Mama Canned a Lot of Food!
I found an old list in my Buntin family folder that I’d copied down from my Mothers letter. This was after most of the kids had married and moved away. Am searching for a list she made of what all she canned one year back when Dad was still alive and she canned in a big way….HUNDREDS of cans of all sorts of food. Thought y’all just might be interested in what she wrote….Of the food she’d put by for winter.
4 1/2 bushels of sweet potatoes
1 1/2 bushels of white potatoes
Lots of dry peas and lima beans
85 quarts peaches
15 quarts pickled peaches
69 quarts black berries
70 quarts green beans
80 quarts tomatoes
25 quarts vegetable soup
55 quarts apples to bake
18 quarts apples for pies
35 quarts beet pickles
48 quarts cucumber pickles
10 qts mixed pickles
12 pints apple jelly
32 pints pear preserves
10 pints peach preserves
5 pints plum jelly
14 pints blackberry jelly
18 pints blackberry jam
175 lbs. vegetables in the freezer at the Food Locker in town – Lima
beans, 3 kinds of peas, okra, cut corn and several lbs. of goat meat.
Of course we killed a pig or two each Fall, had chickens for meat and for eggs and a milk cow…..Mama made big old fat dinner rolls, and had a sweet tooth that guaranteed that we had good pies, tea cakes and stuff all the time…For pore folks we ate pretty high on the hog !
Ma’s Fried Corn
Mama said Ma made the best she ever ate…it was white corn and had a faint bluish color since it was cooked in an iron skillet..You can
thicken it a bit with flour..Some older folks insist on field corn … but I like Silver Queen .
Shuck and silk the corn and cut it off the cob, paying particular care to cut in the middle of the grain. Stand the cob on its end in a bowl or pan and then take your knife and scrape down bringing the rest of the grain into your pan which will also bring the juice or milk from the grain and cob. Place your cut corn in a large deep frying pan that has bacon grease and add pepper and salt. Some like to also add butter before taking it from the skillet. Some like it cooked to the point where it is browned slightly but I usually don’t leave it that long. I think the secret to having good tasting fried corn is being careful to cut it as I described to get all the juice or milk in with the grain. Jeannie T
by Jeannie Travis