Pickling and Preserving: The Foxfire Americana Library - Foxfire Students (2011)

PRESERVING AND COOKING FOOD

“Then y’ had some good eatin’.”

Imake my sauerkraut by the full of the moon because my mother and grandmother made it that way and their mothers before them made it that way.” That’s what Lizzie Moore told Russell Bauman, a Foxfire student, when he interviewed her. She also told him, “When you learn something in the family, it goes right down the family with you.” Lizzie Moore’s words, however, don’t just apply to sauerkraut. They apply to a whole way of life, one that is disappearing in some places, changing in others, but still occasionally appearing when we least expect it. After having worked with Foxfire for several years, while in high school and now in college, I know that we are trying hard to preserve the old Appalachian customs and ways of life—our heritage. What I didn’t realize is that some parts of it are still very much present.

While working on this section, I called my grandmother daily for help in editing the recipes. Not only did she not mind, she was thrilled. She doesn’t care how I learn to cook or what my motivations are just as long as I eventually learn. I was proud to announce to my grandmother that I knew how to make sauerkraut and that the recipe I was using was similar to my great-grandmother’s.

I was at home one night with my mother, who was trying to teach me how to make slaw. I remembered Lizzie Moore’s comments about learning to make sauerkraut from her mother. That’s when I realized that this chapter is about family traditions, and one of those traditions is taking the time, each and every day, to sit together over a meal and discuss family life. The importance of dinner cannot be stressed enough. Mealtimes were among the few occasions when the whole family sat in the same room, did no work, and simply enjoyed each other’s company. Important decisions were made as steaming bowls of corn and potatoes were passed around the table. News about engagements and births, local gossip, and news from far away were shared as families gathered together for the evening meal. And when the community lost a member, people gathered at the home of the bereaved family, bringing every kind of good food imaginable so that the family wouldn’t have to worry about cooking.

Although our lifestyle is quite different today, the dinner meal is still one of the most important parts of the day. In spite of the fact that meals where the whole family eats at the same table and at the same time now seem to occur less frequently, the times when families do eat together still bear resemblance to those of years ago. Who’s getting married, who’s having kids, and who’s moving in or out of the community are still favorite subjects. Other matters often discussed are who makes better biscuits or when the next fishing trip will be. And neighbors still take food to those who’ve lost a loved one, knowing that the food is not as important as the concern behind it.

I will be the first to admit that my motivation for putting together this section on recipes was that, first and foremost, I love to eat, and much of what I love to eat is discussed in the following pages.

The words on these pages represent a collection of recipes, hints, and cooking stories, knowledge that has been passed down for generations, mother to daughter (or perhaps father to son), about how to care for a family in the form of fixing them what they like to eat. Here you have time-tested and well-loved recipes from families throughout the region. Many directions are not precise, as the women learned to add “a little bit” of this and “a dab” of that from their mothers, who did it that way because that’s the way their mothers did it.

—Lacy Hunter