Appalachian Holiday
by Cathy Hortonphoto by Meg Reilley
As you gear up for the holiday rush…wrapping gifts, planning menus, arranging dinner seating (to maintain family harmony) and trying to keep just a little of your sanity, think of cooks of yesteryear. In addition to everything on our to-do list, they had to find time to butcher the hog, render the lard and can the last of the summer vegetables. Count your blessings, and praise Sara Lee.
Barbara Swell learned to cook from a long line of “old ladies” in West Virginia. After college, she became a social worker and continued to meet rural farmwomen who were delighted to share the secrets of their kitchens. For a time, Barbara and her husband even lived in a rustic farmhouse and cooked only on a wood-fired stove.
Some years and three children later, Barbara decided to parlay her interest into a career. She began researching historic cooking methods, relying heavily on old agricultural journals and cooking diaries to give her a sense of how people cooked and ate in earlier days. Eight cookbooks later, Barbara now teaches old-time cooking classes in her 1940s log cabin kitchen. Classes focus on traditional cooking methods such as pie-baking, jam-canning and woodstove-cooking. Groups are kept small to ensure hands-on involvement and, after a demonstration, you actually prepare the dishes yourself. People often mention a feeling of nostalgia as they cook in a Dutch oven.
Reading through the cookbooks that Barbara has put together, you can learn all sorts of interesting facts: it takes seven hours of kissing to burn off a good size piece of apple pie, for instance. If you have no one to perform that exercise with, take a tip from Kentucky Superstitions, 1920: “If you take the last piece of pie from a plate, you will get a handsome husband or wife.”
The books are filled with wonderful old black and white photos, household tips and recipes in both their original form as well as updated versions for today’s kitchens.
As for old-timey Appalachian holiday cooking, Barbara says that it was a time for families to come together. Food centered on what was available, such as pumpkins, nuts and mulled cider. Children received a stocking instead of gifts on Christmas morning in most households, and the tradition of Christmas trees was reserved for wealthier, urban homes. Simple cookies of sugar and butter often finished a holiday meal. Families ate well, and simply, utilizing their gardens and farm animals for sustenance. An avid member of the Slow Food movement, Barbara believes in the restorative power, both physically and emotionally, of whole foods that are prepared with love.
Scarcity, or sometimes rationing, was the Mother of Invention in many a kitchen of yesteryear. Barbara is particularly intrigued with some of the ingenious “mock” recipes that were born out of necessity, such as mock cherry pie. It is a beautiful and tasty holiday treat that might find its way into your next gathering.
Log Cabin Cooking & Music
111 Bell Road, Asheville
828-299-7031
www.nativeground.com
Mock Cherry Pie
Original Recipe from the
Gold Medal Flour Cook Book, 1910:
Cover the bottom of a pie plate with paste (pie dough). Reserve enough for upper crust. For filling, use 1 cup of cranberries cut in halves, ½ cup raisins seeded and cut in pieces, ¾ cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon Gold Medal flour, lump of butter size of walnut. Bake 30 minutes in moderate oven. Some like a little more sugar.
Updated Recipe:
¾ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
½ cup water
1 ½ cup fresh cranberries
½ cup raisins
½ lemon, juice and rind
Butter, walnut size
Add cornstarch and sugar to cold water; cook until it’s clear. Add berries and raisins, and cook a couple of minutes until cranberry skins pop. Stir in lemon juice and rind. Add butter and pour into an unbaked pie crust. Cover with a lattice top crust, crimp, and bake at 400º about 30 minutes, until filling bubbles.
