Davidson - Grandma Graces southern favorites: very, very old recipes adapted for a new generation

GRANDMA GRACES
SOUTHERN FAVORITES

GRANDMA
GRACES
SOUTHERN
FAVORITES

VERY,VERY OLD RECIPES ADAPTED FOR A NEW GENERATION

MARTY DAVIDSON

Copyright 2005 by Marty Davidson.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Rutledge Hill Press, a Division of Thomas Nelson Publishers, P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, Tennessee 37214.

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This book is sold without any warranties of any kind, express or implied, and the publisher and author disclaim any liability for injury, loss, or damage caused by the contents of this book.

Illustrations of hearth and cookware (pages xiv, 3033) by Alicia Adkerson.
Illustrations of food by Tonya Pitkin.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davidson, Marty.
Grandma Grace's southern favorites : very, very old recipes adapted for a new generation / Marty Davidson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-4016-0219-3 (hardcover)
1. Cookery, AmericanSouthern style. I. Title.
TX715.2.S68D435 2005
641.5975dc22

2005008215

Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 5 4 3 2 1

TO GRANDMA GRACE,
WHO MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE

Down where the suns most always shining,
Where poverty clouds have a silver lining,
Where theres chicken and corn bread with every dining,
Thats where the South begins.

Down where knighthoods still in flower,
Where they marry for love without a dower,
Where money is useful, but not a power,
Thats where the South begins.

Down where the latch-strings outside the door,
Where a friends a friend, whether rich or poor,
Where they trace their ancestry back to Noah,
Thats where the South begins.

Anonymous

CONTENTS

I thank relatives and friends who were helpful in making these recipes usable. The excerpts from Grandma Graces receipt books for everyday living, which appear throughout the book, come from the following sources: Dr. Chases Recipes, or Information for Everybody: An Invaluable Collection of About Eight Hundred Practical Recipes by A. W. Chase, M.D. (Ann Arbor: 1867); Mackenzies Five Thousand Receipts in All the Useful and Domestic Arts: Constituting a Complete Practical Library by an American Physician (Pittsburgh: Troutman & Hayes, 1852); The Housekeeper Cook Book (Minneapolis: The Housekeeper Publishing Company, 1894); Useful Knowledge, or A Familiar and Explanatory Account of the Various Productions of Nature, Mineral, Vegetable and Animal Which Are Chiefly Employed for the Use of Man by Rev. William Bingley, A.M.F.L.S. (Philadelphia: A. Small, 1818).

GRANDMA GRACES
SOUTHERN FAVORITES

I f you are looking for excellent cooking with a taste of the Old South, you will find it in these pages. Within each recipe, enhancing the taste, youll discover a dreamy mixture of southern culture, down-home warmth, and family pride.

Chicken and Cloud-Tender Dumplins, Gingersnap Gravy, Aunt Ellas Green Tomato Pie, Apple Cider Cake. These recipes have been passed down from generation to generation in my family, and I want to share them with a new generation that is hungry for wholesome southern cooking. When you fix these recipes and read the fascinating family stories accompanying them, youll feel like you are basking in the flavors, tastes, smells, and warmth of the Old South. Enjoy!

HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE

I had been wondering what I could possibly do with the collection of outdated recipes Grandma Grace left me. I opened the shoebox of old cooking recipes, some penciled on scraps of paper, but most in narrow writing tablets with front covers wrinkled, corners missing. All were brown-spotted from age. Some headings indicated their origin from Aunt Hezzie, Cousin Ludie Mae, even her mother, Rachel, who practiced her cooking expertise before and during the Civil War. They were enchanting, with their pinch of this, dab of that. Gazing at first one, then another, they somehow seemed familiar. Suddenly, I realized the recipes were for food I was brought up on, only they were written in fireplace language.

In the old days, instructions in recipes (called receipts in the 1800s and earlier) were so skimpy and vague they appeared to be written only for the experienced cook. The usual directions were take a few, put in a handful of, scatter a few pinches, and the like. Some of Grandma Graces recipes had quaint instructions and terms not readily understandable, and some had no instructions at all.

Another part of my inheritance involved receipts that were not instructions for food but for everyday living. Grandma had saved receipt books published between 1818 and 1894 that offered advice on topics such as using milk to paint the barn, curing ulcers with carrots, and mending broken glass with garlic juice. I removed these books from the brown paper bags that Grandma had declared kept the bugs away. As I thumbed through the pages, I came across facts that Grandma had instilled deeply in me, reminding me of the tremendous influence she had on my life. She and Grandpa Ned lived within walking distance of our house, and I spent many days with her. During these visits, she described in great detail the old ways of life, explaining decades-old methods she still practiced. Later, I realized her stories included subtle messages about the best way to handle ordinary incidents in everyday life.

Both the cooking recipes and the receipts for everyday living were exceptional because they captured a way of life in the Old South that has now disappeared. Grandma wanted me to preserve them for our future kin, but some scraps and pages were already so disintegrated, they would be short-lived.

As I sat mulling over what to do with Grandmas treasures, dozens of images of my early childhood ran through my head. Suddenly, her big fireplace loomed before me. She was kneeling in front of the fire with the long bill of her bonnet pulled forward to protect her face, shiny with homemade cold cream. When I asked why she didnt use her little wood-burning cookstove that sat in the corner of the kitchen, she said she couldnt keep an even temperature in it like she could with fireplace coals. I already knew there was no equal to the scrumptious taste of her lemon meringue pie baked in the Dutch oven on red embers pulled a little forward onto the hearth.

I remembered Grandma laughing when she told me how hard it had been to get used to her new cookstove. She washed the turnip greens, put them in the black bucket-pot, and hung the pot over the fireplace as she had done in the past. All at once, she remembered she should have put the greens in her new aluminum boiler and set it on her new wood-burning cookstove.