Charleston Had It All # 54
Gardening, Canning, and Preserving
By Mildred Reeves Burnett
MAKING HOMINY
Hominy was an inexpensive food, easy to make, and required wood ashes that were plentiful in those days. The ashes, having been steeped in water, were drained through a cloth, making lye.
Our family looked forward to Mama’s homemade hominy. She poured shelled field corn, white or yellow, into the iron kettle of boiling water over a fire, and then added about equal amount of wood ashes tied loosely in a cloth bag. The corn boiled until the husk peeled off easily, taking hours to do so. Mama then dipped the hominy from the kettle, washed it thoroughly in cold water, and boiled again. Salting and canning came next. Hominy was seasoned when served.
“If you didn’t make it, you didn’t have it.” That’s the way it was.
Incidentally, large black iron kettles, and crocks as well, were important items in earlier times, having many uses, some of which I have spoken.
MAKING SAUERKRAUT AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT
Not only did my dad make wine, he also made sauerkraut. I have followed his recipe numerous times, so I can tell all about it. While weather is still warm, wash cabbage heads. Discard outer leaves and core. Five pounds will make a “right smart amount” of kraut.
One fall, I bought a fifty-pound bag of pretty green cabbage, for an irresistible price, at Mueller Farms. Digging out Dad’s old fashioned cabbage cutter, I sat down on a straight-back chair and shredded cabbage over a large crock, sprinkling 3 tablespoons of canning salt for every five pounds of cabbage, alternating it. I threw in a little more salt “for good measure.”
Pack cabbage in large crock, cover with a cloth, and a board or plate, and a weight, so the brine will rise to cover the cabbage. Every two or three days skim the scum that forms, and change cloths. In around three weeks, when the house reeks with rank fermentation odor, it’s kraut.
“What in the world am I going to do with all that kraut?” An idea popped into my head. Soon after, I called numerous friends and threw a big sauerkraut party, and received raves untold.
The following fall, I had all kinds of helpers. There were Fred and Dorothy Lee DeField, L. G. Black, Jr., Richard and Louise Sutherland, Al my husband, and our son Stotts.
Richard stood at the kitchen sink cutting and coring cabbage while the rest of us took turn shredding it, laughing and having a fun time. A whit more than three weeks later, we held a sauerkraut supper at the Charleston Country Club. The following years the supper grew with additional friends coming.
We served pork tenderloin and kraut, ham hock and beans with carrots added to defuse the beans as Fred and Richard advised, and large pans of cornbread. What else— I can’t remember, only luscious cakes Richard baked, which we loosely called “sauerkraut” cakes.
Those were memorable days.
GARDENING
Come March, we helped Mom cut Irish seed potatoes, leaving a few “eyes” on to take root, and worked to get them all in the ground by St. Patrick’s Day. Our family always planted a large garden with many kinds of vegetables, and in August sowed turnip and mustard greens, enough to feed half the town, it seemed. As weeds invaded we chopped them out.
When the garden overflowed with food, we sat on the porch and helped Mom stem and cut green beans, and hull black eye and purple hull peas to be canned. Our fingers were stained purplish by the time we finished hulling.
Washing and rinsing “fruit” jars and lids were the next job undertaken. Mom packed sterilized jars with the food stuff and cooked it in a pressure cooker.
Housewives also canned in large pots, covering the jars of food with water, the pot with a lid, and then cooking the required time. There were those who canned in lard cans, and others in black iron kettles over a hot crackling wood fire, in the yard, using same method. Folks used whatever means they had in canning.
Not only were vegetables canned, but also jelly, jam, preserves such as strawberry, pear, and watermelon (cutting the rind from the white area and leaving on a little pink). Cucumbers were pickled and spiced peaches, too, mincemeat, butters—apple and peach, all canned.
Then there was pumpkin. Yes, it found its way into glass jars like about everything else. Okra, we didn’t do a thing to, except eat it cornmealed and fried, in soup or boiled—slick enough to slide down the throat.
Irish potatoes were dug and stored on straw or dirt floors in sheds or cellars, and turnips pulled and hilled up before freezing. Relish was made from green peppers and tomatoes still hanging on the vines right before frost. Onions, with dry, straw-colored tops tied together, were hung in cool places. Field corn was ground for cornmeal at Fowlkes and Hill’s Grist Mill or maybe at home.
Mom dried sliced apples and peaches, covered with cheesecloth, on the chicken house roof, because we liked dried fruit pies fried.
We Reeves kids used to sit on the tin roof of the chicken house and eat green apples we’d picked from the orchard, but never did get a “belly ache.”
When the apples, peaches, and plums ripened, we ate fruit right off the trees. There were pretty bright red cherries too, but sour as all get out. Lots of fruit was always available for eating, giving away, and canning as were vegetables.
It’s difficult to name all things prepared in or about the home, since there was, indeed, so much. “Man worked from sun to sun and woman’s work was never done”, was a saying I remember.
To Be Continued |