Recipes

I am posting this picture for Julia who asked to see the whole
tree. This is one of the peach trees, it is called a Fair Time Peach.
It comes off about September about the time our local fair
starts and it is a wonderful peach. Much better than say a
cling or something like that.

I make my menu's once a week and then go grocery shopping
so that I only go to the grocery store once a week, and so that
I just have to look at my menu to know what I am going to be
having for dinner. It has saved my sanity.
I am a little bored with my recipes so yesterday I was going through
my cookbooks and I ran across this little old cookbook that had
been in my grand mothers things. I thought I would share some of them.
I will be reproducing
them just the way they are written.

Hard Times Coffee
Short of coffee an' too pore to buy any? Here's yore answer if you have
the followin' ingredients.

Mix well 2 quarts wheat bran with 1 pint yellow corn meal. Add 3 well-beaten
eggs and 1 cup best sorghum molasses. Beat well; spread on pan and put to dry
in oven. Use great care by stirring often while it is browning---this is the secret
of good coffee. A hand full is sufficient for two persons. Sweet cream improves the flavor
of the brew, but as with store-bought coffee, this is a matter of personal taste.

Possum
"It jest stands to reason thet if your're jest newly hitched, you might not know th'
best way to fix' possum---(sum mothers fail to teach their young'uns th' important
things) So if you wants to weasel yore way into yore man's heart---spring this recipe
on him."
Take a possum and parboil until tender. Take out of water and put in bread pan.
then pepper to taste. Take three large sweet potatoes and boil until tender. Lay these around
possum in bread pan, put in oven and bake until brown. Serve warm.

"If you keep a mule shoe in th' stove oven it will keep hawks away frum th' chickens."

This cook book has recipes for Coon, turtle, carp, and all kinds of venison and quail.
I love reading through it, it has recipes for feeding the invalid. It has one that I thought was cute for making " Home Brew."

" Chase wild bullfrogs fer three miles to gather up hops. To them add ten
gallons of tan bark, 1/2 pint of shellac, an' one bar of homemade soap. Boil
36 hours, then strain through an I.W.W. sock to keep it from workin'.
Add one grasshopper to each pint to give a kick. Pour a little into th'
kitchen sink if it takes th' enamel off, it's ready to bottle."

I don't know what an " I. W.W. sock is and I don't know what tan bark is
and I think it is a joke so don't try it.

My great, great grandmother's favorite food was something that was
fixed with squirrel brains. My grandmother told me how they would have
to go out in the woods, and hunt squirrels to fix this dish and it took twelve squirrels.
My grandmother hated doing it but they had to anyway. Maybe that is why she
had this book in her things.

I won't be fixing any of these recipes this week. I just enjoyed reading them.
I thought you might like it too.
The cook book is called " Ma's 'Cookin' mountain recipes. It has a picture of a
woman in a bonnet cooking over a black pot outside.

I just thought I would share a few.

Have a lovely day,
~Kim~