Faith, Folklore, and Friends

Barbecue slaw is so good on hot dogs, barbecue, or with ham and beans.  Here is how I make it: 3 large onions and three bell peppers, chopped. A gallon of shredded cabbage and four large carrots. A gallon is about 3 large cabbage heads.  We grew ours this year, but sometimes, I buy them at the grocery store.  I make this during the winter if we run out. In a very large pot, mix 3 cups sugar, 1 cup white vinegar, 1 Tablespoon salt, 1 Tablespoon black pepper. This is where you can control the heat.  The recipe calls for 1 Tablespoon cayenne pepper.  I added 3 Tablespoons to this batch.  We like it spicy. Add three cups of prepared yellow mustard, the cheapest you can find.  There is a local store that sells it by the quart. Mix it all together, and put on the stove at medium high.  Stir constantly until it begins to simmer. Mix the cabbage, carrots, onions, and peppers together thoroughly.  Add to simmering...

It was the mid-seventies when I started preserving food. We lived on a five-acre plot in the country, so there was room for a large garden, and I had an abundance of things to can and freeze. There was a huge brush pile on the property that had been there a while, and there were elderberry bushes growing all around it. I watched those elderberries bloom and become berries, gorgeous purple-black berries that looked scrumptious. My mom, nor anyone close to me, had ever canned any juice or jelly from it. The library offered books on preserving wild berries, and I made some jelly that year, and many years since then. In the early years of our country, pioneers and Indians referred to elderberries as 'the medicine chest of the common people.' The tiny berries contain more vitamin C than any other herbaceous plant except for black currants and rose hips. The jelly is eaten anytime one of us has a cold or flu-like symptoms. Last week, Hub visited his brother out in the country, and c...

In the South, we love our okra. Most vegetable gardens have a row or two of okra. If they don't, it is probably because of space and sun restrictions, not because the gardeners didn't want it. Okra is related to cotton (compare their blossoms) and hibiscus. Because it is fibrous, the best okra pods are those that are very immature, not over a few days old. We seemingly have to wait for it forever. It is a heat loving plant, and won't grow as long as the soil is the least bit cool. But when it starts producing, it is hard to keep up with. It needs to be picked everyday during optimal growing conditions. We eat it everyday with enough left over for freezing and canning. I have made ten pints of pickled okra so far, but most of my family prefers it fried. Here's how I prepared some for the freezer today. Wash the okra and let it dry on a towel. Cut into thin rounds; no more than 1/4 inch. Today I have a little less th...

It was a big gamble. In 1902, debt-ridden Alexander Kerr borrowed money to buy a patent on a glass vacuum jar that could be sealed at home. A San Francisco glass works company believed his dream, and four years later, the business was thriving. When the 1906 earthquake devastated most of San Francisco, Kerr was informed that his factory, in the heart of the conflagration,had undoubtedly been destroyed. When the fires died, the Kerr factory was found intact within the smoldering ashes, not one glass jar broken. The two-piece canning lid, invented in the Kerr kitchen in 1915, increased their business explosively. It is still being used today. When Alexander died in 1925, Ruth took over, managing the successful company in comfortable shoes and the Bible on her desk. The Kerr's business motto: Every time Kerr makes a dollar, God gets a dime . It works. "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almight...