Hnuh, huh, uh!! Gator's got yer grannie!! Lol Kristi welcome to the 60s!!!

My Uncles neighbor "Pitty Pat" YEP that was the name in the foothills of the apalachians in coal miner country-she had a poke salad patch. I used to love walking the path from my Uncles (Uncle Butch WAS a coal miner and died of black lung) Anyway, they lived on the side of a worn mountain, outhouse, no indoor plumbing, just a pump for water in the kitchen-like area of the house. The front of the house was a basement and 2 stories, the back was one slanted story. It literally grew out of the steep hills.

Back to Pitty Pat. I would love to go across the path where dill, rosemary and heavenly herbs filled the air when I brushed them. In my minds eye, her place was a rickety old shack made beautiful by all the wildflowers, vegetables and herbs surrounding her humble place. She always wore the same ol blue paisley printed skirt with deep pockets and muddy boots. Sometimes the rain would wash down the hillside into her poke salad patch so hard. She had boards laid all in between so there was something to walk on in the muddy slanting slope. Oh yeah, she didn't have many teeth either, but I loved her storeis and digging in her gardens with her when I was a kid. YUP, poke salad patches, my Uncle Butch and Miss Pitty Pat. Neat memory Kristi, thanks.

oh boy..me, too, Kristi! for some reason I've been reading 'southern' writers: Fannie Flagg, Marjorie Rawlings, again...the Yearling is amazing. Now I'm into Patrick Smith - he actually lives only about 5 miles from me, tho, sadly, I've never met him...BUT...his writings are soooo 'local'.... It's amazing what one can learn from some of these writers... Love Poke Salad Annie! *smile* Thanks for this post!

Another mystery solved! I always wondered what Poke Salad was, and loved that song. Thanks for the post, a little dance down memory lane.

Majorie Rawlings also wrote a cookbook "Cross Creek Cookery", one of my favorites. The Black Bottom Pie is to die for..It is a good read, even if you don't make any of the recipes.

Just one word of caution before any newbies go picking salad greens from pokeweed...if you don't get just the right bits at the right time, it is VERY toxic. I've never actually eaten it myself, but I believe the greens ONLY (no stems) must be picked very young, and I know the berries are poisonous. Maybe someone who is familiar can tell us exactly what is safe to eat and when, or how it needs to be prepared. For sure, it was a very common food for po' folk in the day. But like most of the old-timers, they knew exactly what was safe and what wasn't. Me, I'm not so sure...and I don't want to make any mistakes, if I ever decide to try it.

Marcia

And I forgot to say that I fell in love with The Yearling and Cross Creek when I was twelve years old (that's clear back in 1956!!!) and have admired the adventurous spirit of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ever since. One of my favorite places to go is her homestead in Cross Creek. If you've never visited, I highly recommend a trip. You can see just how she had her vegetable garden and groves laid out. They have done a wonderful job in recreating the atmosphere there. You can stand on her actual front porch and see the VERY typewriter she used to type her novels, sitting on her palm trunk table. The sense of her and of that time is everywhere.

Marcia

Poke - or pokeweed - is a tall, berry-bearing annual that grows in Tennessee and other southern states.

In its tender, young state, the plant's leafy parts can be prepared in methods similar to cooking spinach or greens. Inotherwords you boil the heck out of them and then add themto bacon grease to finish cooking.

In the case of poke, this usually involves boiling and at least two changes of water. You boil for about 15 minutes, rinse well, boil for another 5 minutes, rinse well. place in collander and pour boiling water over them once and then rinse with cold and let drain. Sometoimes you let them boil once for about 15 minutes, rinse well and then cook for another 15-20 minutes with a slice of salt pork or fatback in them and then drain.

After it gets over 7 inches long, it becomes poisonous to humans, and the berries are poisonous to humans. Myfather taght me to never pick them over 6 inches. He said to pick them the same as I would young mustard I wanted to wilt. He said over 6 and that is how deep you will be planted.

