For the Love of Food

It is unfortunate that not one of Janie's recipes survived. Wouldn't it be grand to be able to make peach leather just the way she did it? Or groundnut candy? Many of the old southern recipes do survive: hoppin' john, Carolina Pilau, and others. We just don't know who wrote most of them. I do believe I could almost channel Janie through the preparation process if I could follow her instructions for even one of her favorite dishes. It would be a way of knowing her better.

While I can't cook from Janie's own direction, I can enjoy many of the recipes that would have made it to a post-Civil War Charleston table. Many of these closely guarded secrets were first recorded in The Carolina Housewife, or House and Home:  By a Lady of Charleston, published anonymously in 1847. In it the author described a scene which Janie wrote about in her journal, one that was very familiar to the old cook:

“Then the Battery Dairy and their boat coming over at about six o’clock from Mr. Lawton’s place on James Island.  The loud cheerful banging of milk tins by the docking hands was followed by the horses and wagons going out with the bottles, while a social situation developed with nearby nurses, waitresses, and children coming to the dairy for milk…” (xi)

What a lovely image, huh? The splash of the south bay water against a wooden boat, right on schedule from Lawton's dairy. The clippity clop of horse hooves on cobblestone as the wagons pulled away from the docks to distribute their product. The smell of horse piles and salt in the air. Comfortable din of affable conversation among the group of folks who habitually met there to buy milk. I can see some of them taking a swig out of the tin on the way home, chatting with friends as they went.

So that image, coupled with the one in Wednesday's Charleston Post and Courier highlighting a sweet potato giveaway (see link here: Pile of sweet potatoes at Pinopolis church goes to rural residents in need The Post and Courier, Charleston SC - News, Sports, Entertainment) got me to thinkin'. And I remembered a recipe I practically pried out of the black woman who cooked for my husband's family some 30 years ago at a Thanksgiving dinner.

This lady, Mary, was very much like my grandmother in that she had no idea how much of anything went into her sweet potato pone. I'm sure she was very much like Janie too. That's because she was a kinetic cook; she just did it. Ingredients in motion...just let the force be with you. Correspond that with my version of cooking, (I am a butt cook, meaning extremely anal...) and you can see how my insistence that she be specific about whether it is TWO teaspoons or TWO and a HALF teaspoons drove her out of my presence in short order.

But she didn't get far.

One of the great-aunts had picked Mary up and driven her to their house to cook. So, really, she was our holiday hostage. And I would have her confession.

What I got out of Mary that Thanksgiving Day is printed below. It is her Sweet Potato Pone, and you'll just have to figure your own measurements to suit your taste. That's what I did, not using my butt at all, and really, it's all good.

2-3 sweet potatoes, grated
cinnamon
nutmeg
1 can evaporated milk
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar and 1 package of Equal
1/2 stick butter
Cook sweet potatoes on the stove; stir will until they start to boil. Cook 5 minutes and keep stirring. Mix other ingredients and add to the pot. Turn into a casserole dish and bake at 400 degrees until brown.