Old Time Fruitcake Recipes

 I know, I know tons of people don’t like fruitcake. As one friend of mine used to tell me, someone gives her fruitcake she thinks of it as a gift of a door stop for a year until another one shows up.

I think I understand why people malign fruit cakes….because they don’t make fruitcakes like the old timer’s did. The one's my mother would buy were NOT like the original fruitcakes in my family and I've often thought of them as cardboard with fruit.  I have shared how my people were moonshiners and wine makers.  Well the old timer’s in my family made their cakes with alcohol.  And I don’t mean just adding alcohol to the recipe and then letting it bake out, I mean they SOAKED the cakes in alcohol for weeks!

 Now the first time I noticed a difference was when I was a kid. My family would get these fruitcakes given to them that we kids were NOT allowed to eat.  We thought the adults were just being stingy and wouldn’t share AT ALL.   But you know how kids are…like sneaking into the liquor cabinet, we’d sneak a piece and let me tell you…that’s when I figured out some fruitcakes are much better than others.

My fruitcake recipes come from family. When I was a budding family historian, they tell you to go around and talk to your family first to start building your family tree. Ask family members if they have any stories they can share or things they can show you. 

I’ve seen old quilts, guns, rolling pins and got an old bread board given to me and even one granny’s pair of eye glasses she wore. Now…I really didn’t want the glasses but you could tell they meant something to the person that gave them to me. They themselves were too tender hearted to part with them or give them to the Lion’s club which is what I did with them. Of course that was after putting them on and seeing how blind great granny was.  

But the one share in those early years was RECIPES. Everyone had a recipe from someone in the family. Seems we Appalachians, our history revolves around food. So I started collecting those along with the family stories of where they came from.

I have two fruitcake recipes from both sides of my family tree. One is from my dad’s people and it’s soaked in bourbon. Well... they were living closer to Tennessee and Kentucky.  Came from my Aunt Flossie and I can remember as a kid her making these cakes. She had a basement and in the basement was a wooden box that always smelled like alcohol. She’d make these cakes, wrap them in cheesecloth soaked in bourbon, wrap them in an oily paper and put them in that box. Every week or so go down and resoak the cheesecloth and re wrap the cakes.

Today I use a spray bottle, I don’t even have to unwrap them from the cheesecloth. First time I made these, I kept them in my fridge, which made it smell like a bar, for weeks! And everything had the taste of bourbon…bourbon scrambled eggs, bourbon lettuce, which my feller didn’t mind but the kids snarled their nose up at. So now I just keep them a cool place like an unheated room, in a box wrapped in plastic wrap and aluminum foil.

The other recipe is from the mountains of North Carolina. Wilkes County to be exact. I’m told because it’s dark, it’s an English brandy fruitcake recipe using sour milk and molasses and I guess the oldest recipe in my box.  When I wrote the recipe down from my Great Aunt Callie, I had put that she said it was her Great Great grandmother Perdue’s recipe.

I didn’t know who that was at the time, but now I know tracking the family history, it was Francis Wooten Perdue, who was born in Wilkes County, NC in 1837 and died in McDowell County WV in 1923.  Her husband was John Wesley Perdue, who served in the Civil War and was at the battle of Gettysburg. After he passed, she was living with one of her sons who worked in the coal mines in McDowell County.   

I’ve was told by someone you should make them up and sell these recipes. Well…there is a mountain tradition in my family that when something is freely shared, and it is not your creation, you don’t make money on it…first of all…. that’s stealing and second of all kind of a karma curse happens when you do that.  I will not break that tradition of what was freely shared to be getting 30 pieces of silver.

And don’t eat these fruitcakes and then drive. Like my daughter said, “How am I going to convince a cop that the alcohol in my bloodstream is from my mother’s fruitcake?”  Hope you enjoy these recipes and here is wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  

You can make these cakes in rings or in loaves. I made loaves because it makes more to share, just watch them in the oven. Loaves don't take as long to bake. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Both of these recipes take a really long time to bake at a lower temperature oven and you use a pan of water in the bottom of the stove so they will not dry out so quickly. Otherwise you get more like a hard brick, instead of a cake. Yep...I did that!

Bourbon Fruitcake

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups raisins

2 cups mixed candied fruit

1/2 cup bourbon

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 1/2 cups butter, softened (3 sticks) BUTTER not margarine ( Margarine makes it just greasy and loses taste) Yep did that too.

1 3/4 cups sugar

6 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

Combine raisins, fruits and bourbon in a bowl and let soak overnight.

Grease and flower a straight tube pan or 3 bread pans.

Sift flour, baking powder and nutmeg together. Set aside.

Beat butter and sugar together in large bowl until smooth.

Beat in eggs until light and fluffy.

Stir in flour mixture alternately with milk, beating until smooth after each addition.

Stir in fruits soaked in bourbon and nuts.

Turn into prepared pan.

Bake in preheated slow oven 300 degrees. Make sure to put a pan of water on lower rack of oven. For tube bake 2 hours and 10 minutes. For loaves about 1 hour and 45 minutes. check with a toothpick if it comes out clean and it springs back when lightly pressed with fingertip it's done. Cool in pan on a rack for 20 minutes. Remove from pan, cool completely.

Wrap cake in bourbon soaked cheesecloth: over wrap in plastic wrap and then in aluminum foil. Store in fridge or cool place. Each week I open them up and with a spray bottle full of Kentucky bourbon (or bourbon of your choice) I lightly spray the cheese cloth and recover. I let mine age 6 to 8 weeks but by the 4th week ...we break into one and it's fine.

