Jennie Bowen and Phyllis Evans interview with Mrs. Crawford, Emma, Odessa, Thelma Greye, Ruby, and Lucille (part one)

The John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archive recordings contains unedited versions of all interviews. Some material may contain descriptions of violence, offensive language, or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. There are instances of racist language and description, particularly in regards to African Americans. These items are presented as part of the historical record. This project is a repository for the stories, accounts, and memories of those who chose to share their experiences for educational purposes. The viewpoints expressed in this project do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Atlanta History Center or any of its officers, agents, employees, or volunteers. The Atlanta History Center makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in the interviews and expressly disclaims any liability therefore. If you believe you are the copyright holder of any of the content published in this collection and do not want it publicly available, please contact the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center at 404-814-4040 or reference@atlantahistorycenter.com. This is the first of a two part recording. Mrs. Crawford starts by reminiscing about how her family slaughtered pigs and what they used the meat for; throughout the discussion, the other women chip in about their own experiences. They then talk about cooking and preparing other food including drying fruit and baking biscuits and fruit pies, sometimes called moon pies. At 6:00 they talk about freezing food as a preservation method. They then tell stories about apples turning rotten. At 7:40 one of the women says that President Grover Cleveland drank apple cider at the Cotton States Exposition. There is a break in the audio until 9:07, when one of the women explains how to make Kraut and poke salad, which you need to forage for carefully because it can be poisonous. Thelma Greye tells a story about her mother using poke to cure her brothers itch. They talk further about traditional cures against lice and bedbugs. To conclude the interview at 15:20, Mrs. Crawford explains how they turned syrup into candy. No biographical information has been determined. AHC Oral History Cataloging Worksheet File Information Catalogue number l,~,u)::> 10:01$. II 0' ! Source Field' (ContentDM) Release form Yesor~ Transcript Yes or No scanned: From Yes or No DefauIt text: Contributed by an OR: Donated by individual: individual through <your org. name> Georgia Folklore Collection through <your org. name> . Object Information Enter .Informati'on about the plhlYsl.CaI oblj'ect here: Title 'vI, '), ( \ (\,qL ~ c) \? 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CMJ" \ ~N\\;'O I~Y,- ~O"',) c.oot ,..., (, ,~,vt,. , bl,L, Ir<);,\c 0'v,,::''x ~fN\' ("~ (1~'A"(t"\,,,:> 9.,) 'A,()~A<-. n.v\" ('J\ot .2 Recording issues \}0IItC,?;, ' (~ i(;~ (background t:Htl~._> noise, echo,' static, etc,) Subject Information Enter 'Informati'on about the content 0 f the object here: Subject Date Exact Date (yyyy-mm-dd) (use only one) Year (If only the year is known) Circa (4 digit year) 1'1 (v()( Year Span From To Subject Who Last Name First Name MI CY7J-'J.\C(" , 2> \-A(~ . t\i'c'liI'<'''') 0'''''<.:;.'' \\,;, , f}~H(." DJe'I{,IA, 'rUe'''' Subject Country State rl \c County Town Local Name Location \" '\ V,(/;\l</ Subject What AHC Cataloger will complete this for you. (LOC subiect headinos only) Keywords Burrison, John Personal names See subject who for additional names 3 Corporate f )\( 1\ ~Af,IJ l""_t)('\ I";) ., , I names ~yf:"";\ CAt" <:. ~.\ Geographic locations Topics "\)"J F'~~' ("~"''''''\ :SOo~, ~~(>.k., V',~ rc(\()(',<';;, (" ~ \" '''. . 4 FOliC COOKING 14E'rHODS AND RECIPES By: Jennie BO~lOn and Phyllis Evans Folklore 401 John Burrison 5-28-69 (,.) rI INTRODUCTION This information was recorded at a Quilting club meeting at Ben Hill Methodist Church, having already had unsuccessful attempts at collecting all day in Clayton, Georgia; Dillard, Georgia; and around and in Rabun Gap. The informants were all female, in their late 60's and 70's, and all from the middle Georgia area. Their names are: Mrs. Crawford, Emma, Odessa, Thelma, and Ruby ~ c,""j 1,u,ci lie" We did talk to two people in Dillard, Giselle and Kayy, one of French background and the other of Georgian background, who told us a few things. In the summer time the mountain folks put things in springs and cold \ caves for preserving them. In the winter, salted-down vegetables were common, and they were usually canned. Giselle also went on to tell about making biscuits and corn bread in skillets on the fire (Spiders), and heaping coals on top. We found a delightful old log cabin which we found out later to be occupied by two old men, and we took a few pictures of the cabin and its surroundings. This was in Clayton, Georgia. Our