This
past January 31st, a good friend of mine was speaking to a group of Stockton
University students about her college degree, which is from Stockton, and the
ways that it prepared her for a career as craftswoman and breeder of sheep on
her local farm. That morning, she said to the students, in the eight-degree
cold snap, the first of her sheep gave birth to its lambs.
“One
day early,” I thought, remembering back to an older, pastoral time, when the
Celtic festival of Imbolc, later St. Brigid’s Day, February 1st, celebrated the
arrival of lambs and thus spring.
Two
thousand years ago, or even five hundred years ago, winter stores consisted of dry
foodstuffs (grains), milk products turned into cheese, and meat products
preserved by smoking, salting, or processing into cured sausages. In some
places, you could preserve foods by submerging it in bogs (400-year old butter
has been found in Irish boglands), but such food surely tasted a bit off. Even
with skill, food storage over a long, cold, hard winter was unpredictable, and
historical records suggest that late in January, food often became very scarce
indeed. Families and communities might be on the edge of starvation, sharing
out decreasing amounts of crumbling cheese or what few remaining oats survived the depredations of rodents. But then, as the
situation became dire, as if by miracle, the sheep lambed. And the community
could share life-giving sheep’s milk, high in milk fat, with the newborns.
Food
and folkways of people are closely intertwined. Let me skip centuries to the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many years ago, Mom collected
recipes from her family and from Dad’s family. There were cookie and pie
recipes that I recognized from holidays at Grandma’s. But there were dozens of
other recipes that I had never seen on the table or tasted. These were older
recipes not just from my grandparents, but some from my great grandparents, and
perhaps older still. When I first read these recipes, I kept seeing “green,”
“grind” (in a cast-iron hand crank grinder that I knew Mom still owned), and
“can.” We had a fruit cellar in the family home and as a young’un I had spent
hours peeling tomatoes (badly) that soaked in hot tubs in the basement,
preparing them for canning. But all of this green, ground stuff? I had to talk
with Ma about it.
Mary Elizabeth Oakes Ferguson
Pepper Relish
From Mary
Elizabeth (Oakes) Ferguson, my great grandmother
12
green peppers
12
red peppers
5
onions
Chop
fine, pour boiling water over all. Let stand 15 minutes (drain).
3
cups vinegar
2
tablespoons salt
1
½ cups sugar
Bring
to boiling point, put in peppers. Cook 10 minutes.
Can.
Green Tomato
Mince Meat
Also from Mary
Elizabeth (Oakes) Ferguson, my great grandmother
Chop
1 peck green tomatoes. Drain off juice. Let come to boil after adding as much
water as juice. Let come to boil three times each time draining then adding as
much water again to the tomatoes. Add:
1
peck apples, chopped
1
pint vinegar
3
lbs. seedless raisins
1
tablespoon salt
½
tablespoon cloves
1
tablespoon cinnamon
¼
lb. citron
¼
lb. orange peel
¼
lb. lemon peel
6
lbs. brown sugar.
Cook
slowly two hours. Put tomatoes and apples through grinder.
Can.
Higdon
From Margaret (Ferguson)
Kinsella, My Grandmother’s Recipe:
1
peck green tomatoes, grind and drain. Cook 20 minutes in salt water. Drain well.
Grind 8 onions, 6 green peppers. Add:
2
tablespoons mustard seed
1
tablespoon celery seed
2
½ pounds brown sugar
Cook
2 hours slowly.
Can.
Editor:
Curious minds
ask, what IS ‘Higdon’? We googled; it was not easy to find. But, it IS a
relish. One helpful writer wrote: “Green tomatoes and mustard seeds are the
key! My friend's family has been in Indiana for years but never heard of anyone
else who made Higdon relish.”
She found
references to it in 1863 in Pennsylvania. That recipe used cucumbers instead of
green tomatoes.
An 1866 Ohio
farmer used melons:
“Higdon is made
of green melons, cucumbers and onions. Take off the rinds, and slice and chop
them fine; green peppers are also used. Then add mustard seed and spices. Press
it into a jar and cover with vinegar. In a week or two it will be ready for
use. If onions are not agreeable, leave them out. It is a nice pickle.” The
Ohio Farmer’s family really liked higdon—“We all liked it so well that I will
send you the recipe, believing if it was better known, it would be far more
generally used.”
Closer to home,
a Rochester NY cookbook also had a recipe for Higdon relish.
Pickled Beans
From Emily
(Carr) Taylor, my step-great grandmother
1
peck string beans cut and cooked in salt water, as for table use, and drain.
3
lbs. white sugar
½
C. flour
½
C. dry mustard
1
T. turmeric
1
T. celery seed
2
quarts vinegar
Put
dry ingredients in small container; mix with a little vinegar to a smooth
paste. Add the rest of heated vinegar and cook until thick. Pour over green
beans and can, or use now.
When
I asked about these recipes, mom smiled and said, “Times change.” At the turn
of the century, she explained, and certainly throughout the Depression, there
was little refrigeration. The iceman made his rounds, but the icebox was small
and for cooling milk. In summer and through harvest time in fall, there were
plenty of greens on the table, “But if we wanted a bit of green at the family
dinner in January or February, it had to be canned months before.” So the
family canned peppers, and green tomatoes, and string beans (and of course
peaches, pears, cherries, pickles, red tomatoes, jellies and jams).
I
still have a canning setup in my basement. All I need is a fresh batch of mason
jars and some lids. Perhaps this growing season I’ll can some peppers or green
tomatoes and think about Mom and Dad, and their parents, and their parents. Or
perhaps I’ll visit my friend’s farm and stand by the sheep pen, thinking even
further back into our food and folkways.
