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I think there must be different levels of Hillbilly. Dog, guinea pig, cat, camel, emu? I'd eat it before I eat a spider but feel free to eat all the spiders you want.I would even pass you the plate.
You would be amazed at what you will eat if youre ever hungry enough. But I will try pretty much any food once to see if I like it. Thats the way I was raised. My grandfather once said to me, "Will, the fact that we will eat pretty much anything is what kept me alive in that German camp. Rat tastes the same as squirrel and bugs arent bad once you get past the crunch".
I know you are right. In certain circumstances a person would have to eat whatever they could find but I hope it never comes down to someone telling me "C, you have to eat this spider." I was raised on "rough grub" (or whatever we could afford) that's what it's called in the hills where I lived. I'm not sure if it's called the same thing throughout the mountains. I'm not a picky eater and if push came to shove I'd eat a lot of things I would rather not. In fact because I've traveled I like a lot of international foods but I can't say I am super adventurous. I know sometimes it is better to not ask and just eat it. Where I come from it is very rude and offensive to refuse food. If someone offers you food you take it and eat it or try to even if you hate it. It would have to be a do or die situation before I could manage to choke down a spider though.
Same here. Only we called it "poor do". We used to joke that we would have biscuits and gravy for breakfast and, as a nice change of pace, gravy and biscuits for dinner. Our food bill was less than $15/week. No joke. We got by because we grew our own veggies or picked wild foods. Dandelions, water/field cress, cattails, etc. My grandfather had poultry, but, if chicken or duck wasnt available, we have eaten snakes, turtles, squirrels, rabbits, doves..., pretty much any critter we could get. I could set traps as well as any adult before I was 7 years old. Clean the things I caught, too.
I had no idea you could do any of that to a cattail or that there were poisonous lookalikes!True. Dialects can vary, not just from state to state, but from valleys separated by only a few miles. We also use scald/scalded. You can scald yourself, you can scald vegetables (to remove the skin from tomatoes before canning, etc), and it can also mean an area of dead vegetation. We had to be resourceful or we didn't eat. I can even turn fat-free powdered milk into buttermilk.
That $15/week was for flour, coffee, tea, and sugar. Ive made black strap molasses, rendered hog fat to make lard, churned butter, and even made soap using rendered fat and hard wood ashes (lye). The nice thing about rendered fat is "cracklins". Makes some excellent cornbread.
My mother, grandmother, and two of my great-grandmothers passed on all their recipes and traditions. Unfortunately, Im the only one who really wanted to learn them all. I make two types of biscuits. Eatin and soakers. Eatin biscuits are just that, light, fluffy, and are amazing. The other is soakers, which are primarily used to soak up gravy.
Cattails? Well, it depends upon which part you are eating or if you are using it as an ingredient or additive. The female plant, you can roast the tops and eat them like corn. Or dry it and pound it into "flour". You can use the rootbase for stew (like pieces of potato) or pound it for a paste. You can dry it and pound it into a powder. But, you have to know what youre looking for because there is a lookalike plant that is poisonous.
I had no idea you could do any of that to a cattail or that there were poisonous lookalikes!I just knew they were edible but nothing else. I had no idea you could use different parts of it. Maybe you should write a book. You could call it "Survival in the Mountains" or something along those lines but make sure to include pictures of plants or else people will accidentally poison themselves.
For whatever reason I am not a good hand at biscuits. I can make gravy but biscuits seem to elude me. They either taste good and look awful or look good and taste awful.Oh well, practice makes perfect right? Feel free to ship me any eatin' biscuits you may have. Who knows they may taste just like my Granny's. Try explaining a cat head biscuit to people who have no idea what you're talking about. Oh the facial expressions and confusion are hilarious! I really want to try my hand at making an apple stack cake. Mamaw used to make them before I was born and my Dad talks about them from time to time. I think I'll give it a try for his birthday or thanksgiving. Cornbread is a source of contention in my family. It is a battle I will never win but that's okay. As long as they let me have sweet cornbread once in a while I'm okay with losing.
This was one of the places my people called home. The government made it a part of one of the National Historic Parks...I have mixed feelings about it but what is done is done and it's not as if I have any right to fuss about it. The other places they called home...well they have disappeared into the mists of time, hidden in the shadows of the mountains. The counties are still there but the homes and such are only memories.
That is very true, about the dialects/accents! Isn't it odd though? For instance, if I were to go to Middlesboro and then travel to Pikeville there is a noticeable difference. I always found it strange and interesting how much can change from one valley to the next though more than one valley separates Middlesboro and Pikeville. I wonder what caused the differences apart from how remote and removed one community was from the next. I suppose it also had to do with which people group had the strongest hold on any given area and perhaps what they did for a living.
Well, if a zombie apocalypse ever comes I say we hunt you down. You can be our leader.
One year my older brother came to us and asked if we had something he could take to work for their Thanksgiving meal. The only things we had available were a jar of home canned bread and butters, a dried apple stack cake, and we offered to make some biscuits. We made a little over five dozen cat heads. 64 to be exact. One guy at my brother's work was from West Virginia and another was from the same little town in Tennessee my mom's parents are from. He told them what he was going to bring and when he arrived the day of the meal, they met him at his pickup. They actually told him, "You can leave, but the cake's a-stayin". We never did get the half-gallon jar back that had the pickles in them. We never got the cake plate back. The two large bowls we sent the biscuits in, well, it took over a year to get them back. We make two stack cakes for Thanksgiving and two for Christmas, because as time consuming as it is to make one, you may as well make two. Oh, and we also make a vinegar stack cake and a strawberry's and cream stack cake. Ive been making stack cakes since my mother's health started going. Now, I do all the cooking at the house and most of the holiday meals. Have you ever had an Irish Potato cake? If you decide to make the stack cake for your dad and need some tips, I would be happy to help.
