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Scrambled Eggs and Herring Roe
Herring Roe
Eggs
Cream
Salt
Pepper
Butter
Poach the roe for about 15 mins. Drain. Remove any membranes. Break up in pieces. Beat eggs with a fork, stir in some cream, salt, pepper, and roe. Scramble in butter to desired consistency.
Rutababa and Apples
About 3 cups cut up rutabaga
About 1 cup apples, sliced
Brown Sugar
Butter
Parboil rutabaga. Place half the rutabaga and apples in a greased casserole dish, dot with butter, sprinkle with brown sugar.
Repeat with other half of ingredients. Bake at 350 for 30 to 45 minutes.
Fresh Tomatoes with Vinegar and Sugar
Fresh tomatoes
Vinegar
Sugar
Water
Cut up tomatoes and place in serving bowl. Sprinkle with sugar. Add about 1/4 c. vinegar and a little water to dilute. Let set. Good with cucumbers and spring onions added too.
Country Style Steak with Gravy
Round Steak
Flour
Salt
Pepper
Cut round steak into serving pieces. Beat flour into meat with a saucer. Brown meat in hot oil in iron skillet till very brown on bottom. Turn over and brown other side. Make sure the meat is very brown on both sides. Cover with water. Put lid on pan and simmer for a couple of hours.
Scalloped Oysters
1 pint oysters with their liquor
2 cups oyster crackers
1/2 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup half and half
1/4 cup oyster liquor
salt, pepper to taste
Drain oysters, reserving liquor. Mix crackers with melted butter and place 1/3 in bottom of a greased baking dish. Cover with half the oysters. Sprinkle oysters with pepper. Add another layer of crackers and place remaining oysters on top. Sprinkle with more pepper. Combine cream and oyster liquor, salt. Pour over oysters. Top with final layer of crackers. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes.
Collards cooked with New Potatoes and Backbone
Cut backbone into several pieces. Parboil in large soup pot. Remove backbone from pot. Bring the liquid to boil. Add washed collards to boiling water. Place backbone on top of collards. Cover and cook about 2 hours. About 30 to 45 minutes before done add new potatoes. Potatoes will cook faster it you put them in the liquid. Season with salt and pepper.
Persimmon Pudding
About 2 cups ripe persimmon pulp.
3 cups milk
1 1/2 to 2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking power
1 teaspoon baking soda
Vanilla Extract
Cinnamon
In a large bowl, combine the pulp, milk, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract, and cinnamon until well mixed. Pour the mixture into an ungreased 9 by 13 inch baking pan and bake for about an hour or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Best served warm with whipped cream.
Separating seeds and peel from pulp: My mother had a metal sieve or strainer with a wooden pestle she used for this. I just use a colander and wooden spoon.
1 16 oz. can sliced tomatoes
1/2 to 1 cup white sugar (or use both white and brown sugar)
3 slices bread, broken (white, whole wheat or even use 1 slice of
cinnamon bread in combination with white or whole wheat)
1/2 stick butter or margarine (or use liquid margarine)
Tomato Pudding 1 large can crushed tomatoes 1/2 stick margarine 1 1/4 cups sugar 3/4 tube saltine crackers, crushedHeat tomatoes, add butter, sugar and crushed crackers. Mix and pour into greased baking dish. Bake in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until it starts to brown..
She preferred a cast iron skillet, but I guess you can used something else. Ingredients - One large can of crushed tomatoes (1 lb.,12 oz. size), 1/2 to 1 cup of crushed saltine crackers (my mother often used crumbled up cold biscuits), salt and pepper, 1/4 to 1/2 cup of sugar (my dad always added more when he ate it), and a dash of cinnamon. Heat the pan on top of the stove with a little bacon grease or olive oil in the bottom of the pan, but don't let it get too hot. Add the tomatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. Add the sugar and then mix well. Add the bread crumbs or cracker crumbs. Add a dash or two of cinnamon. Stir well. Bring to a simmer. Stir often and cook down to a pudding consistency. Enjoy.
