HOLIDAY NOSTALGIA
Four generations of the family, probably taken at one of the last Christmases Daddy was alive–Daddy, my daughter Natasha holding my granddaughter Ashlyn, and me.
With each passing year I find myself increasingly prone to look back to the joys of Christmases past, even though in recent years I have thoroughly enjoyed celebrating the holiday at my daughter’s house, and she certainly knows how to decorate in a fashion fully reminiscent of her mother and paternal grandmother. Both absolutely reveled in the season, and Natasha, if anything, outdoes them.
This year I’m altering what has been my standard practice for the last decade or so as far as gifts are concerned. While there will still be gifts to loved ones and a few friends, I’m honoring others, including my webmaster whose skills bring this newsletter to you, through making donations in their honor to Samaritan’s Purse, with most of the money designated for relief of those in my beloved highland homeland who were devastated by Hurricane Helene. I would urge you to consider charitable donations in a similar vein, and for Samaritan’s Purse you can designate gifts specifically for the region (www.samaritanspurse.org).
With that bit of what I hope will be some gentle tugging of good will on the part of you, as readers, let’s turn to the pleasant subject of Christmas comestibles (and I bet that’s a word you haven’t encountered recently). Along with recollections of togetherness, a few particularly special presents, and church-related activities, food memories are my strongest ones. My boyhood in the Smokies involved plenty of provender to satisfy even the most peculiar of palates, and much of it involved dishes you don’t encounter every day. I hope what follows will make you a bit peckish (if you don’t know what that means, as my 9th grade English teacher would have said, look it up) and evoke some similar recollections of the season from you.
Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa’s–That’s me, aged about 14, seated next to the tree in the background and looking a bit bored with the whole situation (and no doubt thinking about rabbit hunting). Others in the photo are my brother Don looking less than thrilled with a shirt, cousin James next to him, my sister Annette with the baton,
my mother with a cousin next to her, and to the far left one of my aunts.
Perhaps my most powerful memory involves Mom’s applesauce cake. Part of that no doubt derives from a passin’ powerful sweet tooth and the fact that some way, every day, no matter that she’s been gone for almost a quarter of a century, I think of my dear departed mother. I’ve provided the recipe of the applesauce cake in the past, and below you’ll find one for another apple-based cake. For me, the setting and the way the ingredients were procured are an integral part of the story. We had a small apple orchard on our land, and Dad tended the Red Delicious, Stayman, and Golden Delicious trees with great care. That meant annual pruning, careful spraying, and hard if joyous work at harvest time.
Many of the apples would be canned in late September or early October, with Mom’s annual goal being 200 quarts of cooked apples. Seldom did a day go by when we didn’t have cooked apples or applesauce on the table. Other apples would be dried, providing the key ingredient for a mainstay of hearty winter breakfasts, apple stack cakes, and fried apple pies. The cream of the crop, those apples which were unblemished, was stored in a huge bin and airy baskets in the basement. One of my youthful jobs was to go through these every week or so to cull out rotting apples. Typically I would catch them when they just showed a spot or two, and Mom would turn these into a cobbler which was delicious and easily prepared.
Black walnuts on the ground–when walnuts fell in early fall, we noted the location, gathered them for hulling and drying a few weeks later, and would crack them and pick out the nut meats before Christmas for some scrumptious eating.
By December we had already gathered the year’s harvest of black walnuts as well, and these too went into a variety of Christmas delicacies (the recipe for one of them appears below). Applesauce cake was made better for a marriage of the oily, pungent flavor of walnut kernels with the juiciness of apples, the meaty tang of seeded Muscat or yellow raisins, and just the right blend of spices. Walnut kernels also figured prominently in Mom’s fudge, and at least three or four times during December she would bake a whopping batch of oatmeal cookies chock full of raisins and walnuts. She had a magic touch with the cookies, always making sure not to overcook them. That resulted in moist, chewy morsels which, when still warm and accompanied by a glass of milk, were pure culinary heaven.