Some poisonous plants are actually edible at certain times of the year and if you know how to prepare them properly. Poke salad for example. You can also turn acorns into flour or a beverage.
My uncle still says "hit" instead of "it". Such as "Hits ovar" for "Its over there". It also used to "irk" our football coach when my brother and I would either slip into our "dialect" or into Cherokee. Of course, when we had a game, the other team didn't understand a word we were saying, either. Unfortunately, I cant post any pictures of my family's ancestral homes because my relatives are still living there.
I agree. I think it was a combination of factors. Isolation, if they were exposed to the people (natives), and where the original inhabitants came from.
Zombies? Sure. I will even dress like Daryl from the Walking Dead. lol Um, but with much shorter hair.
They loved all of it so much they kept the jar, bowls, and plate? I'm not surprised you didn't get the jar back but they kept the plate?! It's good they at least returned the bowls, eventually. That is really odd. Maybe they were hoping you'd pay ransom in biscuits and cake to get them back. I admit I have been guilty of keeping a jar due to thoughtlessness or forgetfulness but never someone's bowl, plate, or other crockery.
Vinegar stack cake? I have never heard of them. Are they tart? I've heard of apricot and strawberry stack cake but never vinegar. The strawberry and cream sounds good but I have to avoid strawberries, which is a shame. It sounds interesting.
I have to make a stack cake now. I mentioned it to my Dad today and he was so excited that I can't back out now. ha ha. So, I would welcome any tips or hints.
Irish potato cake? Are you talking about the tater cakes that are also known as boxty or potato pancakes? If so, then the answer is yes. I even had them in Ireland and they are so tasty. If not then no. I know a little about poke salad but not enough to risk eating it without consulting someone who knows the plant well. I've never eaten it, to my knowledge, but my parents grew up eating it.
I understand "irk" and I've heard people use "hit". ha ha. Do y'all ever say "don't care to"? I used to use the phrase a lot but it confuses a lot of people so I try to keep that in mind. Where my family is from saying "I don't care to" is not a refusal or a negative statement. If someone asks, "Do you want to go to the store with me?" and you respond "I don't care to." it's understood that you don't mind tagging along. You can imagine the confusion I caused when I would use the phrase while I was in seminary.
I'm glad your family was able to hold onto your ancestral homes. I don't know why so many people are leery or even frightened of mountain people and the mountains. I've known adults who, when invited to come home with me, flat out refused. They would tell me they weren't going anywhere near the mountains. They were afraid of the "hillbillies". I was baffled. I would look at them and say "Do you know me? Do you know where I'm from? Do I frighten you?" but most of my old friends never would go home with me. Alright, I think everyone can live with you not having hair that resembles Daryl's.
Actually, I think the plate was a matter of "went home with the wrong person", but we know what happened to the bowls. There was a guy at work who mentioned to my brother, "I haven't had a homemade biscuit since I left home to join the military when I was 17". He was in his late 30's, early 40's at the time. Neither he, nor his wife, could make homemade biscuits. We found out who it was when my brother returned the bowls. Of course, that didn't stop me from suggesting to my brother that the cake plate and jar had ended up as some weird shrine, and that the creator of the shrine offered gifts in the hope that the jar and plate would somehow, spontaneously regenerate their contents. Yes, my brother does think Im crazy. lol And I try to keep it that way. lol
Vinegar cake isn't really tart. Its sweet, like lemonade or lemon pudding is sweet with only a hint of tartness. You can make a stack cake with almost anything. Especially any kind of dried fruit. You just have to know which spices go better with each "filling". Basically, a stack cake is the original "fruit cake", made before they learned how to float the fruit in a batter through flouring. When are you going to make your dad the cake? Do you want the hints and tips now? I can tell you all the mistakes when I first began making them. Like not making sure the pans were well greased and floured. Those thin layers stick in a heartbeat and will tear the layer when trying to drop them out. Its best to have a clean bath towel on the surface where you are going to turn out the layers. Having fingernails can be a problem when pressing out the dough into the pans since the layer, before cooking, is usually only about 1/16 inch thick. Since you have had to divide your dough into portions (I usually do 6 layers) knead each portion into a ball, then place in the center of your greased/floured pan. Then turn the pan, pressing out from the center. This is extremely sticky dough. Make sure to have a small bowl of flour within reach. That's just a few.
Irish potato cake is an extremely rich, Chocolate cake, which doesn't use oil or eggs for binders. Only "creamed potatoes". It is also filled with nuts and dried fruit. Its a bit like eating a giant candy bar. Only, its very moist. Poke salad can only be collected for a short period in the early spring when it is new growth. We only collect it if it is only 3"-3.5" or less in height.
Yeah, we use "don't care to" and "don't mind to". I think people's fear stems from a history of "hillbillies" being distrustful of outsiders. Far too often, when hillbillies encountered outsiders, the outsiders tended to either try and take advantage of them or treated them as if they were "savages" or subhuman. There is a reason many hillbillies refer to outsiders as "foreigners". We are very clannish and when we take offense, it can lead to violence. That has lead to that reputation.
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