instead of the sunny orange color to which I am accustomed. I can't say that I don't think it's good. It is. But it is such a departure from what I know that it is off-putting, which makes me feel old and set in my ways, something I really don't think I am. I typically love fresh takes on familiar foods. 

But I guess if the shoe fits . . . maybe I feel nostalgic about Carolyn's pimento cheese because it reminds me of her and of my dad and of our visits and that they are getting older and that I'm not ready. Exactly what it is I'm not ready for is unclear, but I think it's the inevitability of Carolyn and Dad no longer being able to do and be all that they do and are.

I am thankful and grateful to have them both in my life and to have so many of Carolyn's recipes. I am thrilled I get to share this one with you now.