November 2010 NewsletterJim Casada
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www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com November Nostrums
Writers are regularly told that they should craft their words to a level somewhere between the sixth and eighth grade readers, and at a recent writers’ conference I learned from a skilled editor and sporting scribe that there’s even a computer tool to tell you the level of your material. Call me old-fashioned, obstinate, or downright obstreperous, but I’m constitutionally incapable of writing down in this fashion. I love words and their usage, and I happen to think that this catering to the lowest common denominator, whether in the written word on in matters of much greater moment, is one of today’s problems. To me, “dumbing down” is just dumb. That attitude probably won’t win me favorable votes in some arenas, but I’m of an age and a mindset to plow on heedless of such concerns. Accordingly, since I’m doing my own thing in this newsletter and no editor fresh out of journalism school can start messing with it, I reckon I can use multi-syllable words and my chosen title, “November Nostrums.” A nostrum is a remedy or a cure, and my Grandma Minnie had a whole batch of them which she could and did apply to all sorts of maladies. In this case though, I’m referring to nostrums for mental ailments or a particular state of mind rather than those of a physical nature. It just so happens that November offers a whole bunch of nostrums which soothe my soul either through fond remembrance or realization that something I will thoroughly enjoy is in the offing. With that in mind, indulge me in a spate of November nostalgia. I hope it will appeal to you in a fashion somewhat similar to the way it warms the cockles of my heart. On the memory side of the ledger, there are all sorts of fond recollections from boyhood days in the Smokies. Most of them revolve around hunting, although food figures in the equation as it so often does where I’m concerned. In my youth, rabbit hunting season opened late Thanksgiving week, and by that time I was more than ready for the sound of a pack of beagles hot on a cottontail’s trail, the quiet moment of pride which came when I was the one who jumped the first rabbit of a day’s hunt, and the mental celebration connected with killing one and stuffing it in the capacious game bag of my Duxbak jacket. It was a time when rabbits were plentiful, and on Saturdays and holidays, when my father and a couple of other adults joined me and my teenage friends for an all-day outing, we had every expectation of a group kill of somewhere between 20 and 30 cottontails. Along with those “big” hunts there were plenty of smaller ones—often just me, a pair of dogs, and my little single-shot 20 gauge Stevens. There were enough rabbits close to the house to keep me busy, and once in a while there would be a banner day when I came home, bursting with pride and carrying two, three, or even on one glorious occasion, four cottontails. Of course other game entered the November picture as well, because a rabbit hunting outing could always have sidelights such as flushing a covey of quail, getting up a woodcock, or perhaps spotting a squirrel. Even, on rare occasions, a grouse would take wing. One of the enduring memories of my boyhood is the first grouse I killed in flight, although honesty compels me to admit I had ground swatted other grouse prior to that. As a favorite English sporting writer, J. K. Stanford, once stated, “any boy is three parts poacher.” I wasn’t exactly a poacher, but Stanford had the right idea. If a grouse was foolish enough to walk within range while I was still hunting squirrels, chances were pretty darn good that there would be a wonderful accompaniment to the next mess of squirrels the family enjoyed. If confession is good for the soul, I reckon I’ve just had a spate of that about 55 years after the fact. Strangely enough, I don’t recall my first quail, but I can say I never shot them on the ground. There were strong strictures against that, probably because both my father and my Uncle Hall (who raised rangy pointers and enjoyed the incredible luxury of hunting with a dandy little Parker 16 gauge), would have tanned my hide had I somehow managed to spot quail on the ground and “have at them.” Yet quail were a fairly frequent part of my mixed bag hunts, because in the 1950s, even in the Smokies, not an area you would think of as prime bobwhite habitat, they were quite plentiful. Hunting held my soul in November, but the month had other appealing aspects as well. One of them, although it ceased when I was in my mid-teens, was being part of the family hog butchering. Each year my father, along with some of my aunts and uncles, would buy a bunch of shoats and turn them over to Grandpa Joe. He raised them through the summer and, sometime about the onset of Indian Summer, began fattening them up in a serious way. This was something Grandpa Joe had done all his life, although the traditional mountain way of fattening hogs he had once known and practiced was long gone by my boyhood. This involved turning the animals, carefully earmarked to distinguish ownership, loose in the fall woods. Chestnuts were everywhere, and from all accounts there was nothing to match a hog fattened for four to six weeks on a steady diet of chestnuts. I can believe it, because I’ve eaten a few nuts from true American chestnuts, along with a passel of chinquapins (a diminutive first cousin), and they are sweet and satisfying to a degree which puts Chinese chestnuts to shame. The demise of the American chestnut was a great tragedy to the folks of Appalachia, and reminiscing about this mighty monarch of the upland forests invariably affected Grandpa Joe to a noticeable degree. He was a tough old codger, not readily given to shows of emotion, but when chestnuts were the subject there would be a catch in his voice and a bit of excess moisture in his eyes. Whenever it was time to kill hogs he would invariably mention chestnuts, and his pithy suggestion “it ain’t like it once was,” was an apt one. Still, hog-killing time, at least for a small boy, offered a day of delight. For the adults it meant long hours