Mom always made the applesauce cakes the weekend following Thanksgiving, a time when the boys and man of the house were busy getting the opening days of another rabbit season off to a rollicking start. Look back, I suspect she was also glad to have us out from under foot. Whatever the exact motivation for her timing, by the first of December she would have a bevy of perfectly baked applesauce cakes “aging” in a downstairs room we never heated. They got better with each passing week, thanks at least in part to the addition of a dollop of wine to keep them moist and because, like fruit cakes, they benefited from a bit of time before being eaten. I think a few weeks just allowed the myriad flavors to mix, mingle, and eventually mate in a marriage of perfect taste.
Don’t get me wrong though, Christmas food involved more than desserts, and for that matter, the sweets covered here merely scratched the surface. It seemed like Mom was baking something almost every day in the two weeks immediately prior to Christmas, with candy roaster or pumpkin pies, tea cakes, sweet breads, half a dozen kinds of cookies, and more figuring in the holiday picture.
Meanwhile, with cottontail season being open, we dined once or twice a week on rabbit, along with the occasional feast of quail or grouse. We had already been enjoying squirrel for weeks, but none of us ever tired of game on the family table. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was probably welcome in terms of family economics as well. Other than small game (thanks to being scarce as hen’s teeth, deer and wild turkeys were not a part of my youth, either as a hunter or in terms of food), our main meat at this season was pork. There’s nothing unusual about that, because until the current generation or possibly the one before it, pork was the primary meat for most mountain folks.
Our pork came from hogs Grandpa raised, and until sometime in my teens we had an annual family hog killing which occupied a whole day and produced great foodstuffs in a variety of forms. There was canned sausage, stored by making the sausage patties, stuffing them into quart jars, and covering with just rendered lard before sealing them. It was a central feature of many a breakfast, and quite often our evening meal would feature cathead biscuits and sausage gravy. That way a quart jar of sausage could go a long way.
At other supper times another pork product would figure prominently in our supper, and before mentioning it I should note that dinner was our main meal, and in the Smokies “dinner” comes in the middle of the day. Quite often we would have a cold supper of cornbread and milk, but in the cold weather months this changed a bit. We would still have the same fare, but the cornbread would sometimes be a freshly baked pone filled with cracklings. For those of you among my readers who have led lives of culinary deprivation, cracklings are the crisp tidbits left from rendering pork fat into lard. They carry enough cholesterol to be a cardiologist’s nightmare, and convey enough flavor to bring tears of pure joy to the eyes of a mountain boy.
On special occasions we would have country ham (Dad cured ours), invariably offered in company with biscuits, hominy, or grits. Another part of the hog reserved for festive meals or company was tenderloin. Although it is never tastier than when eaten fresh the day of a hog killing or the next day, tenderloin was also canned and made for some might fine eating.
Fried quail and fixin’s–Quail, and on rare occasions grouse, were most welcome game on the Casada family table at this season of the year.
When we didn’t eat pork, wild game usually graced the table. Fried young squirrel or baked squirrel when dealing with older bushytails, when accompanied by milk gravy, biscuits, sweet taters, and turnip greens which had already been nipped by frost and which included plenty of little pieces of the diced root in the bargain, was a most satisfying meal. Much the same held true for rabbit, and Mom could work wonders with either of these critters.
We only had chicken or turkey, mostly the former, on special occasions. That meant most Sundays and on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. For the most part, these were not “store bought” birds. Instead, they were free-range chickens raised by Grandpa Joe. As was the case with the hogs, when family members bought shoats and Grandpa raised them, Dad and some of his siblings bought biddies enough each spring to provide eggs and table fare throughout the year. I can assure those of you who have never known the pleasure of eating free-range eggs or consuming chicken raised on a diet in which scratch feed was merely a supplement, nothing that comes from Perdue Farms or Tyson even comes close.