last informant, Mrs. Earnest Haynes, 68 years old, of Atlanta, Georgia, was too bashful to talk to us with the recorder on, but she did give us a few recipes. We took some pictures of her old cook books, one of which dates back to the 1820's. CON'l'ENTS TAPES Spider Cooking Roasting potatoes in ashes Bakod frozon egg Ohow-ehow lIoppin I John Hominy PAGES { # ? Oraoklings - Chit.lings Go'tting hair off hog Bladder toy Calvels foot jelly Souse meat Livor pudding ,1 C; /0 1/ /1 Sausag'8 Krout (begun) Krout Poke salad - Poke weed Parboiling Story about Poke weed Story about bed bugs Candy pulling Getting hair off hog Moon Pies - Dried apples Presorving apples Story about apples Cider REOIPES j,j,,(} /3/'/ I ~; --(0 ( S .," if, /(; ///';( (~ i? /1 " ,)J) ,,) (., ,'," ... ) (Of)" .l/}(:, TRANSCRIPTION - SIDE ONE Emma: Here ladies, I found a stranger in my bed. Everyone: (laughing) Mam? What do you mean? What'd you do with er--him, her or it? Well, I declare. Emma: I watn't expectin him. His bed was piled fulla stuff so he went in another bed. Jennie: 0 K Mrs. Crawford, would you like to start talking about it? (laughs) We'll just see if it picks up. Mrs. Crawford: Some of the the uh old methods of cooking were to uh use uh skillet with legs that they called a "spider." Keep it from the hearth so that when they made their corn pone and bread, they'd pullout the hot coals and ashes and put under it and some on the top of it. This uh skillet had a top with a a lid that would hold eh the coals so that the bread could be browned on top. At the same time it was bra wner1, on the bottom and I don't know why, but it had a different taste from anything cooked any other way. It's jest betta. Another thing they did at the fire place was to uh roast sweet potatoes and irish potatoes either one in the ashes. They jest put em in the edge of the ashes and pull the hot ashes over 'em and keep them there til they got soft and done. They have a different flavor when they're cooked like that than any other method of I baking. Emma: An the eggs are good too, you know lotta times we'd go gather up the eggs and it'd be so cold that some o'em would even froze and pop . An my daddy would uh take a brown paper sack and wet it and wrap the egg in it and put it in the ashes and bake it. Odessa: I'd forgotten 'bout that. Jennie: I've never heard of that. Mrs. Crawford: I never heard a that. Emma: But my mother used to bake biscuits .. Odessa: Oh mine did too. Emma: In the in the uh skillet on the fiDe with the lid on it Odessa: And Cracklin corn bread. Ooh, that was delicious, mmm-huh. Emma: Well did you ever bake the potatoes in the ashes, Odessa? 0.: Yea. Umm-huh. E.: Well did you ever roast corn in the ashes? 0.: Some time I think so. Uh-huh. Mrs. C.: I seem to remember that too. (Someone comes in) (laughing) E.: Well, in the Fall we made Chow-chow. You got it turned on? J. : It's on. E.: And uh you gather green tomatoes and uh cabbage and bell peppers and cucumbers if you have them, and a ,,:onions. You grind it up with a food chopper and you sprinkle the top with salt and let it sit a few hours, usually over night. J.: What is that food chopper you're talking about? E.: Food chopper? A little chopper that you grind up ': ,things with. J.: Oh. E.: The next mon1ing you kinda squeeze summa the juice out. The salt is drawn out, you know, and then you uh mix ya vinegar, and sugar and uh spices --Always take some allspice and tie it on in a little thin bag. Put it down in there and uh put the same amount of uh vinegar that you do of sugar and cook that, and uh just cook it a few minutes and it's jest delicious. 0.: Can it in jars--in pint jars. phyllis: It's gotta tangy sweet flavor; it's really unusual. E.: Sweety sour. 1-3 1-4 Mrs. C.: It's gooct with vegetables, especially turnip greens. E.: Dmm-huh. Phyllis: Dict you put it on black-eyed peas when, you did it? That's what my mother does. E.: Oh yes, it's good with meats, too. Mrs. C.: With black-eyed peas, we always cooked rice at the same time we had peas. And that was what they called .. J.: Do you remember anything abuut canning? Did you can much? Mrs. C.: Hoppin John. J.: What'd you say? Mrs. C.: I said they called that Hoppin John. J.: Oh. Mrs. C.: We usect to have Hoppin John a lotta the time. E.: Rice and peas? Mrs. C.: Yea--That's real gooct. E.: Cooked together? Mrs. C.: Not cookect together, but cooked and servect together uh, I mean you served the rice and then put your peas on top of it. phyllis: Well, did they serve a lot of rice, you know, when you were a little girl, or was it mostly rice? E.: We jest had rice when we were sick. Mother would cook us rice and made us lemonade. P.: Really? (laughing) 0.: Rice was rather a rarity. E.: Yea, it wa~. P.: Would you have to buy it in the store? E.: Um-huh. We didn't have a They say Southerners used to eat grits--I never saw any grits till I got married, I don't guess. P.: Really? E.: We didn't cook grits. We cooked hominy. A lotta people say hominy - grits, but it isn't hominy, hominy - grits. It's hominy is made out of Wlole grains and grits have been ground like meal, only not as fine. P.: Umm-huh. Hominy's kinda puffy and yellow, idn't it? J.: There's a difference. E.: Well, it's yellow if it's made of yellav corn; white if it's made of white corn. P.: Well would you eat that for breakfast, or at a meal? 0.: Uh, Emma made uh the best ooh when I first knew Emma, she uh fried some Canadian bacon and then put her hominy in and kinda browned it good with the Canadian bacon and it was delicious. 