POLK SALAD

1 1/2 lb. Poke Leaves & Stalks
5 Thick Slices Salt Bacon
1/2 t. Salt
6-8 Eggs

Select tender young polk greens, include some tender stalks, not over 6 inches long.
Cut stalks like you would celery. Clean well rinsing several times.

Parboil and discard water. Add fresh water and 1 slice of bacon. Cook until tender. Fry rest of bacon until crisp and set aside.

Add greens, salt and eggs to drippings, cook over low heat for 20 minutes. Or you can boil the eggs and add them chopped to the greens.

I actually used to grow poke salad on my 5 acres. My neighbor taught me how to plant and harvest it. It's not bad.

Scents, I just love the phrase your dad used: "He said over 6 and that is how deep you will be planted." That's probably what his father (or mother) told him too.

I wonder how long ago, where and who started the easily remembered phrase for coral snakes: "Red meet black, friend of Jack. Red meet yellow, beware fellow."

And as always, thanks for the information, Marcia.

Marilyn

LOL...I grew up eating this stuff. My mom scrambled eggs in it so I would eat it. They would call it duck eggs. I would gag with every bite. lol
This brings up another memory of going to the "ramp patch". I never hear of anyone talking about that. We would have family get togethers. Everyone would climb into two or three vehicles and we would head out to the ramp patch some where in the mountains. My Granny, my mom and her sisters would get the fire going to get the coffee going and the fried potatoes for the ramps as everyone came back down from digging them.

I always heard stories of kids from their generation being suspended from school because they reaked of ramps. lol

Great post Coffeemom.

Tropcialfreak

P.S. thanks for posting some info on southern writers.

My Grandparents on my mother's side were farmers. Certainly not wealthy but then who was growing up during the Depression. They owned 20 acres in Waycross Georgia which they farmed during the summer, and built a house in Opa Lacka during the 1920, leasing 30 acres on what was then the edge of the Everglades...farmed the winter crops there. My fondest memories as a child in the late 50s were the summers we spent in Waycross, we didn't have family reunions then, instead we all gathered to help harvest the summer crops...in retrospect a truly magic time that I miss dearly.

As to the coral snakes, I grew up in the Ft. Lauderdale area before many people actually lived there. My mom always told me "Red, then Black, you better jump back, Black, then Red, you'll be dead". Lord knows this helped me when I had gotten the clothes hanging on the clothes line, brought them in and started folding them. When I got down to the bottom of the basket, there was Black then Red staring up at me. I've never picked up a laundry basket and thrown the contents out the door so fast in my life!

I have loved reading this thread about Poke Salad, live on Annie!

Cathy (Tom's wife)

This thread, Coffeemom, and all the responses have been wonderful! Thanks for sharing the memories.

Cathy, I'd have thrown that laundry basket out the door too! What a memorable frightening experience!

Just thought I'd mention that if red meets black, the snake can be a scarlett or milk snake, mimicking the coral, and ... well, a friend (of jack). Red meet yellow is the poisonous one, (beware, fellow) but they won't hurt you if you politely exit the scene, or give them an exit, which is precisely what it sounds like you did.

I'm proably singing to the choir here, but have this wierd love for snakes that inspired me to post.

I've never had poke salad, but plenty of meals gowing up consisting of bread and gravy with whatever fresh veggies Mom scrounged/cooked up. Cheers, I agree, long live Annie!

You guys have just demonstrated the reason I never use that rhyme when I teach snake ID's. Too easy to mix it up or say it backwards...was it "red on yellow, kill a fellow?" or "red on yellow, friend of fellow?" or "red on black, will kill Jack?" etc, etc, etc. Way too easy to get mixed up in the fright of the moment. The easiest way to ID an eastern coral snake INSTANTLY is much simpler: They have a black nose. All the other mimics have red noses. See? So simple, you can't forget it. Black nose (like a black hat) indicates the villain. Even though coral snakes are not actually villains, you still don't want to pick one up.

And there ya go. My tip for the day. Complete with visual aids:

Coral snake with BLACK nose:

Florida scarlet snake with red nose:

Marcia

Wow! This post has morphed into some fine southern writing on it's own. Thanks to all for contributing. I loved reading all your stories and memories.