Perdue Family Fruit Cake 

Ingredients

1 pound of butter

1 pound of light brown sugar, sifted after it's weighed

10 small eggs, separated

1/2 cup molasses

4 1/2 cups flour (all purpose)

1 tsp. baking soda

3 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. ground cloves

2 tsp. cinnamon

2 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg

1/2 cup sour milk

4 cups of raisins

2 cups of currants

1 cup chopped citron

1 cup candied pineapple

1 1/2 cup candied cherries

1/2 cup candied orange peel (recipe for this in on this blog)

1/2 cup candied lemon peel

2 cups dates

1 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup almonds

1/3 cup brandy for soaking fruit, 

1/2 cup brandy for batter

Combine all the fruit with 1/3 cup brandy, over night. Leave currants, raisins whole the rest are chopped.  Next day flour the fruit, sprinkle about a 1/4 cup flour on them and mix in.

Cream butter by itself until it is soft, then add sugar and cream again. Add egg yolks and beat all together for 5 minutes. 

Sift flour, soda, baking powder, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg together 3 times and add alternately  with sour milk, molasses, and brandy.  Beat by hand then add floured fruit. Add pecans chopped but almonds whole.

Last fold in well beaten egg whites.

Bake in loaf pans (I fill them about half way up) or in 2 large tube pans. Grease and flour dust pans. 

Bake in slow oven 250 degrees for 2 1/2 hours with pan of water underneath on lower rack. Done when springs back when lightly touched.

Let cool in pan a bit and then turn out and cool completely. Wrap in cheesecloth soaked in brandy. Store in a cool place wrapped in waxed paper. (that was the aunt's wooden box in the basement) Resoak the cheesecloth once a week for 6 to 8 weeks. (I don't unwrap them today, I use a spray bottle) Garnish with half pieces of candied cherries and green citron. I used V and J brandy. Also apricot brandy, but it's really sweet when you use apricot. 

Now I freely share this recipe with you and if you try to make money on it, because neither you nor I created it....there is kind of a karma that goes with that. Don't ask me why but the one's I give away turn out perfectly. It's meant to be shared freely.  So be mindful of that. A bar owner would ask me to sell him several and they turned out TERRIBLE. So I traded with him. He bought all the ingredients for all my cakes and in turn got 3 cakes from me and that worked. 

I bought my fruit and nuts from Nuts.com this year. They are really good fresh products and made an excellent cake. 

Mom's Chicken Salad Recipe

Well...I know...MONTHS since I've written on this blog. Well that's an advantage. I don't write just to write. Unless I have something to share or say. Keeps your inbox from filling up.

My son's health is NOT good. This ankylosing spondylitis has taken his eyesight in his right eye and in July, for the 4th, he was in the hospital. Inflammation has moved into his colon. SO...trying to find things he can eat or wants to eat has been an adventure.  He can't eat much beef...it doesn't digest well. One of his requests was for chicken salad spread. Well those little containers you buy are expensive, so I resurrected Mom's Chicken Salad recipe. Been making it about once a week since the end of July and SO glad I did. I forgot how good it is.

Now my dad was a meat and potatoes, beans and cornbread kind of guy. He always had brown beans with every meal even spaghetti!  Mom would make chicken salad as a revolt on occasion. She would use left over chicken sometimes, but we RARELY had any of her chicken left over after a meal. So when she got a wild hair for chicken salad, she would just make it from scratch.When she used leftover or can chicken it was NEVER as good as when she cooked the chicken specifically for her chicken salad.  If she got a good deal on a whole chicken she would use that. I know.  I used to be the one to clean the chicken meat off the bones, give the chicken skin to the animals, etc. for her to make it.

Today I use her recipe and just chicken breasts. 2 chicken breast makes enough for a week for two of us. I mentioned eating this chicken salad on Ritz crackers as, "Ain't nothin better" and was asked for the recipe.  Was going to wait until next week, because I really don't measure when I make this salad and thought I'd be more precise...but what the heck... just wing it.  It's all according to personal taste anyway. Just juggle the ingredients to suit you.

Mom's Chicken Salad Recipe with my chicken

2 chicken breasts

1/2 of a onion chopped
salt to taste
pepper to taste
garlic powder - a dash
poultry seasoning 1/4 tsp. or just a big dash (if you don't have this just a dash of sage and thyme will work)

salad cubes pickles- 2 big heaping tablespoons or to taste

mayonnaise - Depends on how much you like mayo. I like mine creamy. I start with a couple of big heaping tablespoons and then if it doesn't look like what I think it should, I add more.

chopped celery- about a stalk chopped fine. This and the salad cubes gives it just the right crunch.

lemon juice- About a tablespoon at least for 2 chicken breasts. THIS is the key to this recipe. Not only does it give it flavor but preserves it too.


Take 2 chicken breast, put in pot, cover with cold water. Add the onion, salt, pepper, garlic powder and poultry seasoning. Bring to a boil. Turn down the stove and let it slow simmer for about 40 or 45 minutes. Turn it off and let it cool until you can handle it.

Strain the broth. You can save the chicken stock in a jar in the fridge. Makes great stock for gravy or a soup base. Put the strained onion bits into your mixing bowl to go into the salad.

Take the chicken breasts and put them on a cutting board. Shred it with a knife and fork, like you would pulled pork and then I chop it up even more fine with a knife. Add it to the onion in the bowl.

Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Store  in a covered container in the fridge. It's best the next day but can be eaten immediately.  It lasts 3 or 4 days in the fridge. Then about every Monday I make another batch. If you are single, I'd cook just one chicken breast....2 chicken breasts makes a lot of chicken salad.  I

Modify it the way you want. I guarantee, if you take the time to make this, you will not buy it in those expensive containers anymore.  I love it with Ritz crackers.