1-5 E.: I, I do that with sausage and pork chops and uh jest ordinary bacon too, jest put it in if you have too much grease pour off some and need jest have a moderate amount. Just put ya hominy on in and let it brown a little bit after meat's cooked. DW you want her to Did you want me to tell about how you make the hominy? J.: Yea. That'd be good. (at same time) P. : Oh yea. E.; How they used to make the hominy? (clears throat) Well in the old days nearly everybody had what ya call an ash hopper which was an arr&1gement outside of the house in a where the rain dripped where it rained into a barrel where the ashes from the fireplace were put. The ashes from oak and hickory I believe; pine ashes were not considered any good. And uh the water would dissolve the lye in the ashes. (Someone enters the room) And it'd make a lye water and we'd uh ", soak;our corn that that is the dry grain after it's it's already matured and dried and soak it overnight in plain water and then boil it in the wash pot, in the with the lye water for hours and hours and hours until the husks uh came off and the grains of corn puffed up 'bout two or three times their size when they were dry. And then they had to be washed and washed 1-1) and washed and washed until all that lye water was washed off. Then you Then ya put it up--I guess we must have canned it, I forgot.what we did with it to keep it. 0.: We always ate ours up so fast (laughing) it didn't get to be canned. E.} oh you know these old store jars, that it something like antique jars that's what my mother put it in. 0.: Well, that's kinda like Kraut like they kept kraut uh E.: Yea. 0.: You used to make Kraut too, didn't ya? E.: Yea. 1-7 7 SIDE2~O: Mrs. Crawford: The back part of the hog was '" was cut up in small pieces and put in big pots and uh and Was cooked. Then all the water would cook out, and that Was to keep 'em from stickin' to the greasy part below. And all the lard was cooked out. And ye jest had a little, little, uh, brown dried up lookin' pieces of fat. And those were the cracklings. And you put 'em in the cornbread. And then the lard was strained and put in buckets. And the certain parts was cut for sausage added the ah sage and the pepper and the seasonings. And we would fry ours in little patties, uh, almost done. And then put 'em in a crock, and Dour some of the grease it was fried in over to cover as it'd keep a long time in the winter time and that way would preserve 'em till you got ready to eat. Emma: And then some people would take the, the, u~, what'd you call those things Chitlins part" Mrs. C: Yea, chitlins. E: It was, yes sir, it was the least ones. They took that big one and made it. Chitlinn. ~Mrs. C: And then the small intestine they used to clean and stuff the sausage. LAnd that means they cut it off and were link sausages. E: Ooh, were they good! ,y' 0: E: Page 2 - 2 Odessa: We made little sacks out of flour sacks about that big around (indicates with hands), wide you know, and stuffed that with our sausages and hung it up and then it was smoked in the smoke house in thar, and it was real good. Mrs. C: on the head meat, they put uh, they cooked up the head and the feetaand they made what they called souse meat, souse meat, heh, heh. And the feet had lots of gelatine you know, and that would, uh, kinda solidify. You could slice it. Some of these modern lunchmeats are real good, too. E: W~ll in the here now I know we'll buy a liver Dudding, but it's mostly cornmeal. Back home we always took the head and the liver and cooked 'em until it's real tender and then we put sage, and pepper and salt and you grind this through your sausage mill. And it would be - You do this while it's warm yet, yo~ know, and it was runny, like cake batter. But you would pour it up in pans and then you would just cut it out. Gel-like, Yea, and that to me, uh, you take good liver pudding and hot biscuit ooh, that's good eatin'. Mrs. C:Well, the difference in the souse and the liver pudding was that they jest used the head, the head and the feet for the souse and ek, they used the liver for the liver pudding 0: Yea, yould use it ... Mrs. C:We always fried ours, uh, cooked our liver and ate it fresh cause we liked it like that. Page 3 - 2 E: When we first married, uh, we had a hog and we killed it and (clears throat) I'm gonna make some souse meat out of the head and