I must also admit that I thoroughly enjoyed that part of the “chicken every Sunday, Lord, chicken every Sunday” (words from an old Bobby Bare song) process that would send a P.E.T.A. proponent shrieking straight to the nearest feel-good shrink. Chickens went to their Sunday dinner final reward in one of three ways. Some were caught and unceremoniously had their necks wrung. Others were caught and went straight to Grandpa Joe’s equivalent of a guillotine for barnyard fowl; namely, a razor-sharp ax dealing with a chicken’s neck stretched across the section of log where he chopped kindling wood.
It was the third method, however, which particularly suited my fancy. Hens tend to become derelict in their egg-laying duties when disturbed while roosting, yet that’s the best time to catch one when you are dealing with free-range birds. Grandpa, in an example of the commonsense wisdom which has long typified the “make do with what you’ve got” approach to life taken by hardy Appalachian hill country folks, had come up with the perfect solution. He had an exceptionally long, stiff cane pole equipped with about three feet of old-fashioned black nylon fishing line and a size 10 hook. When Grandma Minnie needed a fat hen, Grandpa would scatter a couple of handfuls of scratch feed then back away while the hens greedily shouldered one another aside for prime pickin’s. From a decent and discreet distance, Grandpa would put a kernel of corn or a bit of pinched cornbread on the hook and, using the pole, drop it in front of the feasting chicken he thought was failing to carry her part of the egg-laying load.
Invariably he got a “bite” almost immediately, and all he had to do at that point was pull the squawking, wing-flapping hen his way, hand-over-hand in the same manner you maneuver a cane pole when using the bass fishing technique known as doodlesocking. Once he laid hands on the chicken, he would remove the hook, but this was no catch-and-release situation. Instead, it was time then to employ one of the two previously mentioned techniques for dispatching a hen.
A baked hen from Grandpa’s lot, cooked to a lovely brown turn in Grandma’s oven, was about as good as eating got. She would make gravy using the giblets, adding three or four boiled, chopped up eggs as well, and with a leg or thigh and a brace of cathead biscuits swimming in gravy, I was in pure paradise. The only thing which made it better was being given the privilege of digging into the picked-over carcass to get the little eggs in the making to be found inside. There would be a whole line of miniature yolks of diminishing size in the body cavity, and I reckon it’s been even longer since I ate those than it has been since I had a chunk of cracklin’ cornbread, fresh from an iron spider and slathered with butter made in a hand churn.
Those may seem somewhat strange Christmas recollections to at least some of you, but that was life as I knew it in boyhood. One thing for sure, I knew from an early age the precise origin of the food I ate, and I understood the cycle of life in a practical, down-to-earth way that probably not one youngster in a thousand does today.
Our Christmas food came from what we raised, cultivated, fed, harvested, preserved, or killed, and I’m convinced it meant more to us as a result. I might add, in closing, that it was also, thanks to the kitchen magic of Grandma Minnie and Mom, incredibly delicious. Sure, there were memorable gifts, special moments of various kinds, the joys of caroling and gathering all the greenery and decorations for what was a truly natural Christmas, but looking back nothing enchants me in quite the same way food memories do. Here’s hoping you have some similar treasures stored in the storehouse of your mind, and all the best to you and yours for the Christmas season, maybe even with one of the recipes below as a part of it.
JIM’S DOINGS
Recent weeks have been busy ones for me, and I guess I’ll offer that as one explanation (though not an excuse) for failing to get a newsletter out in November. In the early part of last month I enjoyed a long and delightful weekend with a bunch of fellow sporting scribes who are also longtime writers. Three dozen or so of us got together in Colbert County, Alabama for fellowship, ample opportunities to enjoy some of the region’s special attractions, lots of musical entertainment, and just plain fun. Much of this was made possible by a wonderful and highly capable woman whom I’ve known and admired for decades, Susann Hamlin. The head of the Colbert County Tourism and Convention Bureau, Susann and her staff, ably assisted by her dutiful and hardworking husband, entertained us in royal fashion.