Appalachian Recipes Recycling Orange Peels

I've been trying to make this recipe for Candied Orange Peels and write this blog post for what we would do to recycle our orange peels for weeks. These are things my mother, grandmothers and aunts used to do. Part of the NEVER waste anything mentality our people had.

The problem is her recipe for Candied Orange Peels calls for orange peels from 6 large oranges. When I was a child, with five siblings, we would have those orange peels in 15 minutes. But it's just my son and myself here. I forget to tell him to refrigerate his orange peels. I also forget and throw the peels in the compost by habit. If I wait until I remember to get enough peels together...it would be after Christmas before you get this recipe.

Oranges were a big treat in Appalachia. We did not get oranges all through the year. It was mostly on holidays only. Many times getting oranges or exotic nuts in your stocking at Christmas was a VERY big deal. We don't think of oranges that way today as much.  When my mother was a child, it was always special to get a treat of oranges. To make it last they came up with ways to use those rare orange peels. From what we call potpourri, (and I will give you the ingredients to that) to orange peel candy, and even cleaning products, they were always resourceful and never wasteful.

My mother would use the wood cook stove to make this recipe and it was an aroma of Christmas and the holidays for sure. About Thanksgiving she would buy a big bag of oranges to put in the center place bowl on the table. The bowl was large and it would have apples, oranges, nuts, sometimes bananas and grapes, if times were really good. If you were hungry during the holidays, in between meals, that's where you were pointed to. She kept a pot by the side of the stove on the sink for the apple peels and orange peels. We were told to drop them in there.

She would either make orange peel candy, or boil them in water and strain the liquid out to use as a cleaner on the walls and cabinets, or put them in another pot on the stove for her mix of potpourri. BEST SMELL IN THE WORLD!!!! The apple peels she would sometimes make apple jelly. Wasn't our favorite, so she didn't make it much but later I might post some of her apple recipes.

Orange Peel Candy

Peels from 6 large oranges

1 tablespoon of salt

4 cups of water

3 cups of sugar

more hot water

Take the orange peels and cover peels with salt and water in a glass bowl; weigh it down with a plate. Let it stand overnight. Drain and rinse under cold water thoroughly. Cover peels with cold water and bring to a boil. Drain, add more cold water to cover and bring it to a boil, drain and rinse. Do this THREE times! This gets rid of the bitter taste, and makes the house smell awesome. ALSO this is the water she would save in a jug or bucket for cleaning. Cuts grease off well. When you drain peels the last time, let cool and cut orange peel into 1/4 inch strips. Momma used scissors to cut them into strips. 

Peels should measure 3 cups when you are finished. (If you don't get 3 cups, it's a cup of sugar for each cup of orange peel.) So you can make a small batch, it's just a lot of work for a little batch. 

Add sugar and hot water together (just enough to cover orange peels), to dissolve the sugar. Add the peels and stir. Cook slow until the orange peel is translucent or clear. Drain well in a colander; roll in granulated sugar and dry on a wire rack. She would let the peels dry for a day or so. She would then store her candied orange peel (what she could keep us out of) in a canning jar after it was dried.

Sometimes she would decorate a white cake with white icing with candied orange peel....OH MY Goodness, it was SO GOOD!!!  Once she covered them in chocolate....yep they didn't last long around her brood!

 Wood Stove Potpourri

This one is not measured. She would do this only on the holidays. We kept a pot of water or kettle on the wood/coal stove all the time. It's a dry heat and it would put moisture in the air. During the holidays though she would throw things in the pot to make it smell like Christmas. The fore runner of a potpourri pot.  I don't have measurements so you will just have to judge what smells good to you. About every other day she would throw it out, clean the pot and start over. When she gave up having a wood stove she would have it on the back burner of the modern day stove in a small pot she kept just for the purpose. I gave her a potpourri pot...she never used it. But her recipe works great in either potpourri pot or a small crock pot.  

She would put these items in the water:

Orange peels, apple peels, cinnamon sticks or ground cinnamon, a teaspoon of vanilla extract and  some pickling spice. If she didn't have pickling spice she would add whole cloves and allspice and nutmeg sometimes to it.  When we had these smells in the house, for us it was truly Christmas. 

I want to wish all of you Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas. Blessings to you all.  

Preacher Cookies (Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies)

The other day I made what we call, "Preacher Cookies".  My family used to make them for pot lucks at church all the time. I guess that's why we call them Preacher Cookies. Quick, easy, and fast recipe to make with no baking.

Here's our old recipe for them.

Preacher Cookies

Preacher Cookies or Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

1 stick butter or margarine
2 cups of sugar
4 tablespoons of cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup peanut butter (sometimes I like to use the crunchy)
3 cups quick oatmeal
1 tablespoon vanilla

Put peanut butter, oatmeal and vanilla in a bowl and set aside. Mix butter, sugar, cocoa, milk and salt in a pot and bring to a boil. Boil for 1 minute. Pour hot mixture over oatmeal, peanut butter and vanilla in bowl. Stir together quickly and drop by tablespoons on wax paper. Have to work quickly, they get hard fast. We like ours a little big. Let cool and that's it.

Black Magic Hot Chocolate Recipe ....Love it when the power goes out.

Ok ....I know...takes me forever to get a blog post up. Part my illness, part many things going on in my world. If I set down to write out everything that occurs instead of deal with them...I'd never get off the computer or I'd use precious energy needed for other endeavors. Almost finished with a couple of posts and new info to add to the Jenny Wiley endeavor. Plus maybe a guest author here.