For over 30 years my grandmother Catherine Drake Dozier Lyon lived as a member one of our family after she had the misfortune of losing Grandpa Lewis Lunsford Lyon. As my assigned roommate doing my younger youth she added so many fond memories of her devoted love about her family history. You much know Miss Kate was a living encyclopedia of our family and friends genealogy. If only I had taken the time to record all this wonderful family history by Grandma but she was two steps ahead of me because she had it in a safe place a manuscript with everything written in her own hand writing that we later located with her important papers. I have the original notes of her memories with complete bible records of five generation of my ancestors. What a gift of love this was. Also included were the names, dates of important events for all the slave family members. I presented a copy to the public Library in Tarboro, Edgecombe Co NC because it was the county of her birth.
At night I could hardly wait until bedtime. This meant story time with Grandma. What exciting adventures transpired when we were together as we snuggle between the sheets in her goose down feather mattress? No matter how hard I tried there was no way Grandma would allow the Tar Baby to keep Peter Rabbit a captive for Bro fox. The brier patch was far too thick to keep Peter from making his dramatic escape. Her stories were endless with a new tale every night. During many winter nights I would be treated with a heated brick wrapped in a hand towel which she placed under the covers next to my ice cold toes.
Grandma was the family culinary pastry chief. In other words she was the bread maker as she prepared and served all the homemade bread or substituted bread items for all our meals. Buttered toast with home made jams or jelly and on Sunday morning corn flakes and homemade loaf bread toast with melted cheese. She took great pride in making from scratch, buttermilk biscuits, cheese biscuits, left over toasted split biscuits, toasted split biscuits with melted cheese topping, spoon drop biscuit, cornbread, skillet litebread, egg bread, A oven baked sausage, loaf bread and egg casserole, skillet flour bread, pan fried cornbread cakes, potato cakes, deep fat fried hush puppies, pan cakes, wafers cooked in a cast iron duel stovetop waffle iron, Oyster fritters when is season, assorted cookies and three layer oven baked cakes and square baking pan oven baked single or layer cakes of all kinds. It was necessary to dissolve and preheat the yeast to make the batter too rise for the needed loft in the cake layers. Miss Kate also prepared grits, oatmeal, and cream of wheat, rice pudding or harmony.
Crackling skillet Bread and oven baked sweet potato biscuits were two of grandma’s famous treats she prepared for me which I enjoyed very much. At times she would hand make me a miniature snake or turtle biscuits out of any left over biscuit dough which I always waited until the last bite to eat with a generous serving of melted home made butter along with a tall glass of whole milk, chocolate milk or Postum the drink promoted by Buck Rogers the All American hero.
For Sunday’s mid day dinner she always had my very special home made from scratch yeast rolls that were out of this world. The aroma they produced while cooking would certainly peak your appetite. You could smelled there presence the moment you opened the back door when returning from Sunday school and Church service. Preparation started very early in the morning when the dough was prepared and mixed together with a melted cake of active yeast and placed in a large bowl. After a couple of hours it would be almost over the rim. Once more the dough is reworked and placed back into the bowl and left it rise a second time. Next step was to spread and flatten the dough and roll it out into a layer on- half inch thick which is now cut out with a biscuit cutter that is now placed in a greased pan and set out to rise again. Now the pan of rolls is popped into a hot over and baked until they are a light tan color making them ready to be served at the dinner table while they are steaming hot. The loftiness, texture and strong yeast flavor was superb too your taste buds. Marie Jones who was my mother’s kitchen assistant was always ready to serve seconds because she knew the first serving would disappear in a flash.
