Another Bowl Conquered! 

Tommie Agee knows his way around more than the football field. The former NFL running back and veteran of two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys – is no slouch around the mixing bowl either.

These days Agee works at the Opelika Sportsplex and Aquatic Center, where he is assistant director of Parks and Recreation. But you’re almost as likely to find him in the kitchen, whipping up sweet potato soufflé or cherry pie.

Agee, who was a running back for the Auburn Tigers, grew up surrounded by good cooking about 100 miles west of Lee County, in Maplesville, Alabama. He and three older brothers were raised in their grandmother’s house. Both his mother and grandmother were cooks, and his grandmother also fed a number of elderly relatives in her home. Grandmother’s influence was strong.

“I learned to cook country food, because that’s what Grandmamma cooked,” he says. It is all about the flavor, he says. “People don’t know how to put a ham hock or a ham bone for seasoning your greens. They don’t believe in putting a little fatback or a little bacon into food to season it. But that’s what I call real Southern cooking.”

“When Mama and Grandmamma worked, the cooking fell to me. It fell to all three of us. All three of my brothers can cook.” Now Agee and wife of twenty-four years, Anchylus, share cooking duties, with Agee handling much of the day-to-day meal prep since leaving football, and Anchylus, a teacher at Southview Primary School in Opelika, putting together the big Sunday meal. The couple has three children: Tyler, sophomore at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, where he runs track; Torey, a straight-A student at Opelika High School, who recently committed to play football for Vanderbilt University in Nashville; and Angelic, a ninth grader and member of Opelika High School Marching band “Showstoppers,” a dance and kickline performance group.

“I  feel like I have 375 children, when you count all the kids down at the Sportsplex,” Agee says. “I like to help them out and keep them on the straight and narrow path.”

Agee and his family love living in Opelika. He likes how people rally around different causes. It reminds him a lot of Maplesville —a slow, quiet atmosphere with everything you need nearby.

When Agee was in the pros, including seasons with both the Seattle Seahawks and Kansas City Chiefs, his wife was a stay-at-home mother and did all the cooking for the family. During the off-season, he loved to get in the kitchen. These days, likes uses his lunch hour to prep for dinner — starting the sauce for spaghetti or preparing a salad. He likes cookbooks that feature quick and easy recipes with plenty of variety.

But he still loves the recipes he learned from his grandmother, although he says he has trouble remembering ingredients and amounts at times — something he blames on football — so he has to call up his grandmother for reminders. “She keeps all her recipes up in her head,” says Agee. “She’s not into precise measurement, though, and she’ll say ‘a pinch of this’ and ‘a handful of that.’ You can probably imagine that my handful is a lot bigger than hers.”

When Agee has company over on the weekend to watch a football game, he loves to grill a feast in the backyard. Burgers and dogs are great sometimes, but his real specialty is fried fish with all the trimmings — hushpuppies, cheese grits, and fried green tomatoes.

When Anchylus makes the Sunday meal, he makes the dessert. At Thanksgiving, they will work together to prepare the feast for twenty to twenty-five people. She’ll fix the turkey, and he’ll make desserts and help with the cornbread dressing or cleaning and cutting the vegetables. Sisters-in-law Margaret and Vivian Walker pitch in with their famous collard greens, and Joann Walker brings what Agee says is “the world’s best potato salad.”

When Agee is cooking, he likes to keep things interesting. “I like to change recipes around and surprise folks,” he says. His signature dessert is always a showstopper. “Most people think they see a red velvet cake, but when they cut it open, it’s green. It’s my Key Lime Cake.”

Although Agee’s sons have not followed their father into the kitchen, he has schooled them on the basics. “I’ve taught them how to make a good breakfast,” he says. “That way, they can always make themselves a meal instead of going hungry.” His oldest son, Tyler, enjoys barbecuing in the back yard, and his daughter likes making cakes and other desserts. Torey, Dad says, isn’t quite the chef. He puts stuff in the oven and forgets about it.

There are a couple of items that Agee says he will never be able to make as good as his grandmother’s, despite trying for years. The first is a pork chop (bone-in) casserole with rice, pimentos, Lipton onion soup mix, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, and cream of mushroom soup. “She cooks it all in one pan in the oven,” says Agee. “It all just melds together into this perfect combination of flavors, but I just can’t get mine to that.”

The other is her caramel layer cake. Agee isn’t happy with the consistency of his caramel icing,  although he intends to keep trying. “Hers is like you take a huge piece of caramel candy that is melted and runs all over the cake and between the layers.”

He’s glad he can still consult her for advice, he says. At eighty-nine, she still has a lot to teach him.

Key Lime Cake

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 3/4 cups Swan cake flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 teaspoon lemon flavor
• 1 3-ounce package lime gelatin

Frosting

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 1 box confectioner’s sugar
• 3 tablespoons fresh limejuice

Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Add flour and dry ingredients, starting with flour and alternating with orange juice. Add flavoring and gelatin, beat well. Pour equal amounts into three greased and floured 8″ pans. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool on rack.

For frosting: Beat butter and cream cheese in a large bowl until creamy. Add lime juice and confectioner’s sugar. Mix until creamy and fluffy. Frost cooled cake.

Easy Cherry Cream Cheese Pie

• 1 large graham cracker piecrust
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 1/4 cup lemon juice, or to taste
• 1 can Eagle condensed milk
• 1 can cherry pie filling

Beat together cream cheese and condensed milk. Add lemon juice. Pour mixture into piecrust and refrigerate for 4 hour. Spread with cherry filling and serve.

Sweet Potato Crunch

This can be served as a dessert or a side dish.

• 3 cups cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup evaporated milk
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 eggs, beaten

Topping

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 stick butter, melted

Mix all ingredients and pour into a casserole dish. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Make topping while casserole is baking by simply mixing topping ingredients. Then bake casserole for another 15 minutes.

Easy Hershey Bar Cake

• 1 box Duncan Hines Swiss Chocolate cake mix

Frosting

• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 12 1.5-ounce milk chocolate Hershey Bars
• 1 12-ounce container frozen whipped topping

Make cake batter following the box directions. Pour into three greased 8-inch cake pans. Bake at 325 for 25 minutes. Cool cake before frosting. To make frosting, beat cream cheese and sugars until creamy. Finely chop eight candy bars, blend with cream cheese, and whipped topping. Chop remaining candy bars and sprinkle over frosted cake.

by Mary Wood Littleton