Filling up the lamps, replacing or trimming the candles for next time. 

I hate doing that chore in the dark so we keep them READY!

BUT....the lights went out and the idea to share this recipe for my favorite cocoa popped in my head. We went without power last night. Happens all the time here and we are sort of use to it. Always a pain but I have lamps and candles and we heat by wood so it's not too inconvenient, except NO computer...for HOURS!! No.... I don't have a smart phone!! Nor the funds for one.

This time we had just fried chicken and getting ready to cream the potatoes for Sunday supper and out the lights went. Lumpy taters by candlelight. I just didn't want to pull out the hand mixer...you know the one with the crank? YES, I still have one! We heated the rest of the dinner on the wood stove, but it was good.

After dinner we had instant cocoa using the kettle heated on the wood stove and I was wishing I had the ingredients for our Magic Cocoa Recipe.  I don't. That's a future wish list.

But since it's the holidays, it is cold and this recipe is always one I enjoy when I do have the ingredients, I thought I'd share it. It was shared with me probably about 15 years ago via my good friend Cathy. It's for adults!!! Children get the regular version of cocoa!!

When I make this I like to make the regular cocoa from scratch you find on the cans of dry powdered cocoa in the grocery store. I also like to use whole milk. Then add these extra ingredients. But these ingredients can also be added to instant cocoa or any version of cocoa you like to make.

It is made by the cup full.

You can make it light by teaspoons, or heavy by tablespoons, (that would be light on the cocoa!) either way it is good. If you have a nut allergy just omit the Amaretto. Just don't drink too much.

In your cocoa cup add:

1 teaspoon Amaretto (almond liquor)

1 teaspoon Irish Creme

1 teaspoon Kahlua or coffee/rum liquor

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Fill the rest of the cup with your hot cocoa and mix with a spoon. That's it. Enjoy. Just one of the simple pleasures to enjoy in the winter when the winds howl and snow piles up.  Stay WARM!!

Banana Nut Bread - Nuts optional!

It's getting hot with summer almost here. I live in a house without air conditioning. I could not stand a house with it because cold air makes my joints hurt. That being said, when I buy bananas they don't last long in this house when it is warm. We end up making banana bread.

Now this recipe...God only knows where I got it.  In the late 70's, early 80's, as I have mentioned before, I took all these notes of recipes from my mother, my grandmothers, my aunts, my in-laws, my outlaws and transferred them to 3 X 5 cards. This one card has been used A BUNCH!!  I need to make a new one.

As a matter of fact, I have recipes on cards that I call the, "I don't know what they are" dishes.  Just ingredients and how to cook them or put them together. Maybe I ought to try a mystery recipe column and put these together.  One is a salad (or maybe a dessert?) that uses mandarin oranges and looks promising. One that might be a sauce? Another that might be cookies? I might Google the ingredients and see if any recipe looks similar or the same.

This Banana bread recipe is pretty good. My family likes it and you can make it without nuts. For new bakers...whenever you see dry ingredients such as baking powder, salt and flour I always sift those ingredients together.

I love my old sifter. It's really not that old...well.... maybe 30 years old, and I bought it from the Floyd Virginia Country Store. I saw an article today that they are still in business and expanding!  I hate those hand squeezer sifters!! First of all, they are not large enough and my hands won't work like that anymore.

Ah....Floyd County, Virginia....where all the old hippies went in the 1980s!  If anyone is ever in that area I recommend the old Floyd Country store and FloydFest.

Back to the recipe. Whenever I see butter and sugar, I melt the butter, beat in the sugar, then the eggs, the milk or juice, then the bananas before adding the dry sifted ingredients and the rest.

The recipes calls for one pan and baking an hour. Whoever had this recipe must have had a really large bread pan. The most I fill a bread pan is 3/4's the way full with this batter. The recipe is way too much for my largest bread pan.

So it depends on the size of the bread pans as to how long I bake them, or how much I fill them and how far I need to spread this around. With this bread recipe I can get by with filling the bread pans only half full and it tastes just fine. Kind of like the five fish and two loaves Jesus story.

My mother and my great grandmother when they were surprised with extra company at dinner time and not sure it would be enough, they would always say a prayer over the food on the stove. "Jesus, I read where you fed 5,000 with five fish and two loaves....you know the need." There would always be plenty.

The day I baked these, I needed one loaf for my beloved son-in-law, (who is a banana bread fanatic), one loaf for after dinner and one for my morning coffee. So I filled the pans half full and I made 3 different sizes. Baked at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes. I know when they begin to split and a toothpick comes out clean they are done.  Yes, I watch the stove.

Banana Bread
1 stick of butter
3 large ripe bananas or 4 small peeled and mashed
1 cup sugar
3 eggs beaten until fluffy
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk or orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts Optional (I use walnuts, pecans make it richer)

It says mix together and bake in greased loaf pan. 350 degrees for 1 hour. Read above for my method.

Questions or comments please feel free to contact me.

Mrs. Imhoff's Apple Dapple Cake Recipe

Well, if all I want to accomplish gets finished, I think I will live a long time. CFS beating me up again. Wish I knew a cure, because it sure does hamper me in doing what I want to do.

This will be a post for an apple cake I make several times a year. I've shared it hundreds of times. It was handed down to me...oh....30 years ago. It's been brought to my attention that maybe I need to put all these handed down recipes in a book. I have a lot of collected recipes. As the family historian along with the pictures, etc. came cook books and scraps of recipes written on pieces of paper.  In the early 80's I took all those scraps of recipes and typed them on 3X5 cards. Filled 2 3X5 boxes.  I don't know if I have it in me to get a whole book together but it would be an interesting concept.  There are black walnut recipes, wild game recipes and fruit cake. Now I'm not talking about the hard as a rock fruit cake that you buy in the store. I'm talking about one you make starting 6 weeks before Christmas and soak in bourbon whiskey.

