Joy Sheffield Harris - The Florida Cracker Cookbook: Recipes & Stories from Cabin to Condo

Published by American Palate

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.com

Copyright 2019 by Joy Sheffield Harris

All rights reserved

Front cover, top left: Crowley Museum and Nature Center in Sarasota; top right: Patrick Owens Sheffield; center: authors collection.

All photos courtesy Florida Memory Archives (FMA) unless otherwise noted.

First published 2019

e-book edition 2019

ISBN 978.1.43966.842.9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945076

print edition ISBN 978.1.46714.319.6

Guava Glazed Cinnamon Sausage Gems, Collard Greens Florida Style, Deeper than Deep South Hoppin John, Sunlight Fluff and Oatmeal Bars Florida-Style from Easy Breezy Florida Cooking by Joy and Jack Harris (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, Seaside Publishing, 2008).

Reprinted with permission.

Buckys Banana Pudding and Delicious Deviled Eggs from Harris & Co. Cookbook: I Cant Believe I 8 the Whole Thing by Charles Knight (Tampa, FL: Health Craft Inc., Depot Press, 1994).

Reprinted with permission.

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To Jack, my husband, and Jackson, our son.

They are my inspiration and at-home editors.

And to all the Cracker cooks who have fed generations of hungry children.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

A side from the final chapter, most of the recipes in this book have previously been published, either by myselfin Harris & Co. Cookbook: I Cant Believe I 8 the Whole Thing, Jack Harris Unwrapped, Easy Breezy Florida Cooking, A Culinary History of Florida or Florida Sweetsor in cookbooks found in the public domain. Many cookbooks published before 1924 are considered part of the public domain, and those recipes help illustrate the cooking styles of previous generations. For example, the 1878 cookbook Housekeeping in Old Virginia by Marion Cabell Tyree offers insight into methods used for early cooking. Although these are not classic Cracker recipes from Florida, they represent a style of cooking. Since early written recipes from Cracker kitchens are scarce, these older cookbooks from other southern states help answer questions about cooking methods used at the time Florida was being settled. These books also show the progression of recipe writing, which evolved with a clearer understanding of methods and measurements, and how cookbooks were eventually streamlined. From open-hearth cooking with tin roasters and spiders to the modern age of ferromagnetic pans and induction cooktops, the flavor and quality of our foods have grown with fits and starts to reach an age of easy, economical dishes served every day. Project Gutenbergs Housekeeping in Old Virginia can be found as an eBook for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg.

In 1796, Amelia Simmons wrote American Cookery, the first cookbook to introduce American ingredients in the recipes. Many women of the previous century were not only great cooks but were also prolific writers. S.R. Dull explains in Southern Cooking, The interest taken in my weekly page, in the magazine section of the Atlanta Journal, which I edited for twenty years, convinced me of the need for an authoritative source of information on the preparation of foodstuffs the Southern way, and as a consequence Southern Cooking was born in 1928.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Amanda Irle, formerly with Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, for getting this project started and to Joe Gartrell for following through. Thank you to Kelly Smith for her diligent work and delightful comments while editing The Florida Cracker Cookbook.

Thank you to all my friends and family who contributed to this book, with special thanks to:

Mary Owens Sheffield

Lisa Tamargo

Ellen Nafe

LeAnn and Charles Knight

Patrick Owens and Carolyn Sheffield

Dennis Floyd and Laurelyn Sheffield

Marlene Forand

Peter Borg

Thank you to all my Flora-Bama aunts, uncles and cousins who are baked into my culinary Cracker memories.

Thank you to Lisa Kalmbach and her mother, Betty Cook, for providing me with beautiful family photos, including those of Granny Mattie and Lisas grandfather David Jackson Cook, whom my father admired and Granny Mattie adored. We are proud that our son, Jackson Arthur Harris, shares his name.

Introduction

OUR HERITAGE

The desire to know our heritage passes mysteriously from generation to generation, skipping over some members and possessing others powerfully. To understand what a man has endured is to know the man.
Merewyn Stollings McEldowney

The stories of our food and how we eat are deeply rooted in our family tree. When you shake that tree, with its gnarly branches and loose leaves, its surprising what you may find. As a seventh-generation Florida Cracker, our son, Jackson, can add hillbilly and redneck to his lineage, as well as British and Scotch-Irish roots that go back to the founding of America. With a little bit of Seminole Indian mixed in, from both Florida State and our Native American culture, he has a heritage to be proud of.

My father, Floyd Sheffield, was born at home on June 4, 1925. As a fifth-generation Floridian growing up in the piney woods of North Florida, he was a true Cracker. I need an asterisk beside my claim as a Cracker.* My birth on a military base in Libya makes me a naturalized American citizen, but we moved back to Florida when my father was transferred to Tyndall Air Force Base for my formative years from kindergarten on. My Cracker father, GrandFloyd Sheffield, and redneck mother, GrandMary Owens, brought together the best of both when they met at a Florida rodeo and married in Alabama less than a year later. State lines are only imaginary boundaries between Florida Crackers and Alabama rednecks living in LA (Lower Alabama) and the Florida Redneck Riviera.

Margie Yates and James Elwood Cook family, circa 1915, with Margies brother Cornelius Yates on the far right and Mattie Lenora Cook in the middle of the back row. Courtesy of Lisa Kalmbach and Betty Cook.

Mary Frances Owens (GrandMary) and Floyd Sheffield (GrandFloyd) on their wedding day, October 27, 1951. Authors collection.

When I met my husband, Jack, on a TV show he was hosting while I was promoting Florida seafood, I did not know he referred to himself on the radio as Jocular Cracker Jack Crack Jock Jack. He hails from West Virginia and calls himself a high-altitude Cracker. After more than thirty years of marriage, we discovered his strong Scotch-Irish heritage of almost 50 percent when his DNA results arrived in the mail last year. Knowing that much of the Florida Cracker way of life started with Scotch-Irish immigrants, our son and I decided to give him the honorary title of Cracker-in-Waiting. Jack has strong British ties as well, making him even more compatible with my side of the family.