feet. And I didn't know to get 'em clean so I took Marcus' razor and shaved 'em. (laughter) And he went to shave the next morning and he said, "What in the world hafi happened to my razor?" I shaved the hog's head and his feet ya know, I couldn't get the hair off, I didn't know how to get it off. Mrs. C: I bet it was a straight razor. E: No, it wasn't, it was a safety razor. It was flat. Phyllis: How did you get the hair off of the hogs? Mrs. '. c: WeilL Lyol,l, :you put it. in the edge of the fire, you know, I mean down in the hearth and you singed it off. P: Um. E: Well, the way I seen my Mother do it. Well, they used to take a knife and put it in hot water, you know, and the whole body of the hog and then scrape the hair off with a knife. They used, they used to sou~e a hog down in a tub 0' boiling water. We had an old bath tub we used out in the back yard. And you'd keep it in there so many minutes and take it out and then you'd scrape all the hair off. 0: My daddy had a bath tub. It was tin. And it was (clears throat) oh, deep enough, you know, to put a hog in and turn 'em over. It'd take four, you know, turning 'em if it's a big hog. Then he'd git up one morning, oh two or three o'clock ~ .. -; to Mrs.C Ruby: l'l: Mrs. C: E: Mrs. C: Page 4 - 2 and have his fire, his wood laid, ya know. The night before, and the thing filled up with water. He put a fire under that and got it good and hot till he'd git the hog skin. We used to fuss over the bladder. We'd take the bladder and uh, clean it real good and blow it UD like a balloon (laugh). And then we put dried pease in it so it'd rattle and we'd play with that and we tied a string to it, and we all claimed to one every time we killed hogs. And we uh have a fuss over who was gonna get the bladder. (laughing) Well, you didn't know what a balloon was (cough). That's the only thing in that order. E: It was soft. Mrs. C: It was tough, too. It didn't pop ever time you turned around. Yer sister's in yonder hTho, Alice? Dh, huh. Ma know, they used to call jello, gelatine. Calve's foot jelly, and wh~, uh, ya know anybody was sick, the old-time people used to take 'em a biliwl of calve's foot jelly. You've heard of that haven't you? P: No. Mrs. C: You haven't heard of taking a sick person a bowl of calve's foot jelly? J~nny: l'l: J: (laugh)lhaven't learned about that. Yea, sure I have Did you ever have any? /1 Page 5 - 2 E. : Mmm-huh! (Another lady enters) Mrs. C.:We're tellin about how to make some meat and liver pudding and chitlins. J.: Could you tell us how to make something? Thelma: Like what? J.: Just something that you used to , you know, one of your favorites. T.: Well, I like sausage more than anything else. J.: Sausage? T.: Well, I make sausage ever year runnin'. J.: Really? T.: You can't buy sausage in the store seasoned like you can make it yourself. J.: Well, tell us about that. ~.: Cut up the meat, get a cup, fill it fulla intestines, sage, red pepper, and salt, and let it sit over night and then the next day grind it up. Youjalways have to grind it twice for it to be good. J.: what do you grind it with? P.: Do you have a sausage mill? T.: A sausage grinder. A food chopper. P.: what does it look like? I mean could you compare it to T.: It looks like what you get in the store except it's got more lean to it than what you get in the store. It isn't all fat. /~ Page 6 - 2 Mrs. C:Nowadays they just make it outa the fat. E: An' I like mine real hot. P: Everythings so flavorful when it's hot. E: Yeah, that's right, heh. P: I was wondering what th~ sausage mill looked like. T: It's just a food chopper. P: Food chopper. T: Food chopper, 'cept it's usually bigger . . P: Hmm. About that big (shows with hands)? Well, I have an onion chopper. an onior~. ((hopper. T: I'm gonna run home and get my flowers and fix 'em while Alice is here. So I'll come back after while. J: Tell us how you make it. T: Well al I used to make it in a churn but in this day and time it don't make good in a churn cause they're too many insects and germs, and it ruins right quick. I just fill and pack a jar - full, quart jar and put a teaspoonful of salt and cover it with cold ~ater and ~et it sit. Mrs. C: But you hadn't cut up the cabbage yet. T: Huh? Well, uh, my cabbage is already cut. Mrs. C: Well, they didn't know you made it that way-start., T: You want to start from the beginning? J: Yea. T: Shred the cabbage. Shred the cabbage, you can either chop it or shred it, either one you want, which ever you preferl /3 Page 7 - 2 J: Is this how you used to do it? T: Urn-huh. Well you do it now that way, jou just chop it or shred it whichever way, it hasn't changed much. Just put it in a jar. I{ SIDE THREE Thelma: You want me to tell you how to make k~~ut. It used to be made in chu~ns and c~ocks but now ya got so many insects and ge~ms it sou~s befo~e you get IT ~ight. So you sh~ed you~ cabbage o~ chop it which eve~ one you wanna do which eve~ you p~efe~ then pack it in qua~t ja~s