#Appalachian food

[intheholler]

"Turning My Snarky Appalachian Mamaw's Quotes into Inspirational Posters" from appalachopossum

[kimberly40]

To a native of Appalachia, soup beans is just a name for a pinto bean soup everyone makes. Simple, traditional, and mountain, through and through.

A pot of soup beans that are slowly simmered all day with remnants of ham fat results in soft, creamy beans. The ham bone and fat are the heart and soul of the flavor. Served up in a bowl with a side of cornbread, soup beans are both an essential source of sustenance and a comforting meal.

Soup beans refer to brown beans (such as pinto beans) that are cooked with pork for flavoring. Other types of beans can also be used such as white beans, butter beans, or black-eyed peas, but it’s the pinto bean that is the favorite of mountain folk. Soup beans are often re-cooked as fried bean cakes, or made into mountain chili the next day.

Soup beans can be a friendly reminder of growing up with family and enjoying familiar smells cooking on the stove.

(By Kim Wright)

[samantha-paige-howard]

Vlogging Appalachia- Grayson Highlands state park fall harvest festival-...

[clatterbane]

The latest pickling experiment underway: dilly beans made with thawed-out commercial frozen green beans!

It seemed worth a try. You need to blanch fresh green beans for a few minutes anyway, to neutralize weird bean chemicals. Those are already blanched, and they stay crispy enough that it might work.

I haven't tried any from fresh green beans in years, and...that never turned out well before. Every batch I have made before molded on the top. Probably because the blanching does essentially pasteurize them, wiping out the natural lactobacteria hitching a ride on basically any kind of produce.

One way to get around this, I guess: mix things up!

I have certainly known people to pickle corn and beans separately, but never together like that. Guessing that probably is an extremely old combination, for some people. Throw in some squash, and you'd have some Three Sisters mixed pickles.

My Nana regularly did make dilly beans alongside the crocks of kraut and brine dill cucumbers. Guess she really liked that flavor profile too. No idea how she kept the beans from molding.

My original workaround thought was to try laying maybe a cabbage leaf in on top, as good as it is at fermenting itself. They're also great to help keep anything else from floating up to mold.

But, I decided to go one up this time, and fish a donor starter piece of leaf out of the last still-working batch! I had enough already out, so that jar got a couple of layers anyway. Plenty to go around.

I had expected the radish skins to leach a bunch of color, but not enough to turn the brine so pink!

That hopping active cabbage did almost immediately cloud up the top of the new brine. Taking that as a promising sign

Otherwise, that's got fairly standard dill pickle type seasonings. I did throw in another of those little frozen homegrown chiles, a big clove of garlic halved, and a pretty big sprig of fresh dill tucked down in the middle. Since I'm using dill from the store and don't have any seed heads, I also threw some dill seeds in the bottom with the peppercorns, mustard seeds, allspice, bay leaf, and a few of those nice Assam tea leaves for extra tannins to help keep things crispy.

Now in what I suppose is turning into the Pickle Drawer. I guess we'll see how this turns out. With any luck, it (a) won't go moldy, and (b) won't turn too strange a texture. I'll be counting this as a success if it does manage to meet those criteria. But, we'll see.

[anotherpinkmandolin]

I think I'm gonna make a tutorial on how to make traditional Appalachian style chicken and dumplings the way my 90 yr old memaw taught me from how her mother taught her, with a few memaw approved small changes with modern ingredients to make it easier. Anyone interested?

[ireton]

Farmers from around the country are driving in feed and hay for the farm animals of the Appalachians.

The stories of farmers having to shoot starving livestock are true.

[puppy-stevee]

in the three months leading up to steve meeting the rest of eddie's family, eddie has taken it upon himself to run steve through a crash course in the munson family cookbook. they'll be in kentucky the whole summer so steve has to be prepared.

tonight, eddie said he was making steaks.

when steve gets to the trailer after work, eddie's frying something in the skillet that obviously does not smell like any steak he's ever eaten.

"uh, eddie?"

eddie looks over his shoulder. "hey, sweetheart!"

steve sets his keys on the table before walking over and looking over eddie's shoulder. he's even more confused. "i thought you said we're having steak?"

"we are," eddie nods toward the skillet.

"that doesn't look like it."

eddie rolls his eyes and turns around to face him. "not steak from a cow," he says, like it's obvious (it is not, in fact, obvious). "it's bologna."

steve resists the urge to rub at his temples. instead, he puts his hands on eddie's hips and rubs his thumbs over the little tease of skin between his shirt and jeans.

"baby, i don't think bologna counts as steak."

"it does for us poor folk." eddie reaches up and grabs steve's nose, gently giving it a shake. "we call it poor man's steak. real steak's expensive so we gotta use what we can afford." he gestures behind him. "so, bologna."

steve doesn't remember the last time he ate bologna, or if he did at all. all his meals consisted of whatever his mom cooked and it definitely wasn't any of the things eddie had made him so far.

(don't tell his mom, but eddie's food is way better. he can taste the love it was made with.)

"it does smell pretty good," steve concedes. his stomach gives a growl. he hadn't eaten lunch because he was so excited for a steak dinner.

eddie grins and reaches for the loaf of bread on the counter. "pick your poison, then, stevie-boy!" he sweeps his hand over the options of toppings: mustard, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato. "we're eatin' like kings tonight!"