While I am pondering on this and what all that would entail... I promised my favorite apple cake recipe. I have about 5 apple cake recipes, one you make in canning jars to store. But this one is my favorite.



Mrs. Imhoff's Apple Dapple Cake

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups cooking oil
Mix Well
Add sifted dry ingredients: 3 cups flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. of baking soda, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg. Add 2 tsp. Vanilla extract.

Mix well and add: 3 cups chopped apples, 1 cup chopped walnuts, (Optional you can add 1/2 to a 1 cup raisins. My dad liked raisins in his apple cake.) The cake batter will be thick to allow for the cooking of the apples. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour 15 minutes in greased and floured straight side tube pan.  Cool completely. Glaze over.

Glaze: In a small pan add,
            1 stick butter or margarine
            1 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar for the cake in the picture but it doesn't matter!)
            1/4 cup cream (I use evaporated milk)
Mix well. Bring to a boil and cook for 3 minutes. Pour over cake taking a spoon to cover the entire outside of the cake. The glaze will slightly harden as it cools.

That's it!

Poke Salat not Poke Salad and Wild Game

I was asked for a poke salat recipe and any recipes for cooking squirrel. We called it salat and that seems to be the further south you go. Doesn't matter what you call it, poke salad or salat, as long as when you serve it, we get called to dinner!!   I like to have pictures of cooking the dish for the blog. It is just the wrong time of year for it. But I will post a brief write up and later put a more in-depth article.

It is not poke salat season and we haven't hunted any squirrels this year yet. We are just not hungry enough.

Poke Salat as we called it in my family, grows wild all over Appalachia. It has white tiny flowers in the early summer and then the stem begins to turn purple with purple poisonous berries by the fall. When it begins turning purple, we never mess with it much. This is usually in our area about middle to late June.

My Ed in the spring time "grazes" on wild plants. I can tell he's found some tidbit because usually for some reason he has some in his beard. Whether it be the tender shoots of a cattail plant, dandelion, sour grass or wild violets, spring time is grazing time. If he is walking in the woods in the spring, he's eating.  In the old days the folks knew that there were many things in the wild to eat. You didn't always have to go to the store to have food.

Now I've read we are not suppose to eat Poke salat. It's supposed to be poisonous all year. Well someone forgot to tell my folks that because they would eat it just about every spring. I'm going to share how they prepared it and then you are on your own. 

We only gathered Poke salat in the Spring to early summer before blooming. Young plants about 6 to 8 inches tall.  In the fall it's just too strong. We would boil it and rinse it in cold water, twice. This is what gets rid of any toxins I guess. We treated skunk cabbage the same way. Skunk cabbage grows in wetlands in the spring. When really young it tastes like cabbage. When it gets older we prepare it the same way we do Poke Salat.  We just thought boiling and rinsing would rid the dish of the bitter taste and for skunk cabbage the smell!

Momma, after boiling and rinsing the Poke, would then put it in a skillet, add some bacon grease with chopped onions and cook until tender. Then serve with some vinegar.  Sometimes it would be mixed with other greens such as water cress or young lettuce in what we called scalded lettuce. Some folks treat it just like cooked spinach and add it to other ingredients such as eggs. But you have to pick it when it's not too old, and boil it and rinse it...TWICE! That's the trick.

NOTE: After first posting this next part I didn't realize so many were so sensitive to the hunting of wild game. I'm sorry if it offends you but if you eat any type of animal or fish meat, you kill that animal or fish. Doesn't matter that it was wild or raised, or if it's wrapped in a package from the grocery store or served as a dish in a restaurant.  Even vegans should realize that all plants are LIVING THINGS and can respond to music. My grandfather would talk to a tree when he had to cut it for wood and thank it for giving of it's life so that he could use it to live and be warm.

It's part of the Appalachian culture to live off the land and that includes hunting wild game.  It's really the way of the world to kill things to use, animal or plants.....and I just think if you are reading this blog about Appalachians, it is in our heritage and culture and you just have to get over it.

Squirrel....the real trick to any wild game is what you do right after you hunt and kill it. Doesn't really matter the recipe.  Nothing amazes us more to see a hunter with any game he's killed, riding around with it for hours in the back of a truck. Many never taking the time to field dress it (or even know how to field dress properly, yes there are glands you have to watch out for) and then wonder why it tastes so awful or gamey after they cut it up and when they go to eat it.  Learn to field dress as soon as you shoot it and it won't be so gamey!!

If it's fairly warmer weather don't stop by the bar before you go home to process it either. I guess this is the difference in hunting for sport or hunting to eat. We always plan on eating what we hunt or we don't kill it. There is no need to.

After skinning an animal and cutting it up, we soak any wild meat in salt water over night and rinse it before we cook or freeze it. Then for squirrel...fry it using much the same recipe for fried chicken and make gravy.

If it's a fat meat like ground hog or bear, I like to parboil before roasting or cooking. But still, for bear meat, I don't care what anyone does to prepare it. I'm not a big fan of bear meat. Bear's stink, live or dead, and I just don't like that smell. Even a hint of it but that's just me.  When we get some wild game in here, I'll try to get Ed to help me make a video lesson on processing, preparing and cooking.  But if you can't wait, there are already plenty online to learn from.

Spoon Bread Recipe Southern Appalachian Style

It's been another rough week illness wise. Don't know what I do to make this illness jump on me and beat me up with both feet. It happens and I survive the episodes, just it plays havoc with the things I want to do. I have several posts I am working on and I promise to get more up this week. But in the meantime, recipes are easy.