as tight as you can get .. pack it Put a teaspoonful of salt ann cove~ it with cold wate~ Put a tOP9~~ it but not tight so it can wo~k. And it'll wo~k for fou~ or five days, depends on ~eally how bot the weather is how long it'll work. Then uh when it quits wo~kin just tighten you~ top ctown tight and that's all that's all you "have to do . J.I Very good. (laughs) T.: The longe~ it sits, the better it gets. J.: How long can it sit? T.: Yea~ or two. J.: Really? T.: Depends on how long you wanna keep it. J.: It's aged. T.: As long as it don't mo rot, or mold. J.: Um-huh--That's pretty good. T.: Poke salad is a green and it is poisonous and you only pick the tender leaves of it and ya parboil it. people do eat it without it but it's not as good and it's you are liable to get summa the poison. After it gets old it lifts and starts bloomin you don't dare use it and uh you I it ta~s very much like spinach and you cook it like you do any other greens after you par boil it. Jest cook it till it gets done. In case you don't know what parboiling is you boil it bring it to a boil and pour the water off and put fresh water on and boil it again. And mix it with uh tlurnip greens and mustard. Makes it a lot better I think. But you can jest have it jest by itself and serve it with eggs like you do spinach. It grows on the side a the road all o'er the place. J.: Sounds pretty good. E.: Ye oughta taste the stems .. T.: You can pickle the stems -- Skin 'em you skin em when they're tender. E.: She skins em and She cooks em and serves 'em like asparagus. She says they taste very much like asparagus. You make pickles outta the stems. I tell ya but But ya you really got to do that real careful and be sure you get all that skin off because it is poisonous. T.: The berries are deadly poisonous. (laughs) 3-2 /& 3-3 P.: Did you make any kind of medicine from the berries of that little plant? T. : They used to, but I don't know. O. : But I tell you what the root's good for. T. : What's it good for, Mrs. Greye? O. : Itch. Mrs. C.: Good for the itch. 0.: Now my brother the depot agent was boardin' at home before I"z ,grown, and they one night my daddy had a store just across the railroad from the depot. And one day my brother Deke would tend the store and the next day it'd be the reverse. And Mother'd come home to dinner and say so-and-so has gone to Winston Salem, so-and-so has gone to Mount Airy,he's gone to Greensboro and those two boys had the itch and we didn't know it. (laughs) And they uz goin to doctors you know and so they had to take it. My mother said all right, Walter, that's my brother, says you go to the Yew-ground and dig me a basket fulla poke weed and He did; Says you wash it right good put it in a wash pot and fill the pot with water and start a fire and I'll have your medicine"ready 'fore night. So let Eden take this stopper. Well they go to the wash pot and git this water ya know that the poke root was boiled in and put the wash tub and carried it upstairs. So uh my mother says how you better take ,'t ;'1.) /7 a saucer of lard. My brother says, "What do you h think we are, babies?" But Walt took his bath first ann. the house is a ten-room house. Big ole long hall upstairs and downstairs. And he was jest running through that hall like crazy hollering for lard. I can see him yet. She had a big ole high lard stand you know tin settin' in the kitchen and she jest grabbed the saucer outta the cabinet jobbed it down there got er a saucer of lard and run and poked that stuff to him. Heh- But we never heard any more of any itch. T.: H~h, heh, One application? 0.: One application, Oueee, those two boys had a time of it up there. E.: The itch and lice, that's two things you could l0IDk out for when you go to school. Some body getting .. T.: I had a sister, my mother always said that if it was the last of school she'd get it. E.: I never had one that I know of but I had bedbugs. 0.: Where in the world are tpey bedbugs? E.: They gone. (Everybody laughs) 0.: I swanny. E.: My daddy could smell one and back then, you know we had a parlor. You had a parlor back then, but it was 3-4 If 3-5 kept closed up for when the preacher come or somebody had a baby and in the room, the parlor's one side of the hall, ann my daddy's and mother's room was across the front on the other side and they had one bed in there. W~ll that's where we sit when company come in like a woman come to spend the evening with us. We'd sit in there and well most of the time you took the woman's coat and lain it on the bed. And that night my daddy'd get ready to go to bed and he'd say-- I never heard him say anything but dad blame and he'd say, "Dad blame it Fanny. You'd jest as well tear up this bed. Sez there "Ching.l.chot"'. And he could smell one; it didn't have to bite him. Then they'd have to tear the bed down and he'd find the Ching-chot. Mrs. C.: One of the most popular social affairs that we use to have is to have a candy pulling. We'd take