BUT I am a fraud. I doubt if I have ever knowingly eaten a "green" of any kind, ever.(maybe spinach,ugh) Growing up in Illinois in the 50's, my family owned a Mom and Dad grocery store so the only thing I picked...was stuff off of shelves.

That is okay, Kristi, as you adore salsa we consider you a garden friend. I will have to fix you some greens that you will eat. I have taught many people to appreciate greens becaue of the way I fix them. I have also taught many people to enjoy grits because of the manner of prepaation, There is a knack to cooking everythin to make it enjoyable and tasty. We have a new Whole Foods store near my home and I purchased turnip roots several days ago. I can not wait to cook them and savor them - the only problem is that i like to eat them raw.

This thread has brought back so many memories of gardening with my father. He had to have his garden no matter where we lived and he usually would plant a gootball field sized garden of sweet potatoes and then half a football field of vegetables including tomatoes, greens in the fall, radish, okra. peas.green beans, cabbage, broccoli, sqyash and as I advanced in age each year he would allow me to introduce new stuff and we had tomatillo, wierd squash, watermellon, cantaloupe, honeydew, etc. That is where I developed my love of gardening and i miss having the land to really plant, but I have learned how to grow anything in containers. I have a container city and tomatoes tucked in with flowers and vines.

I can see my father after his stroke out in the garden hoeing is taers with one hand. He was also a fiherman and we used the guts and heads if the fish for fertilizer. We also had a pond with catfish and a gator named Osceola who ate hotdogs. he would come up and visit when you were on the bank. He scared the you know what out of me one day when I glance down and his hand was between my legs. He was waiting for the hotdogs I was fishing with for the catfish. Needless to say he got the entire package as I dropped them and slowly backed up. He disappeared the next year. My brother had something to do with that.

Daddy, mom and I would go into the woods to pick wild blackberries and we discovered a wild blueberry grove and Dad taugh me the difference between berries as there were also gooseberrie, sparkleberries and dewberries. He taught me which ones were poisoness and which were good. Hw taught me about mushrooms and stated that it was best to purchase in the store instead of getting the wrong ones and finding yourself flying in an unreal world where you could find yourself doing dangerous and crazy things or finding yourself pushing up dasies after they caused you to return to the dust you were created from. I heeded his advice until I took a botany course and really learned about mushrooms and then I learned how to grow my own. I leaned so much from my father and I could sit here and write about a lot of his folk sayings and tales but I do not wsh to bore people. He taught me to fish, how to butcher a hog and make salt bacon and cure the ham. He taught me so many things about nature and how to appreciate it. I learned the names of trees and how many feet of lumber that could be cut from them. I learned about wild flowers and where to fin them in the woods. I was truly blessed to have a father who grew up during the depression and who knew how to take care of himself and provide for his family. He cut wood and sold it to get money. He knew what hard work was all about. I miss him so much but I have a much richer life beause of him and I have all the wonderful memories to keep him close. I feel him whispering in my eqr when I am gardening and being there with me. I am writing a book about him and the stories he told. I enjoy working on that book. I have similar memories about my mother but in different areas. Thanks, Kristi for this thread. Rock on Annie and I have been seeking some of the songs I grew up with in the 60's and 70's on the net. Haooy gardening and memories, Linda

PS, if I can make it to Rioky's swap I have several different salas for you to try my salsa buddy and some of them are fruit based.

I like greens, but can't say I've ever had poke salad. I remember the song, now the darn thing is going round and round in my head. I am as we speak reading a mystery by Christine Kling. She is a teacher at BCC (actually now Broward College, they changed the name.) My husband also works for the college and ran into her yesterday, It is set in Ft. Lauderdale. It is weird to read about places and streets and restaurants,etc. that are so familiar.
Nancy

This is such a great thread. I read the whole thing this morning. I was born and raised in FL but I'm just 38. My mom was born in KY and came down here when she was 15. Some 50 years ago. I had to call her today and ask her if she ever had Poke Salad. She said ooooh yes!!! Then she said, "but you know it's poisonous right?" I told her about the thread here. She said with so many other greens to eat that are not at all poisonous that she'll just stay away fromt the poke salad. I will have to look for some of these books y'all keep talking about. I love books about local stuff. THanks for this thread y'all.
Joy