The final stage takes place when the hot and pre-drained cooked to a medium brown color cracklings are placed in a cast iron press that has a screw worm rod secured dead center above with a 12 inch disc attached that is rotated clockwise making the press plate to move downward while squeezing the remaining white lard from the previously fried cracklings. You needed to crank the overhead parallel wheel until the press was all the way down too the bottom and the cracklings are packed together almost air tight. I and my brothers would take turns cranking the press wheel. Once we had declared we had hit rock bottom James Louis or Irving Douglas “Bro” Austin would try with all their might to squeeze out one more drop. Sometimes they did but mostly I usually won. Mainly, the reason I did win was because my father Hobart Garrett would not fill the press as full when it was my turn as he would for my older brothers. After a cake of solidly packed crackling is removed from the press they were placed in a tin metal lard stand for storage and for later consumption. The lard stands had tight fitting lids that were used to seal and store fried-out pork chops and stuffed link sausage that had been submerged in the cans and covered to the top with the white lard to be saved for a later meal. In cool weather the prepared stored pork would be preserved for about four months or they could become rancid. My mother would dip out chops or sausage and warm it in a hot skillet before placing them on the table. “We now had a fast food operation”. As we had no freezer this was the best way to have fresh tasting pork months after hog killing time. All other pork or beef parts were salt cured and smoked for protect from spoiling. We would have cured country ham, shoulder, siding for bacon, backbone, Canadian bacon, hog jowls, stuffed link sausage, dandoole which was all hung up to be cured after being packed in salt and them washed in a wash tub of hot water and after drying it was basted with black pepper, molasses, brown sugar, salt peter and boric acid (the last two used for skipper control) and hung up and smoked for five days and allowed to absorb the smoke taste made from apple wood coals. As a teen age I was given the job of stoking the fire ever six hours when my daddy was not at home and my brothers has gone off to college..
After getting home from a day in high school I would break off a hunk of cracklings from one of the cake pallets for a quick pick-em up snack.
Another special service my Grandmother did was the production of Lye Soap from lard. After she had cooked out her soap mixture of now tan colored creation that was made in our large black cast iron pot she would let it cool and set before cutting it into four inch square blocks and stored in a dry place. This soap was used for washing clothes, linens, etc using this same pot on Monday wash day. A cube of lye soap was dropped into the boiling water before adding the clothes to be washed. A penny match box size piece of Lye Soap was also given to our dogs to control worms and parasites twice yearly. A good bath for the dogs with this same soap also controlled fees and ticks. Whenever we went blackberry or Chinkapin hunting we always rubbed our legs and arms with a cube of Lye Soap to prevent musketeer and red bug bites. It never failed to do the job but you better be sure and not eat the hand picked berries until you cleaned you hands first.
Grandmother was active until only a few months before she took ill. Two month before her death she baked her own birthday cake but she needed a little help from her daughter Martha Helen Lyon Austin to cook the pineapple icing. Grandma was not run over by a reindeer but Rudolph, if had tried I’m sure he would have been left with two black eyes because she would have wracked him with her ever present flashlight and walking cane. All of grandma’s vital organs gave out at the same time and she only lasted a few days after she became bed ridden. She had outlived all her buddies with whom she would visit daily to chat and exchange any spicy gossips. It was my responsibility to head-up the grandma posy and go fetch and inform her it was bed time and time to come home. She always remark, “My how time flies. I had no idea it was so late”. On the way back to the house she would stop me and bring me up to date on the latest hot gossip items and close by reminding me not to tell it to anyone as it was a secrete between us two. Yes! I still travel down Memory Lane and I do stop by the roadside to sniff the flowers.
After each of you have had your fling at being foot loose and fancy free take a little time to stop and enjoy the rewards of having found and written fond family memories about your love ones if it be about the past or present. Remember we only pass this way just once “so make the best of it” during your visit here on our good earth.
Pete Austin 08/21/09 pete@austinfamily.org
For those who wanted my recipe......I finally made some yesterday. Mind you I was cooking for two so I make a small amount. You can double this but try a small amount first because they are quite primitive and take some getting used to.
1 cup of white cornmeal 1 cup boiling water salt to taste and it does need it.I add the water to the meal though some add the meal to the water. I whisk and let sit for almost an hour. There is no gluten in this as there would be in bread dough so the boiling water is a must. After waiting the prescribed time you just put your hand in the bowl and knead a little. It will feel different from bread dough and is less likely to stay together.