a half gallon of syrup, put a little sugar in it, and boil it down to a stage where when it was cooled, it wasn't hard but it wasn't soft, it was just ready to be pulled. Then two people would get a big handful and put it together and start pulling it and if you kept on pulling long enough the candy would turn white. The longer you pulled the lighter color it would get. You;had to have your hands well-greased before you started to /7 keep it from sticking to you because if you took it up when it was still so hot, it would burn you if you didn't turn it loose real quick. When you got it all pulled and white, you pull it out about into the size of a six-can tin, and lay it down on greased pan or some smooth surface. Then let it cool and you crack it up with a .. well, usually a knife handle or something like that. 3-~ SIDE FOUR Thelma: One thing that they didn't tell was about how they got these hogs in the hot, scalding water and put 'em up on benches and took 'em ... Odessa: And cut 'em up? Mrs. C: Cut 'em open. T: They cut the, uh, after they uh got the hair off, you <- had to put them up on tables to get that hair off andu then they hung 'em up and cut 'em in two, you know and took out the entrails and let 'em drain a good while, while they're hanging up. Phyllis: Did you get all the blood out? T: Emma: T: E: Jenny: E: Yea, you drain the blood out. My mama always managed to have a sick headache that day. I can feel 'em throwing water on those hogs. We'd stand around and keep the fires going to make the lard, uh, and you haven't got that thing on now, have you? Uh huh, go ahead. This is part of it) really. Then we take the tenderloin and cut from around the backbone, you know, the real --- Mrs. C: That's the best part of thej~eat. E: And we put it on a stick and roast it over the fire, you know, broil it over the fire, we use to and have a good old baked sweet potato. :IT: Yea, ha, ha. 0: My mother always fix us, uh, well, she'd have, uh, a big dish of dried fruit, you know to have on the hog killing. Page 4 - 2 It was to take the greasy taste, everything was greasy. E: T: 0: T: 0: E: 0: T: But to make, uh, what we use to call moon pies. Did any of ya'll make 'em - out of dried fruit. Baked moon pies? Yea. I st,ill do. o\"X" I do too if I can getAto some dried fruit. I dry my fruit in the mountains in the summer and have pies all winter. Well now, Fred, that's Florrie's husband, his mother and daddy have some apple trees. You know they live in Winston-Salem and so she always brings him some dried fruit and he keeps it. Till I'm over there to make him some dried, some moon pies. You know what makes the best ones, is to buy these Hungry Jack biscuits - they're a little bigger than most. They have the best taste and you roll 'em real thin. Just as thin as thin as a sheet of paper and then put your dried apples in there or peaches either and turn 'em back over you know. Make 'em where they're shaped like that round on one side. And then, uh, brown 'em in an electric skillet with just a little bit of Mazola. Oh, they're the best things. P: How did you used to make Laughter E: Well, about the same way only we used - we didn't use - we didn't have Mazola and things like that then, we didn't have the skillet and the dough made .... 0: No we sure didn't. T: E: T: E: T: E: 0: T: 0: E: Page 4 - 3 We had biscuit dough like pastry sorta, you know. We used to go from the beginning, you know. Biscuit dough. My mother used biscuit dlugh and she would make the best pies of anybody. It's the temperature., the way you fry 'em, you know. That's what makes 'em good. You can't fryy'em fast. No ya can't. Ya have to fry 'em slow and le"t 'em get real done. I like an old iron frying pan to fry in ya know. That's the only kind you use. Yeah. I have a little one about this big and I make small pies in it. J: You do? P? Did they call those fraffid pies? (General agreement) E: J: E: 0: E: 0: Well, they put fancy names to tPlem, but they was dried apple pies. Is that what a moon pie is? Yes, it's dried apples and you cook your apples and mash 'em up real fine and you put some spices- Grate a little orange or lemon peeling in 'em- that's what makes 'em good. Well I thim~ that just take you some dried peaches and mix with 'em and I have mixed prunes if I didn't have peaches. Just cook some prunes in ~m. You know they cost so much more now, you just can't afford to buy 'em. Page 4 - 4 What did you say? Prunes. Prunes. 