I made Spoon Bread today. It went very well with our Sunday supper of ham, sweet potatoes, green beans and corn. No extra energy is needed since I try to cook something for Sunday supper every week anyway and all I had to do is take a picture of it to share it on the blog.

I cook very little during the week but we still keep our family Appalachian tradition of Sunday Supper. Kith and kin know at my house you can join us for a good old fashioned meal on Sunday. Many bring dishes to contribute especially when I'm having episodes. It's our time to get together every week with family and friends. I rest up for it every week and feel really blessed to have my family.

For those of you that don't know the difference between dinner and supper, in my family....dinner is lunchtime, supper is late in the evening. Many like the noon time dinner after church. I kept finding if I made dinner, folks still just didn't show up until late afternoon on Sunday. In the modern world supper works better for us.

Spoon Bread is a type of cornbread. The taste in it's original recipe, reminds me sort of tamale coverings but better. You just have to make it and try it because I can't describe what Spoon Bread tastes like.  You can cool it completely and it will slice or you can spoon it out hot or warm.  Some folks like it sweet and you can add sugar to the recipe. Some season it with cinnamon. Some like to add pepper before cooking it. I use the original recipe and let folks season it themselves. I just like to add butter to it on my plate.

This recipe came from my friend Geraldine over 30+ years ago. It was her grandmother's recipe. My grandmother made it too but I never had her recipe.

Spoon Bread Recipe Southern Appalachian Style
1 cup corn meal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon butter (can use lard or bacon grease)
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups boiling water
Pour corn meal, salt and butter (or lard) into bowl. Add boiling water and beat until smooth. Break egg into mixture. Add milk into which baking powder has been dissolved. Mix well. Pour into buttered 1 quart baking dish. Cook 400 degrees for 30 minutes. You can check by inserting a toothpick into the center and if comes out clean it is done.

Aunt Callie's Banana Pudding Recipe

Aunt Callie's Banana Pudding Recipe

One of the best cooks and one of the most admired women in my family was my Great Aunt Callie Boyles. Born in Burkes Garden, Virginia, she was the daughter of Stewart and Flora Mae Perdue Burress. She was soft spoken, and gentle, yet she was one of the most independent, strongest women I ever knew. She was my Grandmother Hazel's sister. She married David Brown Boyles, the brother of my grandfather Bane. Sisters from one family married brothers of another. Lot's of double first cousins.

Aunt Callie was remarkable.  She was a small woman that even in her 90's looked immaculate. We used to kid her and say she must have drank embalming fluid or something because she never looked her age.  But to me she was remarkable because of the life she lived. She was always active be it church or whatever.

David Brown Boyles & Callie Burress Boyles
with her boys.

She got a divorce when women didn't get a divorce. She had a 2nd grade education, owned her own home, worked at a company and retired, raised two very fine sons, basically on her own. She never drove a car. All these things she did as a woman in the Appalachian mountains when gender bias was very prominent. She was also just a steady person in our lives that impressed in us that you do what you have to do, but do it honestly and family is always important.

But one of the best stories of this little woman so gentle that I like, is just before she was divorced from my uncle.  Uncle Brown had been seeing another woman. Aunt Callie discovered this and caught them at a dance at the Bluefield Auditorium.  The only time I have ever heard of this quiet, little gentle woman, being very angry. It's said she proceeded to beat them both with her pocketbook. My mother said this 5'2 little woman using her purse, did a number on Uncle Brown's head and she gave both of them a black eye. The police arrested her for assault.

At that time they had a night court over in Bluefield, WV.  They brought her before the judge and the judge told her she couldn't be assaulting her husband, though he understood her reasoning. He fined her $25 and said he was releasing her. He asked her if she had anything she wanted to say and it's said that Aunt Callie told him, "Let me pay you another $25, because when I catch him, I'm going to do it again!"  The judge warned her not to do that or he would have to put her in jail and I guess she didn't. Instead she got a divorce.  She never remarried.

Aunt Callie's house was one that if you came to visit you had to eat. If you did not eat, she was offended!! But it was hard not to eat at her house because she was one of the BEST cooks ever. This is her Banana Pudding Recipe. I inherited her double boiler pot to make it in.

Aunt Callie's Banana Pudding


3/4 cup white sugar
3 tablespoon plain flour
Dash of salt
4 eggs (1 whole and 3 separated)
2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Vanilla wafers

5 or 6 bananas fully ripe sliced. Combine 1/2 cup of the sugar, flour and salt in top of double boiler. Mix in 1 whole egg and 3 egg yolks.

Stir in milk. Cook uncovered over boiling water, stirring constantly until it thickens up to look like pudding.  Remove from heat, add vanilla.  Spread small amount of pudding on bottom of glass casserole dish. Cover with wafers. Top with sliced bananas. Pour 1/3 custard over bananas. Layer with wafers, bananas and custard ending with custard.

Beat remaining 3 egg whites until stiff but not dry. Add 1/4 cup sugar and beat until mixture forms stiff peaks. Pile on top of pudding covering entire surface. Bake 425 degrees oven for 5 minutes until browned. Serve hot or cold.  I always like it cold.

P.S. The last picture is Aunt Callie in her mid 80's. She passed away at age 90. Yep....embalming fluid.



Copyright 2007-2016 Denise Smith

Pineapple Upside Down Cake Recipe

I made a Pineapple Upside Down Cake for my Love slave's birthday. Ok, before I get emails about that let me explain. Eddie Atwell, my partner, gave himself this name the first time he ever went to one of my family reunions.