While we enjoyed an informative visit to Helen Keller’s home, some fishing outings, and trips to the famed Coon Dog Cemetery located nearby, music was at the center of things. Our little group of close friends includes a number of talented musicians, and as a result our gatherings have traditionally featured one or more sessions of self-provided picking and grinning. That still was a feature of the gathering on the final night, but prior to that we sampled and savored an absolute musical feast. Colbert County, with its towns of Sheffield, Tuscumbia, and Muscle Shoals, has long been at the heart (some might even say the heartbeat) of musical recording. In fact, Muscle Shoals proudly claims to be the “hit recording capital of the world.” That claim is based on solid evidence in the form of literally hundreds of hits in pretty much every musical genre—rock, rhythm & blues, blues, jazz, gospel, and country. The list of artists and groups who have cut records in an area studio (at one time there were 14 of them in operation, and many still thrive today) is mind boggling. From Shenandoah to The Rolling Stones, The Osmonds to The Oak Ridge Boys, not to mention Bob Seger, The Staple Singers, Cher, Aretha Franklin, Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Jamey Johnson, Alan Jackson, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Clarence Carter, Little Richard, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Etta James, and dozens more, seemingly a “Who’s Who” of music across all genres has recorded here.
We were fortunate enough to visit and tour two of the best-known recording operations, Fame Studios (www.famestudios.com) and Wishbone Recording Studio (www.wishbonerecordingstudio.com). At Fame Studios Linda Hall, the widow of Fame’s legendary owner, Rick Hall, shared stories, answered questions and was the essence of graciousness. After that tour, we went to Wishbone Recording Studio, which is owned by songwriter/singer/producer Billy Lawson. You’ll look long and hard to find a more humble, down-to-earth, and genuine human being in the world of music. He entertained us with one great story after another and clearly would have continued to do so for hours had lunch reservations not put an end to things.
Yet that up-close exposure to Billy Lawson was only part of the picture. We had heard Billy and his Wishbone Band perform the night before at a benefit concert for a girls’ home sponsored by the Alabama Sherriff’s Association at the nearby Ritz Theatre. Billy served as a sort of master of ceremonies and he and his band, along with several other noted performers, opened the show for its headliner, Grand Old Opry member and legendary country singer T. Graham Brown. Then, to top it all, Billy and his 13-old-son, respectively playing guitar and upright bass, joined our own little group to make music on the final night. Watching interaction between the young lad and his dad was pure delight, with the pleasure being multiplied by a first-ever appearance of slide guitar (pedal steel) in our picking and grinning gatherings, along with the offerings of outdoor writers/musician regulars Rob Simbeck, Lisa Snuggs, and David Rainer, making for a grand finale to a great get together.
My musical abilities are non-existent, unless you include knowing the lyrics of a great many country and bluegrass songs, but I can grin with the best of them. Rest assured my grinning muscles were operating at optimal level during this whole time. I’ll wrap up this account of the adventure by adding that it was made better still by a lady friend whom I’ve known since the first grade (we went through all 12 years of school together) accompanying me along with general agreement that the group would get back together again next year. We enjoy one another’s company and are close enough friends for that to be the case. All that remains is to encourage you, if you want an enjoyable and decidedly different experience, to put Colbert County on your bucket list. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed myself more and I expect most of you would have a similar experience.