0: Uh huh. You just can't afford drl,ed fruit. I was over to the Farmer's Market not long ago and they had this - it wasn't quite a half a pound - dried apples. ~hey was so pretty and bright and I know they'd been handled nice, you know, they hadn't been dried on the outside. And I paid a dollar for 'em. To have the best dried apple pies. It wasn't half a pound. Younknow in the mountains they have so many apples and uh every morning. I uh had a big white dishpan and I'd cut 'em up sliced enough apples to pile that up. And I'd put an Army cot out in the sun early in the morning, put newspaper on it. Lucille, you 'member helping me da that ... Lucille: uh huh. I've done it on many a time at home, you know Mrs. C: E: Mrs. C: E: 0: E: E: 0: P: and I oughta remember. And if you get 'em out early in the morning in North Carolina in the mountains it's so close to the sky they'll dry in one day and I bring 'em in at night and put 'em in a pan in the oven and dry 'em Gut real slow and cool 'em for a while. And they were ready to go! I dried some at home year before ... I started last year because ... They keep for a long time? E: T: E: T: Page '+ - 5 Put 'em in a little sack, you know, like a feed bag or flour sack and sun 'em every now and then and if you put 'em in the oven, uh, that's what, uh, that's what keeps from getting worms, you know, but urn you know about that. Oh, they'll keep just on am on. And if you have a deep freeze, now we've kept 'em, ah might be some in the freezer home now. I froze mine too. I find I cook more than I want to at one time. Well, I mean though, before you freeze 'em, before you cook 'em any, just put 'em in plastic bags or containers what ever you got space for. The rest of this tape had nothing of interest for our (J~ I I r)<Y!- dkec If,,! c"nc0A" neA G);I'~ <: ,;"okJ'''; rneAI,(J,~") pro ject. . ,'j , HECIPES FRO!>! Ims. EHNEST HANES, age 68 Sally Lunn 1 pt. mille 2 tbl. bu'tter 2 tbl. sugar 2 teas. saH 3 eggs -j\. cake oompressed yeast J!'lour suffioient 'to make a good thiok batter, 3 or 4 oups Soald milk and while hot, put into it butter, sugar, salt. Let stand, till tepid. Dissolve yeast oake in cup of oold water. Beat eggs together until light; add mwlk and yeast, then flour; beat for several minutes to 'thoroughly mixed. Set aside to rise. Hhen risen, beat d01m. I,ot rise again and repeat the beating d01m '1'he beating takes the plaoe of kneading and is done three or four times. The vessel should be kept at a pleasan't degree of heat, 68 or 10 degrees. When time to bake, pour into a greased pan and let double in size, which \1111 require about an hour. Dake in a moderate oyen from 3/4 to one hour, aooording to the depth of the loaf. It should be well-oooh~d, with a thiok orust. It may be pu't into muffin molds for indi,vidul;1.1 lunns. The small ones Hill require about 'thirty minutes to oook 'the same as rolls. ~H1rn Pone Cornbr~ 2 oups meal (wator gTound preferrocl) 1 teas salt I tbl. grease Celd water to make inte dough Sif'l; and measure meal, add salt and shortening, mix into dough with eold 1m'ter and let stand a minute, adding more Hater if neoessax';\, , Shape inte small pones and place on hot, greased shalloTi pan, leaving spaoe so they will not touoh PU:1; into hot oven for ten minutes, then reduoe to medium, bake thirty to forty minutes. \'Tatermelon Rind Preserves Prepare the rind of one medium sized melon oarefully, removing green and red portion. Cut into pi00es of uniform shape and size. for twenty-four hours in mildure of: 1 gal, 1iLl-ter 2 heaping tsp, salt all Soak If syrup (Used for Page 2 Freshen in oloan \;at"r i'or twenty-four hours. Soak for t1'1entyfOUl' hours in mixture of: 1 e:al. 1nVGer 1 level 'GSp. alum Fresheil in oles,r 1'1atel' for t11enty-four hours. Dr,d'l and \'Teight. Boil in oloar lmter 1'0:" about r;n hour, or until 'Gender. Use Olle ))ound sugD,r to eaoh pound rind, Add ol1e oup of water for eaoh pound of sugar and add tsp. of small pieoes of ginger for every four pounds of sugar. Bring to boil. Add rind and boil for an hour or more, beoomes too th iek befol'o rind is olear, add boiling wa"Ger. three generations) GnANDl~OTmmI S HOSE JAH rrhis was a "rooipe" us"d to malco saohets for 1'1ardrobes and olosets. The lady still makos this in largo quantities and gave us a sam))le. rose petals sal t orris root oinnamon rose oil allspioo oologne oloves dried lavendel' nutmeg lemon Verbena leaves Dry rose po'l;als, alternate layers of rose petals, ddied lavender and orris 1'00'1;, Add la,yer of lemon Verb,?na, pour ovm' 'I;his a tablespoon allspioe and cloves and, f,nr clrops of rose oil, Cover; open in 'I;hree woeks. The follo1'ling is from a loaflet that I'll'S. Haynes has had for years. It isn I t dcc'l;ed, 1m'I; H is very old and !iithered. Horr TO ~ulK8 CANDY Buok I s S'tove and Range Company "The demand is grea't in every family for a candy 'book !'Thiob. will tell how to rnalce good oandy at home. IIe have soleo'Ged a number of the plainest reoipes from the bes't oandy authorities, a,nd, anyone Oem w1ke oandy Iii th a li ttlo patience. A round-bottomed sauoepan ef graniteware or a poreelain kettle is b"fJ'1; '1;0 use for boiling, exoepting a olean, brighl; ooplJer kettle, whioh is 'best of all. '1'he marble top of the oentorl;able or the slab on 'I;he bureau or oommode ma,y be borrowed to pour out on fOl' oooling, l'Ti thou'l; injury to tlto slab. Greased pans 'tTill do, but 9.l'e no'l; "0 {,ood as the marble. / Puge 3 A Ii ttlo advioe abou"b pullin8 may no"b oome amiss, for in this, as in eV01'ything else,there is a wrong, as 1"1011 as a right, ;;ay. Beginne1' S of'ten pull 11ith the palms of tho hands instead of "the finger-tips, Hi th the result of keeping the dandy ,rarm and sof'"t instead of making H hard and brHtle, Do 110t at'tempt large pieoes at i'irst. It is better "to take a small amoun;t, no-t more than a tablespoonful, unless you are an experienoed puller. Grease yOU1' finGers vri-th olive oil or butter, and begin pulling quiokly and lightly doubling the oandy betvmen pulls. 