Huntin’ and Cookin’ Creases

Spring is such a wonderful time of the year.  As the trees set on new leaves, early flowers bloom and grasses break through the ground, there is promise in the air.  After long, cold winter days the sun stays up longer, warming the soil as we make the first preparations for planting.

Creasy Plant - It may not be the prettiest picture, but things have been pretty muddy this spring.

A couple of years ago, I shared with you an article here which Callie Melton had written about sallet huntin’.  This is not a skill I possess, but one that I greatly admire.  I have long wanted to know which wild plants are edible – how much could you survive on just the fruits of the land?  Today, we have access to fresh fruits and vegetables from around the world through the whole year.  That wasn’t true on the mountain a few years back and Mrs. Melton said everyone was ready for something fresh and green when the first plants broke through.

Well, the Sallet mixture she talked about contained lots of different greens and as I said, I’m not skilled at finding all of that.  But there was one plant she named that I am familiar with – Creases.  She called them “creasy” and that seems to be the generally accepted name.  

When I saw some of them out along the fence row last week, I snatched them up.  Now I may have mentioned before that I don’t care for greens, although I’m very careful not to say I won’t  eat them, I just thank the good Lord that I don’t have to eat them.  However, as I said last week, I’m prepared to eat whatever that same Lord provides – especially in these uncertain times.  So I tried my hand at cooking these creases.

Turns out they were really good.

I might’ve expected the same, strong taste of mustard or turnip greens.  But that’s not what I got.  Cooked with a piece of smoked ham, parboiled then cooked in fresh water, they were fresh-tasting but not strong.  I didn’t cook them till they were mushy but they were certainly soft.

Overall, this is a wild green that I can really recommend – hmm, Grandma and Mama would’ve told me that if I’d listened.

Enjoy a glass of Buttermilk

If you’re having stomach problems we have a lot of options for medicine and care these days.  That’s not always been the case but our mountain ancestors had solutions for their problems nonetheless.  Buttermilk was a favorite medicine.

Of course buttermilk is what’s left in the churn after you’ve made butter.  True buttermilk is not at all like the cultured stuff you can find in a store today. However, they are both beneficial.

Today’s cultured buttermilk is great because it has live cultures added, just like yogurt.  These microorganisms help the naturally-occurring bacteria in your stomach which is there to digest food, produce vitamins and trigger immune responses.  There are also bad bacteria and cultures in yogurt and buttermilk fight against those.

We established that old fashioned, homemade buttermilk doesn’t have anything added to it.  Making butter and therefore making buttermilk is really easy. Start with whole milk, give it a good long shake then strain out the solid butter and what’s left is the buttermilk.  Nothing is added – except what the good Lord adds.

Amazingly, those naturally added “ingredients” were the reason that homemade buttermilk has long been used medicinally.  Butter can be made from either sweet milk or sour.   My grandmas would always offer you a glass of “sweet milk” to differentiate from the buttermilk.  It’s just milk that hasn’t turned yet.

However, everyone on the mountain always thought you could only make butter from sour milk.  As the milk turns, the natural bacteria in the milk begins to ferment and that makes it easier to churn and makes the butter keep longer – both of which may account for why the old folks wanted to use sour milk.  The added benefit are those “cultures” that they couldn’t have named yet they counted on them to cure stomach troubles.

Now some people just enjoy the taste of buttermilk – as some enjoy yogurt.  I can’t help but wonder if that earlier generation appreciated the taste or drank it simply for their health?

How do you eat buttermilk?

Puttin' By

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about winter foods.  On New Year’s we ate hog jowl and black-eyed peas.  Then a bunch of readers mentioned you always eat cabbage too, so last week we talked about that delicious vegetable.  Well those articles got me to thinking about all the work mountain folks usually do in the summertime to prepare for the cold winter months when nothing much is growing.  Really, I have realized anew that “an idle soul shall suffer hunger” (Proverbs 19:15b).

As I write this article, I have a meatloaf ready to go in the oven for tonight’s supper, the potatoes are peeled and I’ll open a Mason jar of green beans to round out a fine wintertime meal.  Of course, all of that is food you might’ve found on my grandmother’s table – as far back as her earliest years of marriage.  We’ve discussed before that she taught me to cook and I find more and more that I cook just like her!  But yesterday we had breaded chicken nuggets – a decidedly modern and convenient food – and earlier in the week there was a pasta dish on my table.  Of course pasta isn’t a traditional Appalachian food as we’re partial to dumplings. 

As I researched and wrote the Cabbage article last week, I couldn’t help but think about what meals would’ve looked like on the mountain a hundred years ago.  In one way, winter was good because meat could be kept and cured.  However, the veggies were always the problem.  I’m going to make a list below of the foods Appalachians-of-old would’ve been eating this time of year.   I mentioned several of the vegetable choices in the last couple of weeks and I’m looking forward to y’uns leaving a comment to tell me what I’ve missed.