Lacy Hoe Cakes
1 cup white cornmeal 1 cup plus a little more water........about 1 1/4 cup salt to tasteThe water does not have to be hot for this kind. You just mix it together and let sit for about 10 minutes. It will be like a slurry and you will have to stir with each one you pour out. You have to use a flat hoe cake skillet......without sides. I use about 1/8 inch of corn oil and stir and ladle out onto the not too hot skillet. The batter will spatter and spit and make lace as it runs across the surface. That is what you want. When the edges are golden, you can turn it.
horace@peele.info Horace Peele
My Mom "Miss Annie" used to make flour hoe cakes rather than corn meal hoe
cakes, but she also used the griddle on top of the stove... I wish I had
one now. The last time she did that for me was when she was about 98 or so,
I asked her if she would make me one and she took a whole can of ready made
biscuits and kneed them together and got out the griddle. It was good just
because she did it for me but not the same as she used to make. Best in the
world.
Rose Denson
Hello from Texas,
My Great grandmother on down to myself have made Hoe Cake for our broods. I
remember as a child of 4 years old a fall spent camping in a cedar break
while my Dad and grandpa cut cedar post. We were there about three weeks. I
have pictures and wonderful memories of that time. Mom and grandma cooked
pinto beans in a huge cast-iron pot , like a washpot, over the fire. At meal
time the lid was put on them while they simmered , greased and Hoe Cake
was baked on top of the lid.
No exact recipe that I know of, just the following:
Flour, baking powder and salt. Water enough to make a batter sort of like a
pancake batter. Then fried in the lard on the lid of the pot.
At home in later years mom used selfrising flour and water. That is how I
have always done it. No measuring the salt and baking powder that way.
Mom always called the bread made with cornmeal, Hot Water Corn Bread or Log
Cabins. The Log Cabin name was due to the impression left on the round cake
as she patted it out. I don't have an exact recipe, but it went like this:
White self rising cornmeal
Boiling water
A bowl of cold water ( to dip her hands in between patties to keep from
being burned!)
Cast iron skillet with hot melted lard
The water was hot poured in a large bowl holding the cornmeal, just enough
to do three or so patties at a time. These were fried, turning once until
golden brown. SOOOO GOOD!
Reese Moses reese7@earthlink.net
Turnip greens, Virginia, what else? I grew up in the country and learned to eat and love greens. Nothing in the world today as good as turnip greens and hot water cracklin' bread. No one has mentioned that either, I don't believe. My dear black Mammy made regular hot water bread with meal, salt and boiling water and added finely chopped cracklings from our smokehouse. Fried in bacon grease, best in the world. I love it all today and forget the calories!
Bryant7898@aol.com
What kind of beans? During the depression, any beans that were moving, we would eat, but dried lima beans (butter beans) navy beans, with a little fat back, and black eyed peas. We usually didn't have meat to put in them, but they filled the tummy (as well as the air after about 2 hours). When nothing else was available, the corn field peas would be cooked. I haven't a clue what corn field peas were, but they worked when you were hungry. A pot of beans with a piece of hot hoe cake after church was a treat for a hungry kid, which I always was.
Use equal amounts of meal and flour (not self-rising). It doesn't matter if you make a small amount or a large amount, just equal yellow cornmeal and flour. Salt to taste. Mix well and add boiling water, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. When all of the meal is wet (It should be about the consistency of Pla-Doh) let it sit a few minutes to absorb the water. Use a bowl of cold water to wet your hands before making each patty. It will keep your hands from burning and also make the dough easier to handle.Scoop up a big spoonful and shape into patty about 1/2 inch - 1 inch thick and fry in about 1/2 inch of hot oil until golden brown. If your oil is too deep your bread will cook apart. 1 cup flour and 1 cup meal makes about 8 large patties. I guarantee there'll be seconds and even thirds called for ! Lynelle lynelle3@bellsouth.net