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January 2006 NewsletterJim Casada
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www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com Musings on Miseries, Mollygrubs Cabin Fever, the New Year, and More Strangely, given the rich and varied storehouse of memories from my boyhood associated with both Thanksgiving and Christmas, my recollections of New Year’s are minimal. It was a day Dad had off from work, which meant an all-day rabbit hunt, and it also marked the fast-approaching end of that wonderful two-week period when there was no school, no homework, and indeed nothing to do but be in the fields and woods daily from dawn to dusk. What I do vividly remember are some of the food folkways associated with the arrival of a New Year. Traditional fare included, above all else, hog jowls and black-eyed peas. This dish, as simple as it is scrumptious, was supposed to bring good luck and good health throughout the year. Accompanying this main dish would be mustard greens, boiled cabbage, or turnip greens, the latter with little pieces of turnip chopped up in them along with a hefty piece of streaked meat added for flavor. Sometimes these vegetable dishes would be cooked so long, with water being added periodically, that you had potlikker (all right, pot liquor if you insist, but that spelling, like sipping the finished product instead of spooning it, is for flatland furriners and infants). Mom always maintained that the greens represented wealth for the coming year. Add a fine pone of cornbread brimming with cracklings and browned to a turn, along with a berry cobbler or maybe a stack cake for dessert, and you had about as fine a meal as anyone could want. With the arrival of New Year’s Day, even as a youngster I was sufficiently aware of the fact that a period of magic was drawing to a close and that the leanest, meanest time of winter lay ahead. For the better part of two weeks I had devoted delightful days to rabbit hunting with my buddies. Interspersed with these group outings, and it no doubt explains my enduring love of being alone when fishing or hunting, would be days of what Grandpa Joe referred to as mixed-bag hunting or “just plundering about.” I would set out after breakfast, usually accompanied by a canine companion or two, to pass the day somewhere within walking distance of home. Shank’s mare might take me just a few hundred yards behind the house or several miles away through the mixture of fields and woods that stretched in every direction away from town. Today these areas are developed, but in the 1950s they were a fine place for rabbits, squirrels, quail, and even the occasional grouse. Another favorite pastime, normally indulged in only when the weather was really nasty—and that meant an all-day rain or bitter cold—involved sitting down close to the stove with Grandpa Joe. As long as we kept out from underfoot and didn’t bother Grandma Minnie, we were left to the special sort of entertainment reserved exclusively for the quite old and the young. Grandpa loved to tell tales, and he had a virtually inexhaustible repertoire of them. Or, to put it more accurately, he probably had between 30 and 40 accounts as his storyteller’s stock-in-trade, but they never grew old because he never told them the same way twice. Once he got comfortably settled, with a good chew of dry twist tobacco working and a coal scuttle close by to serve as a spittoon, Grandpa would take out his pocket knife and set to work with a will carving on something—maybe a flutter mill, a gee-haw whimmydiddle, or a popgun. Once he started talking though, the whittling diminished appreciably. That’s because Grandpa Joe was constitutionally incapable of talking without using his hands for emphasis, to punctuate his pronouncements, and to hold attention. Where I was concerned, he didn’t have to worry on the latter score. Grandpa talked in a very soft voice, almost a mutter, and you had to sit close and listen intently to understand him. Even today, after the passage of a half century, I vividly recall many of his stories, such as squirrel hunting when the American chestnut still reigned supreme in highland forests; catching rabbits in gums or after a deep, soft snow; or trapping snowbirds to make a snowbird pie. He might gripe a bit about “the miseries,” a catch-all term he used to described anything from the pain of arthritis to a bad case of the “mollygrubs.” That’s a somewhat difficult word to define, but it meant being down in the dumps, possessed of cabin fever, or just generally tired of the lean, mean days of winter. It also meant that Grandpa (and yours truly, as his youthful understudy), couldn’t readily escape the sharp tongue and fastidiousness of Grandma. She would pass by us, a diminutive whirlwind with a mop or dust rag, muttering about “old men smelling bad” and “young boys being in the way.” We’d hunker down in cowed silence, but as soon as she was gone Grandpa would shake his head, give me a knowing wink, and pick up his storytelling where it had left off. There weren’t any formal resolutions that I recall, just a resolute determination to face the hard days of winter knowing that ever-returning spring would eventually arrive. The New Year was a time for, as Grandpa put it, “dreaming and scheming,” and as January gave way to the year’s shortest month, he moved into the mode he called “February figuring.” Both involved reliving glories of the past while looking to promised delights of the future, as opposed to dealing with the realities of the present. With each passing year, I gain a deeper appreciation of Grandpa’s mindset and a fuller understanding of a timeless adage we all should remember at this season: “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.” One of the best ways to remember the past and plot the future is over a bowl of steaming hot soup or a hearty serving of stew, and some recipes offering such fare follow. Meanwhile, happy New Year wherever your life’s path may be going! LIMA BEAN CHOWDER1 tablespoon olive oil In a Dutch oven heat olive oil and sauté onion until tender. Add ground venison and cook until venison is browned. Add celery, carrots and bay leaf and sauté for 4-5 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes to blend flavors. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed. CABBAGE AND VENISON KIELBASA SOUP½ stick butter In a large Dutch oven, melt butter. Add onions and sauté until onions are limp. Add cabbage, broth, base and water, kielbasa and black pepper. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes or until cabbage is tender. Taste and adjust seasonings, if needed. This is a soup that seems, if anything, to be better when warmed over. HERBED WHITE BEAN AND SAUSAGE SOUP1 ½ tablespoons olive oil In a large soup pot over medium high heat, heat oil and sauté onions, carrots and garlic. Add dried herbs and bay leaf and sauté one minute. Add tomatoes, drained white beans, chicken stock or water, and ham hock. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer until beans are tender (do not let liquid cook away completely; add more water if necessary) for about 1 ½ hours. Remove ham hock and chop ham. Return chopped ham and browned and crumbled venison sausage to soup. Add spinach and cook about one minute. Adjust salt and pepper seasonings. Serve immediately with hot homemade bread. Tip: Beans can be soaked 6-8 hours or use the quick-soak method: Cover beans with cold water; bring to a boil; boil 2 minutes; cover, remove from heat and let stand one hour; drain and continue with recipe. PROPER POTLIKKER, SMOKY MOUNTAIN STYLETake a large head of cabbage or a pot full of greens, chop coarsely, and cover with water. Add a ham hock, a generous portion of streaked meat, the grease and crumbled bacon from several strips, or trimmings from the Christmas holidays ham. Sprinkle liberally with coarsely ground black pepper. Bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for at least two hours, adding water as needed. Proper potlikker cooks long enough for the vegetable to pretty well disintegrate. Once it is ready, ladle a hearty serving into a bowl and crumble in a good chunk of cornbread (which should be baked as the potlikker is in the final stages of simmering). If you have the cracklin’s necessary to make a batch of cracklin’ cornbread and don’t mind the cholesterol, so much the better (and so much better the taste!). This is a meal to warm the inner man and fill him on a cold winter’s day. Thank you for subscribing to the
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