7.'ake oare ,that you do not begin until it is "tolerably 0001, 01' ,you l'fillJ. have blistered fingers. 11101asses Candy Take tl10 quarts of Porto Rioo, Hem OX'leans 01' sorghum molasses. jvjix two oups of bro;;n sugar in one oup of vinegar. Put all on "the fire together in a big sauoepan and let H boil stoetdily until a little of it dropped from a spoon into a oup of V01'y oold I"rater Hill harden, Then stir into the sauoepan half a teaoupful of butter and a teaspoonful of soda; boat it hard 11ith your sppon and pour i"t into bu"ttered pla"tes "to 0001, tnlen 0001 enough to handle, butter your fingers and. pull quiokly until ol'eamy I1hi te. If you should have moro "than you oaro to pull, pour it into greased pans, pu"bting it only onough "to malee a thin shi3et. Al~ this 00011'1 a littIG, mark it off into squares with a greased knife. Holasses Coooanut Jap Plaoe on slow fire one '1u(l,rt of New Orleans molasses and oneqUarter pound of b -utter. InIOn it boils, add five gL'ated ooooanuts and stir until a bit of H will roll inl;o a hard ball botl1een your fingers in oold wa:hsl' i thon pour out on greased slab. Whon ooibd out in"to squares or diamonds. ).\a,rsh-Iolallol1s Take onG pound of p01-rdered gum arabi 0 , on0 pound of pulverized of oonfeotionors I Bugar, half a pint of strong doooo"hion of althea or mal'Sh-mD,1101-1 l'OOt, ono drOll of oil of nmvol1, extraot of vanilla, Page 4 raspberry juioe or a little orange-flouer water, and the 'ihites of six eggs. Add a pint and a half of oold Hater to the gum arabio, set it on a slow fire in a olean, bright, round-bottomed sauoepan, stirring it oonstantly until dissolved, strain through a fine sieve into another olean, bright basin, and add the sugar and deoootion of marsh-mallow. Stir all toge'~her and plaoe upon a very slow fire - one oovered with a layer of ashes - and evaporate it to a '~hiok oons:lstenoy, stirring oonstantly -~o prevent soorching; then add the lfhi te of eggs beaten to a stiff Sn011! oonUnue the stirring steadily in order to prevent -the mass from stioking to the bottom of the sauoe pan and soorching, and thereby disooloring the paste. Try paste by putting a drop on the baok of yOul' hand. If it is suffioiently done, it will not adhere, NO~T add the oil of hero Ii or the orange flow'0r flavor. If -these flavorings are diffioult to obtain, vanilla extraot and raspberry juioe may be substi '~uted, Con-Unue to stir slo1'Tly a fe~T minutes longer, and then layout the paste on a marble slab whioh you have prepared by dusting thiokly 1'THh staroh or poudered suge.r, flatten out YOU1' paste ana. dust it l-r1. th staroh powder and when it beoomes oold, it may be out into suitable pieoes. Keep in air-tight boxes well dusted with staroh pOWder to keep drops from stioking together. Apple juioe may be used instead of the deoootion of mallou, or -tJdB may be en'~irely omitted, plain water being used. ') "~I P--I A PDF transcript exists for this recording. Please contact an archivist for access. Professor John Burrison founded the Atlanta Folklore Archive Project in 1967 at Georgia State University. He trained undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in his folklore curriculum to conduct oral history interviews. Students interviewed men, women, and children of various demographics in Georgia and across the southeast on crafts, storytelling, music, religion, rural life, and traditions. As archivists, we acknowledge our role as stewards of information, which places us inaposition to choose how individuals and organizations are represented and described in our archives. We are not neutral, andbias isreflected in our descriptions, whichmay not convey the racist or offensive aspects of collection materialsaccurately.Archivists make mistakes and might use poor judgment.We often re-use language used by the former owners and creators, which provides context but also includes bias and prejudices of the time it was created.Additionally,our work to use reparative languagewhereLibrary of Congress subject termsareinaccurate and obsolete isongoing. Kenan Research Center welcomes feedback and questions regarding our archival descriptions. If you encounter harmful, offensive, or insensitive terminology or description please let us know by emailingreference@atlantahistorycenter.com. Your comments are essential to our work to create inclusive and thoughtful description.