From time to time I’m asked to participate in a radio show, podcast, YouTube video, or something similar. I gladly oblige when I have the necessary technology (I don’t have a computer set up with a camera or speaker and can only be part of a Zoom deal by listening to others on my phone. But a recent podcast in which I was involved was pure pleasure. Two die-hard turkey enthusiasts, Andy Gagliano and Cameron Weddington, have in recent years produced literally hundreds of podcasts on the subject. I had talked with them before and did so again recently. If you’d like to listen, visit www.theturkeyhuntingpodcast.com and check out Episode #498. I ramble on about the sport’s history and some of the grand characters I’ve been privileged to know, along with throwing some stones at such things as the state of wild turkey biology. On the publication front, I continue to do a weekly column for the little newspaper in my boyhood hometown, Bryson City, NC, as I have now done for two decades or so. Other recent efforts include: “Abel Chapman: Forgotten Hunting Writer and Conservationist,” “Sporting Classics Daily,” October 24, 2024; “Rowland Ward: Victorian Entrepreneur, Publisher, Big Game Guru and Taxidermist for the Ages,” Sporting Classics, Nov./Dec., 2024, pp. 39-48; “November Nostalgia,” Columbia Metropolitan, Nov., 2024, pp. 62-67; “Venison’s Many Marvels,” South Carolina Wildlife, Nov./Dec., 2024, pp. 53-55; “Traditional New Year’s Fare,” Smoky Mountain Living, Dec.,/Jan., 2024-25, pp. 14-17; “Rowland Ward: Entrepreneur, Publisher, Big Game Guru and Taxidermist,” “Sporting Classics Daily,” Dec. 3, 2024; and ”Abject Sadness to Enduring Gladness,” Columbia Metropolitan, Dec., 2024, pp. 122-24.
BOOK SPECIALS
Thanks to my delay in getting this newsletter out, there are no book specials this month. However, I will have a new and greatly expanded list of books on the Smokies and Southern Appalachia up on my website soon, and I’ll try to notify you (with essential help from my highly capable webmaster, Tipper Pressley) when that happens. Meanwhile, you can visit my website and find not only books I have written or edited on offer but literally thousands of out-of-print titles in a variety of categories.
RECIPES
It’s a time of the year when venison rivals special holiday treats on my personal food list. The recipes below offer examples from both categories and will, I promise, make for some mighty fine seasonal fare.
VENISON CUBED STEAK
Much, indeed most, of the considerable amount of venison I consume (it’s my main meat) involves recipes of one sort or another where ground meat is the key ingredient. From soups and pasta dish to meat loaf or cheeseburger pie, or maybe just in a burger, it’s hearty and tasty. Of course there’s nothing to beat the backstraps (except those delectable tidbits, the loins), but alas only a small portion of the usable meat takes those forms. Accordingly, I grind a lot, but quite a bit of the nicer pieces from the hams goes into cubed steak. My favorite way to prepare it involves little more than a crockpot and patience.
I empty a can of cream of mushroom soup, along with that can refilled with water, into a crockpot and stir it up until well blended. Then flour pieces of cubed steak, brown them on either side in a bit of bacon fat or canola oil, and add the meat to the crockpot. Be sure to use a spatula to scrape all of the brown bits from the frying pan into the crockpot. Then let slow heat do its magic for several hours, checking a couple of times to see if you need to add a bit of water and to flip the steaks over. If desired, towards the end of the cooking process, you can add chunks of onions, potatoes, carrots, and green peas if you want to turn it into a savory venison stew. Alternatively, add rice or pasta. The latter, saved over, makes a fine meat and gravy, when heated and spread atop a piece or two of toast.
VENISON CHILI AND BEANS
There are pretty much endless ways to make chili, and I’ve tried literally dozens of them and seldom been disappointed. For simplicity and scrumptiousness though, this approach is tough to beat (and a tip of the hat to my hunting buddy, Darrin Dawkins, who suggested to two packets mentioned).
1 finely diced onion
2 pounds ground venison
2 or 3 tablespoons bacon grease or vegetable oil
1 can mild Ro-Tel diced tomatoes and green chiles
1 can diced tomatoes
2 minced garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
1 packet original Chili-O mix
1 packet mild Old El Paso taco seasoning mix
Pinto beans (you can buy canned ones and drain them but I prefer to cook my own—just remember they require soaking and considerable time simmering before being ready to add to chili.