Meat:  Any Game
              Smoked Beef
              Cured Pork
Chicken

Break:  Cornbread

Vegetables:  Potatoes
              Cabbage
              Green Beans
              Carrots
              Dried Beans (I’m including Black-Eyed Peas in this category_
              Sweet Potatoes
              Pumpkins
               Turnips
              Onions
             

As I made this list (with my Mama’s help) I first thought that it’s a pretty limited list.  Then, as I looked it over again, I had to admit it covers probably three-fourths of the food I eat, even today.   The big difference is the planning and preparation – every food on that list requires hours of back breaking work.  Whether stalking prey or fattening a hog, putting meat on the table takes some considerable effort.  Corn is particularly labor-intensive as it has to be planted, hoed, picked, shelled and then ground for bread.  The vegetables seem a little easier, but you’ve gotta’ start planning for winter in about March or April.

Does this give you a renewed appreciation for your ancestors?  It sure does me!

Bile Them Cabbage Down

Fried, stewed or pickled cabbage is a mainstay of the mountain diet.  After I shared my daddy’s New Year’s Day meal last week, I was surprised how many of you commented that you always kick off the year eating cabbage.  But I shouldn’t have been surprised.

For the same reasons black eyed peas and salt-cured pork were eaten regularly in the winter months, cabbage would be too.  Late cabbage can be folded in a hole (whilst still planted on the other end) can be enjoyed pretty much the whole winter.  Just as I mentioned last week, without the luxury of imported foods – even imported from warmer, deep-south states - Appalachians spent the winter months eating those foods they could preserve one way or another.  Then just as soon as you’re safe from a hard freeze, little cabbage plants can be planted – they’re often one of the first things planted in the garden.  So if you’ve eaten up all the cabbage you wintered, hang on, there’ll be more in a couple of months.

Cabbage is a very old food and is eaten around the world.  In fact, one of my personal favorites are egg rolls – this wasn’t a food traditionally found on Appalachian tables, owing to the Chinese immigration patterns not reaching the Eastern US until after World War II, and most likely not until the 1960’s. Yet their ancient food combines pork and cabbage in a bread-like wrapper and deep fried.  What could be more southern?  I had a chance to talk with a couple of Chinese ladies and asked if cabbage is really something they eat a lot of.  They explained that in the northern provinces where the temperatures get very cold, cabbage is a mainstay.  They even knew about burying the heads, just the way we do on the mountain.

Of course Sauerkraut (we universally just call it Kraut on the mountain) is the pickled version of the vegetable and while the word is German, the food is more likely Chinese.  Of course, the Germans do love it and in fact it’s a traditional New Year’s food for them as well for the same superstitious hope of good fortune. 

Today’s kale-eating, smoothy-drinking society probably sneers at hog jowl and black eyed peas – and if they ever smelled cabbage stewing they’d no doubt call the health department.  However, you can’t argue with the wisdom in eating this vegetable which is packed with vitamins and is high in fiber, antioxidants and polyphenols.  (Just by way of confession, I can hardly spell those words and had to look up polyphenols to make sure it was something I could mention in a family-friendly blog.  It seems safe enough to say, but experts seem to still be guessing what these micronutrients do except they’re pretty sure it’s all good.)

Of course, our affinity for frying foods extends to all vegetables and a whole lot of fruits.  Many readers who reported eating cabbage on New Year’s Day were frying it.  Now, I do wish you would tell me why it’s Fried Cabbage but Kil’t Lettuce when the process is about the same – chop vegetable, pour in hot bacon grease? 

Hog Jowl & Black Eyed Peas

Happy New Year Ya’ll!

Did y’uns eat hog jowl and black eyed peas on New Year’s Day?  Now this is one of those meals that I’m careful not to say I won’t eat, but I’m praising the Lord that I don’t have to.  This along with collards, turnip or mustard greens.

But enough about my taste in foods. 

Hog jowl and black eyed peas are the traditional meal for New Year’s Day because it’s supposed to bring good luck in the new year.  It seems the folks of old felt lucky to have this meal on new year’s day and hoped for similar luck throughout the year.

Hog killin’ time on the mountain starts just after the first frost so meat killed in the last month or two and salted down would be just about right for frying at the first of January.  And of course black eyed peas were harvested late in the summer and dried so if you could store them in a good dry place they would be good throughout the winter.

By January, the taste of fresh vegetables is dimming and sallet greens won’t be up for two or three more months.  Families who didn’t have the luxury of refrigeration or nearby supermarkets were making do with cornbread and fried side meat.  Leather britches (dried green beans) and potatoes were on the table almost every day. Of course there would still be plenty of dried apples in the attic (don’t want them in the root cellar for risk of dampness) that could be cooked down and fried into pies or spread over a stack cake. 

The flavors on our tables have radically changed in the last fifty years and some of the foods we have long been known for are almost foreign to our younger pallets.  Even if I don’t particularly enjoy hog jowl and black eyed peas there is a comfort in this age old tradition.