[mori-girl-life]

Wild foraged Black Balsam Blueberry Tart with Wood Sorrel & Sourwood honey:

Biscoff crumb crust

Vanilla créme patissierre

Wild blueberry glaze

Wild blueberries

Lemon Zest

Wood Sorrel Leaves

Sourwood Honey

This took me 3 days to make and I'm so proud of it 🥲

[localhollerhaint]

[honourablejester]

Random, but on the topic of fantasy and food, one set of fantasy stories that I specifically remember made me very hungry was the Silver John stories by Manly Wade Wellman (what a name). They're a series of stories and novels about a ex-Korean vet with a silver-stringed guitar wandering around the post-WWII Appalachian mountains and facing down folklore/supernatural foes, and I don't even really like pork, but I remember reading some of the food descriptions in those stories and get really damn hungry. There was, for example, one very loving description of the main character making corn pone on a hot rock over his campfire, and I was like, yes, yes, magic music and devils, sure, but can I have some of your food?

Which ... might be a bad thing, when I think about it, in that I was too focused on my stomach to focus on the plot, but the stories sure made a very vivid description of setting and place and food. That I really, really wanted to try. Heh.

[intheholler]

so when i moved in with my now-wife and it snowed the second time (cause obviously you don't eat the first snow), i made some snow cream and she was like hey what the fuck are you doing lmao

it's not the first time someone has reacted that way when i mention it, so i find myself wonderin whether it is distinctly appalachian given some responses i've gotten from other irls

what say y'all

[kimberly40]

👨🏻‍🌾 Appalachian Garden Folklore:

In the mountains of Appalachia, it is said to be bad luck to say thank you if you ever receive cuttings or plants as a gift. The plant will not thrive. This is just one of many old folklore tells handed down from generation to generation. A lot of these folklores pertain to gardening. This was a way of life for many Appalachians and was taken very seriously. Their lives depended on their gardens producing well.

•Dreaming of thorns is bad luck.

•Tomatoes should be planted on Memorial Day.

•It’s good luck to steal herbs.

•A snowy winter portends a good year for crops.

•After planting a hill of beans, press the soil with your foot for good luck.

•Planting peppers when you’re mad, makes the peppers grow hotter.

•If 2 people’s hoes hit together, they will work in the same field next year.

•Trees that bloom twice in one year will have a bad crop.

•If you spit in your hands when cutting wood-you’ll have good luck.

•Don’t plant your garden until the oak leaves are the size of mouse ears.

•Always plant your potatoes on Good Friday.

•Plant your greenbeans on Good Friday.

•Anything planted on the first day of Spring will live.

•Bury nails around the roots of Hydrangea to make the blooms blue.

•To keep crows from bothering your garden, kill one and hang it nearby.

(Read more at https://growappalachia.berea.edu/2011/12/06/appalachian-garden-folklore-chad-brock-red-bird-mission/

By Chad Brock)

[samantha-paige-howard]

Fall season recipes-Apple Cinnamon oat banana nut bread-Southern recipes

[clatterbane]

Because I am apparently a glutton for punishment who did not get my fill of vegetable prep yesterday, with these wonky joints?

Behold: this evening's plan!

That's the latest rather pitiful haul of hard little end of season tomatoes which needed to just come off the plants. Which should at least be good for pickling! They're all rock hard, and stunted except for the few cherry tomatoes. I don't actually have much experience pickling riper-looking ones, but even those are hard enough that they should hopefully hold up OK.

They may be growing in the balcony room, but the plants are obviously really Not Happy with the dropping sunlight levels and temperatures out there. (It was already marginal enough on light, and I may well set up some LED panels this coming season. Because I am that kind of stubborn nerd.)

There were not as many tomatoes as I thought, and a couple of the bigger ones had just started going off on the plant before they were even completely red. Nowhere near enough harvest to fill up one of our fermentation lock lid jars. I could just cram them in another smaller jar without the handy airlock, but nah.

I'll just bulk it out with some or all of these other storebought veggies! 😎

(Plus some other seasonings, which I haven't quite settled on yet.)

Been meaning to put together some kind of mixed brine pickles anyway, now that I can eat them again. Excellent excuse to get at least one jar going, and honestly it should turn out more appealing than those somewhat questionable tomatoes on their own. I hope.

Going with the seasonal theme, I may also put together a jar or two of old school brine pickled chow-chow with some of that cabbage, once I pick up peppers for it. Not surprisingly, vegetable combos vary a lot for that type of relish. In my family, at least, what gets called chow-chow mostly uses cabbage, peppers (sweet and optionally hot), onion, and maybe some carrot plus spices including turmeric to turn it bright yellow. If you throw other veggies together into a similar type of relish, it is more likely to turn into piccalilli. Or just, "idk, it's some kind of mixed relish". 😁 Which all mostly does get sweet vinegar pickled by now, but I like it the other way too.

[cursedauxiliary]

All CCD ever did for me was make me pray to god to make pokemon real 

[puppy-stevee]

just added "1, 2 many" by luke combs and brooks & dunn to my appalachian eddie playlist 😭