It was one of those reunions where many of the elder's could not keep up with all the young'uns and who belonged to who. So we had name tags and every one kept putting their name and who they were kin to, like Denise, Lena's daughter.  Well in the spirit of that, Eddie put on his name tag, "Eddie, Denise's Love Slave", and it stuck!!  Family call me and ask me all the time, "How's your Love Slave?" And he is just fine.

So for his birthday Sunday I made a Pineapple Upside down cake. It was that or an Apple Dapple cake, (which I will share that recipe probably later in the fall).  I didn't have the apples but had pineapple. Besides I have had several asking me about my recipe and I thought that would be good to share on this blog and so I am. It's all I got cooked as it's been one of those weeks. But it made a nice addition to KFC.

My Pineapple Upside Down cake recipe is really a modified hot water sponge cake from a 1940's cookbook. I bake it in a 10 inch, deep dish, cast iron skillet. The skillet belonged to my great grandmother and is the same one I make cornbread in.  You can use a larger skillet just monitor it on cooking time as it won't take as long.

I remember I once gave this recipe to a friend and she said it tasted great but the cake kept falling. As a matter of fact, all her cakes she said fell.  I watched her one time baking and she would open the oven about every fifteen minutes to look at a cake. Just in case there are new cooks out there who don't know, YOU DON'T do that!! Until a cake is just about the end of the cooking time or it's done. That's why it falls, even if it is a box cake! The oven temperature drops. And don't stomp around your oven either as that will make a cake fall. My mother would chase us out of the house if we dared to stomp around her oven or even be in her kitchen when she baked a cake.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

4 eggs separated
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 can pineapple slices (lg.) drained, SAVE the JUICE
1/2 cup pineapple juice heated to boiling
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla or lemon extract
1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
Maraschino cherries

Cake batter
Beat 4 egg yolks until very thick; Beat 4 egg whites separately until stiff peaks form, set aside;  Gradually add the egg yolks to the white sugar and beat until well mixed. Add heated pineapple juice; mix well. Sift rest of the dry ingredients together, (flour, salt, baking powder) add and mix well; add the extract and fold in the egg whites; mix until smooth.

Prepare the skillet
Melt 1/4 cup butter in skillet on top of stove; add 2/3 cup brown sugar and mix well. Remove from stove.

Arrange Pineapple slices in bottom of skillet on top of butter and brown sugar mix. Put Maraschino cherries in center of slices.

Pour Cake batter in skillet on top of pineapple slices. Bake 325 degrees for 1 hour (slow oven) Let cool slightly (about 5 minutes, cools too much and it will stick in the pan) and flip onto large plate. The pineapple will be on top. Pineapple Upside down cake.

We like it served with vanilla ice cream. 

I have a TON of RECIPES. Many came with the family history stuff. If there are any you are specifically looking for let me know, I might have it. If you need Appalachian "exotic meat" recipes, (you know deer, squirrel, ground hog)  let me know too. We have some of those also.   Any you would like to see just comment or contact, or look for me on Facebook under Appalachian Heart Wood Blogger. I will get this blog linked to that eventually.

Copyright 2007-2016 Denise Smith

Mama's Appalachian Corn Bread Recipe

I'm not exactly sure why but women in Appalachia are expected to cook. I don't know if it's DNA or cultural expectations, not sure...it's just something we all in this family were expected to know how to do.

Though women's roles have changed along with the rest of the country, knowing how to cook these old recipes still survives. But I have a girlfriend, raised right here, who has never learn to really cook. Her husband said he knew she was no cook when they were dating because anytime he questioned her, "What about some dinner?" She grabbed her purse every time.

But most girls were trained at their mother's and grandmother's feet. Somehow knowing some of these recipes, cooking them for dinner in the modern world, is just something we do. Today we cooked the staple Brown Beans, Corn Bread, with diced onions, slice tomato, cucumbers and home made macaroni and cheese.

While making the corn bread I realized most of the women in our family, especially my mother, did not measure ingredients and they learned from their mother's and grandmothers the recipes by memory. But I could not ever remember how to make corn bread by memory. When I tried to find one like it online, in cookbooks, etc. I could not find one quite like our family recipe.

Couple of years ago, after my mother died, my brother gave me something worth more than gold. He was at Mom's house before she passed away, and made her measure out the ingredients for the family cornbread recipe. He let me make a copy of her notes. 

Now many would wonder why I would even think about sharing such a prize recipe with the world. I never understood the hoarding of recipes mindset.  We have family members that share recipes, but they will leave out an ingredient or two, so that if you try to duplicate their recipe...it never tastes like theirs.  There is always a karmic aspect to this practice. I've seen over and over again family wanting to credit the right person for a recipe, it's usually the "bad" recipe that survives and then they are not thought of nor remembered as such a great cook.

Sharing this recipe means that it will survive.  May even be made better.

Lena's Corn Bread Recipe
Ingredients:

3 cups Buttermilk
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar
3 1/3 cups self-rising corn meal
pinch of baking soda
4 tablespoons bacon grease or vegetable oil

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Put the 4 tablespoons oil in iron skillet. Heat oil in skillet in oven until very hot.

Combine buttermilk, egg, sugar, corn meal, baking soda together. Pour in oil from skillet and mix. Pour into oil coated hot skillet. This creates the corn bread crust.

Bake 30 to 40 minutes (depends on oven) until golden brown. You can insert a toothpick in the center to test. If no batter is on the toothpick it's done.

There are many cornbread recipes and this is just one. One suggestion was to add another egg to the batter. I have also made it with regular milk and it worked just fine.  I would love to hear your comments, suggestions, etc.