Brown the venison and onion in the oil in a Dutch oven. Once browned, add the can of Ro-Tel, the tomatoes, the bay leaf, the packets of Chili-O and taco seasoning, and mince garlic. Mix together with a wooden spoon and allow to simmer. If you like a somewhat soupy chili you can add tomato or V-8 juice to the desired consistency. Shortly before you are planning to serve the chili, add the cooked beans, stirring them in well. Some folks like to include a green pepper, but I don’t.
You can top a bowl of this chili with corn chips, shredded cheese, sour cream, or chopped raw onions. It also goes mighty well with cornbread or Texas toast. This is a foodstuff that freezes well, and the recipe above, unless prepared for a number of folks, will provide leftovers.
SCALLOPED OYSTERS
Many moons ago (more than five decades if you insist on my being specific) when I was in graduate school, a bunch of us struggling and pretty much starving students would combine resources and culinary abilities for a potluck Christmas meal. A good friend and fellow student named John Neville who hailed from eastern North Carolina always managed to procure fresh oysters and turn them into a delicious casserole. For me, no matter what else might be served, it was always THE dish.
3 cups crushed saltines
¾ cup unsalted butter, melted
1/8 teaspoon cayenne or other red pepper
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons of chopped, fresh parsley or 2 teaspoons dried parsley
4 cups of shucked oysters with juice
Combine the crackers and butter and stir until the crackers are soaked. Then add parsley and seasonings and stir into the crackers. Using a spoon or spatula, spread a third of the mixture in the bottom of a 9- x 13-inch casserole dish. Pour half of the oysters and their liquor atop this. Repeat with another third of the mix and top with the remaining oysters and liquid. Top out the casserole dish with the rest of the cracker mix. Drizzle the cream evenly atop the oyster-cracker mix. Place in a preheated 375-degree oven and cook for 40-50 minutes until bubbling and golden brown. Let cool 10-12 minutes before serving.
APPLE NUT CAKE
This recipe comes from Tipper Pressley and my cookbook, Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food (available on my website, www.jimcasadaoutdoors, for $24.95 plus shipping), but it is Tipper’s offering rather than mine. She’s a dandy cook and this is a relatively simple and wonderfully savory cake.
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 ½ cups cooking oil
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups finely diced apples
½ cup chopped pecans or English walnuts (I haven’t tried it, but I feel pretty certain that a 1/3 cup of black walnut meats would also work, because they pair well with apples)
Combine flour, baking soda, sugar, and oil and then mix well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each egg is added. Add vanilla, apples, and nuts. Pour into a 9-x13-inch baking pan. Bake at 325 degrees for an hour or until done (check at the hour mark with a toothpick). While cake is still hot, top with glaze (recipe below).
GLAZE
1 stick butter
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup brown sugar
Combine ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly, for two or three minutes. Pour immediately over hot cake.
BLACK WALNUT BARS
Throughout the Christmas season there would be, in addition to cakes aplenty, various types of cookies at our house and that of my grandparents. Stored in round tins which had once held things like commercial fruit cakes (for years, during a time when one of Daddy’s responsibilities at the furniture plant where he worked was serving as purchasing agent, he received one or more of them every Christmas, and far be it from my frugal mother to let a perfectly good container go to waste), they were available for a quick snack most any time. At this season of the year I don’t even recall the normal strictures such as “you’ll ruin your appetite.” As was true of about anything containing black walnuts, I loved these bars. This recipe comes from my book, Fishing for Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir. Copies of the award-winning book are available through my website (www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com) for $28.95 plus shipping.
CRUST
½ cup butter
½ cup packed brown sugar
1 cup flour
FILLING
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1½ cups shredded coconut
1 cup chopped black walnuts
Cream butter and brown sugar. Slowly add flour and mix until crumbly. Pat into a 7 x 11-inch baking dish. Bake for eight to ten minutes at 350 degrees until golden.
Combine brown sugar, eggs, salt and vanilla. In separate bowl, add flour and baking powder to coconut and walnuts. Blend into egg mixture and pour over baked crust. Return to oven and bake for an additional fifteen to twenty minutes or until done. Cut into bars and place on wire racks to cool.