Cooking with Shirley Gordon: Your Favorites, Made Healthy
Easter Sunday, I was depressed. I didn’t get to watch my little nephews hunt for eggs. We didn’t gather at my mother’s house for tiny sandwiches, potato salad, deviled eggs, and fancy cookies on the back porch. I knew Shirley Gordon was cooking Easter dinner on her Facebook feed, and I knew I needed to watch her show for this article for The Pulse, but I was too mopey to watch.
Then, I think it was last Monday morning, I watched the cooking lesson Shirley had posted on Easter Sunday. Oh. My. Goodness. She was exactly what I needed. She was making the foods my grandmother used to make, and she was helpful, cheerful, and, yes, wise. We all need some wisdom in our lives right now. I stopped moping and made some deviled eggs.
Founder of Miss Shirley’s Southern Cooking, Shirley Gordon is the seventh of 11 children.
“My mother was a fantastic cook,” she says. “It was a joy to her when she finally had a girl. I would stand in a chair to help her cook. With so many of us, we had to do big dinners every day. As we got older and my mother went out to work, I had to get the dinners started. I picked it up and I’ve loved cooking ever since!”
Shirley’s first official career was as a hairdresser; however, she’s always enjoyed cooking and the sense of confidence and experimentation she learned from her mother.
“My mother was very creative,” she says. “She taught me that. I will think of something to try and I’ll try it—and it usually comes out right!”
As the years passed, cooking took a more central place in Shirley’s life. A few years ago, Shirley published her first cookbook. She began giving lessons around town, teaching young people to cook, as well as how to stretch their money buying healthy, affordable foods.
“Then my husband got sick with congestive heart failure,” she says. “My son approached me and said, ‘I know you like to cook; why don’t you show other people how?’”
With her son’s help, Shirley began teaching cooking lessons on Facebook. She emphasizes foods that are familiar and comforting, yet healthy for people with heart problems and other chronic conditions.
“I fell in love with it!” she says. “People watch from every age and all over the world. I was never on Facebook before. I am amazed by the calls and comments I get.”
Shirley calls her style “Healthy Soul Food”. She features lots of vegetables and works to keep her foods nutritious for people with heart trouble and diabetes. She has her own line of no-salt spices. People who follow her heart-healthy recipes don’t miss the salt and sugar, she says.
In addition to teaching people to cook healthy, she likes to empower her viewers, especially young people, to have confidence in their own choices. Instead of set-in-stone ingredient lists, she makes suggestions.
“I give people freedom on most things; I want them to have their own style of cooking,” she says. “With potato salad, lots do celery, so I’m letting people know, that’s not wrong. Any time you can get vegetables in the diet, that’s great. My kids don’t like celery, so I don’t put it in mine, but I don’t want [people who watch my show] to limit themselves. I give you a formula to do it, but you have the right to put anything else in there you want.”
Right now I’m champing at the bit to try Shirley’s stir-fry cabbage with potatoes and onions, posted just yesterday. She also has a pork roast tutorial from the same day. Because her lessons are broken into short videos, you can watch one and come back later for the next segment. Mmmm!
I ask everyone I’m talking with lately what they’ve learned during this epidemic and the resulting need to self-isolate when possible.
“I’ve learned strength through this,” Shirley Gordon says. “I just feel in my heart that this happened because it was time for us to get still. This is God’s time of saying, ‘Let’s get still, let’s get to know our family.’
“We just talk. We pick up the phone and have a conversation. I’m really enjoying that—I know I am deepening connections with my church members. We stay in a hurry so much—I’ve been exhausted. Now I’ve been able to lay back in my chair. I’ve got free time now. It really is a blessing.”
Find Shirley Gordon on Facebook at facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009603502690. She usually posts videos on Sundays between Noon and 1 p.m.
To ask a question, request her special no-salt spice mixes, or get a copy of Miss Shirley’s Southern Cooking, reach out via FB Messenger.