Copyright 2007-2016 Denise A. Smith

Dandelion Wine!!! Whoo HOO it's Spring! Uh...I mean Dandelion Jelly! Recipes!

Well hopefully ya'll can read this. I promise I will work on this design thing on this blog. First I forgot I had a blog then I felt a little like Dennis the Menace with a button that needs pushing. Wowwww!!!.... lookey, new design plates on Blogger!! Click! Oh...Crap!!  Have not a clue what I am doing but I will learn. Unfortunately anyone reading this will have to suffer until I figure it out! If your looking for the ditsy Appalachian historian who has CFS...you are in the right place!

Now let's talk Dandelions!!! While most people are trying to kill dandelions in their yard, we don't! That's food and medicine.  Yes, John Boy there is more than one type of "recipe".

You can fry the blooms and eat them with eggs, you can eat the leaves like a salad, or you can pick the blooms, process them and make jelly and WINE!  I'm going to post my two favorite dandelion jelly and dandelion wine recipes at the end of this article.

I looked out the window a couple weeks ago and just saw a sea of huge yellow flowers in the yard. Just about covered the whole yard. Now dandelions grow but this "sea" usually happens when the cicada's are coming back. They come up out of the ground and I believe they aerate the yard or something making dandelions get big yellow blooms on them. I was inspired.

I hadn't made anything out of dandelions in YEARS!  One of the last times was when a girlfriend and I decided the dandelions on the municipal court lawn in Radford were the prettiest, largest blooms we had ever seen.  We grabbed a bucket, bent down on hands and knees and waved at all those going to court while anticipating our future dandelion wine. That's been some years ago! Now it's all the rage to kill dandelions and if any were to show up on that lawn today they would probably be poisonous. Be careful where you pick.

Now with my illness I have to do this in stages. Modern appliances help with this. Not unusual to hear at my house, "Mom, what's this bucket of Dandelions in the refrigerator?"  So I pick them one day and rinse them, process them the next and boil them, then cook the juice into what I want another day. If it were not for this in stage stuff, I'd never get anything made in my shape. But if you have the energy in an afternoon you can have jelly and wine in process.

My grand daughter helping me pick asked me, "Granny, what are you going to make with this?"  "Why I'm gonna make WI...uh...Jelly, little one." She's six so she was calling my jars of jelly Wi-jelly until I fessed up that we also have a small bit of wine brewing.

Blooms Boiling in a pot NO GREENERY!

Now the trick to dandelion jelly and wine is you ONLY USE THE BLOOMS! NO GREENERY! This is a pain in the butt to have to process but worth it because otherwise your jelly, wine whatever comes out a bit bitter. I like to gather just the blooms and rinse them under water. Kind of funny because sometimes the cold water hits them and they will just close up. I take scissors and cut off the base of the flower and then pick the green part from the petals. Put the petals in a measuring cup so I know when I can stop. LONG PROCESS. An ice cream bucket full yields enough for jelly or wine.


Greenery left after a bucket full of processing. Makes my fingers hurt!

The jelly reminds me of honey and you have to use a pectin to make it jell. The wine...just reminds me of warm days. I like to keep some back just for winter, makes you feel warm just thinking about making it.

Here are the two recipes I use:

Dandelion Jelly

Pick enough to process and get 1 quart of bright, fresh, dandelion blossoms. Rinse them quickly in cold water to remove any insects. Using scissors, snip off the stem and remove the green collar under each blossom.

In an enameled saucepan, boil the dandelion petals in 2 quarts of water for 3 minutes. Cool and Strain, pressing the petals with the fingers to extract all the juice. Measure out 3 cups of dandelion liquid. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 package of powdered fruit pectin (1 3/4 ounces).

Add 5 1/2 cups of sugar, stirring to mix well. Continue stirring and boil the mixture until jelly stage. A candy thermometer works well here unless you are like Granny Burress and can "smell" when it's jelly.

Pour into small glasses and cover with melted paraffin when the jelly is cool.

Dandelion Wine

 Ingredients:
1 quart processed dandelion blooms
1 gallon boiling water
1 package active dry yeast (.25 ounce)
8 cups of white sugar (I've used as little as 5 and it came out fine)
1 orange, sliced
1 lemon, sliced

Pick enough to make 1 quart of bright, fresh dandelion blossoms processed. Rinse quickly in cold water to remove any insects. Process using scissors, snip off the stem and remove the green collar under each blossom until you have 1 quart (4 cups).  Heat 1 gallon of boiling water. Place dandelion blossoms in the boiling water and let boil 4 minutes.  Strain, pressing the petals to extract the juice.  Let the juice cool to at least 90 degrees. I test it like testing baby's milk.

Stir in the yeast, sugar, orange and lemon slices. Pour into either plastic gallon jugs or a 3 gallon crock or you can get fancy and use a plastic fermentor with a lock. If using jugs put a balloon over the mouth of the jug. It will expand. For my crock I just use saran wrap loose or even a garbage bag tied tightly. In the old days they just used a crock with a wooden lid or a barrel with a cork. Just keep it in a cool area for a couple of weeks until the bubbles stop.   Siphon the wine off of the lees and strain through a cheese cloth before bottling. You can use quart sized canning jars with rings and lids, an old brown jug, or old wine bottles. Best to age the wine for at least a couple of weeks if you can't wait. I leave mine as long as I can. Always consult your state laws on winemaking. Click Here for Virginia Laws

Hope you can enjoy your dandelions. Have any questions contact me.



Yep it's fermenting!

Now I share my recipes freely. And I copyright my words. You try to make a living on it and a pox will be heard!