of sheer drudgery, but the end results were well worth it. Our family hog killing invariably came on the first Saturday in November which was cold and began with a hard frost. Grandpa took care of the killing, always being careful to separate each hog in turn so that the others couldn’t see its demise. Whether it was true or not, he firmly believed that seeing one of their hog lot brethren die would mean “off” meat in other pigs. Then came work, lots of it. The smelly process of gutting the pig, with entrails steaming in the chilly air and organ meats carefully set aside for the making of liver mush and the like, wasn’t for the squeamish or faint of heart or stomach. Yet anyone who has ever been part of the process, where virtually everything but the squeal was used, will never have to wonder about the source of their pork or ponder mysteries such as how sausage is made or the ingredients of blood pudding or souse meat. Once the hog had been gutted there came a dunking in boiling water, scraping bristles from the hide, skinning, dividing the meat into various cuts, and tossing most of the fat into dishpans. From this lard would be rendered, and that in turn produced the wonder of cracklin’s. Our processing involved backbones and ribs, tenderloin, sausage, hams, and what are today called Boston butts. Both Grandpa and Dad had their own ways of preparing sausage and curing hams, but most everything else was canned. For that matter, the sausage, after having been made, was canned as well. Both the sausage (already cooked) and cracklin’s went into jars which were then topped with lard (still in liquid form) before being sealed. What I remember best, however, is the incomparable taste of fresh tenderloin for breakfast, laid, fresh from the frying pan, atop a cathead biscuit. There would be milk gravy adorning a second cathead on the plate beside a brace of eggs, and if somehow a greedy-gut youngster wanted more, there were always spare biscuits to be decorated with butter and a hefty dose of molasses. The only thing to match it, breakfast-wise, would come weeks later in the form of biscuits, cuts of fried country-cured ham, redeye gravy, and grits. Another personal favorite coming out of hog-killing time, although it was featured at dinner (that’s the mid-day meal in my world) was cracklin’ cornbread. Until you’ve eaten it, made with buttermilk and a plentitude of cracklin’s (none of this nonsense involving sugar mixed with the cornmeal), you’ve lived a life of culinary deprivation. I reckon I’d go through two full days of hog killing, right now, in order to lay by a winter’s supply of canned cracklin’s and all they promise in the way of fine fixin’s. Pork was the main winter meat in the mountains of my boyhood, with chicken taking pride of place in the warmer months (although we would occasionally feast on a baked hen when one of them, in Grandpa Joe’s astute judgment, had begun to slip in her egg-laying duties). Come Thanksgiving though, we always had not one but two feasts. The first came on Thanksgiving Day and would feature a store-bought turkey. We didn’t buy all that much meat from the local grocery/meat market, so the occasional indulgence in turkey or beef was a special treat. The Thanksgiving bird would be served with all the trimmings, including giblet gravy to adorn chestnut dressing. It was one of two times each year there would be cranberries on the menu. The other was at Christmas. While I remember virtually every detail of those Thanksgiving feasts—from a panoply of pickles to stack cake and pumpkin or kushaws pie for finishers—it was the meal which came a couple of days later I found most memorable. It was simpler but at least equally satisfying. The featured dish would be rabbit, and the wonders Mom could work with rabbit still set my stomach to growling with gustatory remembrance. The rabbit, stewed briefly in a “bath” of soda water and then baked, would be served with gravy, the ubiquitous biscuits, baked sweet potatoes, greens or cooked cabbage, turnips, and canned apples. For dessert there would be a hefty slice of leftover stack cake, a dish which improves with a couple of days of aging as the sauce made from dried apples placed between layers has an opportunity to merge and marry with the cake. Talk about food for the soul! These meals were a “nostrum” which could ease the most troubled of minds. Anyone who harbors doubts about how common folks in the Smokies ate in yesteryear need not be troubled. We dined mighty well. It might not have been the healthiest of fare when measured by things like cholesterol and fat counts, but when you worked as hard as my family did, such matters were of no concern. We played hard too, and the tiredness which came at the end of a hard day of rabbit hunting was as satisfying as the food which followed was delicious. Like Robert Ruark once said, anybody who reads these words will realize that I had a mighty fine time as a boy. RABBIT CASADA STYLE2 dressed rabbits Quarter rabbit and place in a large sauce pan and cover with cold water. Add teaspoon of soda, stir, and bring the water to a rolling boil. Remove from pan and rub rabbit in fresh water to remove the soda. Return to the pan, which has been rinsed, and cover with fresh water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until tender. Place in a baking dish, dot each piece with a bit of butter, and bake at 350 degrees until brown and crusty. You can use the broth left when you remove the meat for baking to make milk gravy. SQUIRREL WITH LIMA BEANS¼ pound bacon Dredge squirrel pieces in flour, salt, and pepper mixture. In Ducth oven, fry bacon and remove. Brown squirrel in bacon drippings, then cover meat, bacon, beans, onions, celery and carrots with boiling water. Simmer for two hours. Squirrel meat can be removed from bones at this point if you wish. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for an hour longer or until squirrel and vegetables are tender. If desired, thick with flour and water paste and adjust seasonings. Serves six to eight and is a good way to stretch out a couple of squirrels. This recipe works equally well with rabbits. Thank you for subscribing to the
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