There is a wonderful book of Florida Tales by Webb Garrison entitled A Treasury of Florida Tales that is absolutely wonderful and I also enjoy the bookd by Zora Neale Hurston. Her stories are so amazing and she lived here in the Orlando area. I studied her in college when I took Women's Literature and she is fascinating. There are so many good books by Florida authors that it is mind boggling. I am heaed off to the bookstore now to see what else I can find. Linda

You country folk are killin' me. I remember starting out in the Bronx where someone would open the fire hydrant and we all would swim, run through it until the fire department came and closed it up again. Eventually they made some kind of caps so the water wouldn't gush out. I guess it never occurred to us that we might need that water if there was a fire in the apartments. Then we moved to what I thought was the country. Kearny N.J. there were so many factories there its' a wonder we aren't all mutants.
Stephen Crane also lived in Florida for a while-and almost lost his life here. You may remember "Red Badge of Courage" from your high school readings.
I like Randy Wayne White-he writes about the gulf coast area, Pine Island Sanibel. I haven't read a lot of his books but the ones I read are pretty interesting.

I was "twittering" with a friend yesterday who said she had tried the snakeroot plant roots and they were yummy. Never tried those, but in addition to poke, I've eaten wild mustard, wild garlic, and lambs' quarters. Also, I had wild blueberries growing in my yard in SC, and I used to make jams and pies out of them. They're kinda tough, and not as sweet as the hybrids, but hey, free is free! Of course, blackberries and wild plums were a given. Wild crabapples were tart, but made good crabapple jelly with enough sugar. I can't find any of those growing down here, but I have seen wild thistle and lots of cattails, which can be eaten as well. The problem with the thistles and cattails is that you need some high rubber boots to go harvest them.

I want to buy the book about Florida Edible Weeds.

hmmm...maybe we need a 'local' book thread? (or, maybe we have one, but I'm missing it!) ...just today finished a book called "Skinny Dip" by Carl Hiaasen. It's listed as a 'Florida based' mystery. The author is colorful - it's very enjoyable reading. "The Observer" lists Hiaasen as a satirical novelist...the setting is south Florida - the Glades and Miami area. (I'm still scared of Poke Salad, too!) ...but I've eaten more than my share of dandelion greens (in Vt.) and wild mushrooms.

Let's not forget swamp cabbage. Now I haven't eaten any but I hear it's very good. I wanted to go to the swamp cabbage festival a few months back but I couldn't. I can't remember why.

Many authorities advise against eating pokeweed even after thrice boiling, as traces of the toxin may still remain. For many decades, poke salad has been a staple of southern U.S. cuisine, despite campaigns by doctors who believed pokeweed remained toxic even after being boiled.
The above information is from-wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokeweed

Felix

I grew up eating swamp cabbage when we were in the woods turkey hunting. Loved it, but the problem is that you kill a 2-3' sabal palm to eat the heart at the base of the plant...when the woods were plentiful it didn't seem like a big deal, but those days are quickly disappearing. Gave up the turkey hunting two decades ago too, but I miss that commune with nature.

Love this thread! Lots of great information.
Going to the library later and looking for "Cross Creek Cookery".
Thanks for the snake info too- Now I know that there is a scarlet snake living next to my veggie beds. I feel much better.
I have never eaten poke salad but have read about it and wondered and would love to try it.What does it taste like??? As for lambsquarters there is no hope for me there as I am allergic to the plant.

I revisited this thread after a few days. Linda, thanks for sharing your memories. Your post was thoroughly enjoyable and much, much better than flipping through a magazine or cable tv to find something interesting. Thank you so much for sharing.

It's nice to meet people that aren't plastic and fake, even if the "meeting" isn't face to face. I enjoyed all of your posts. I've never had poke salad but enjoy "poke" vicariously through your posts. Thanks.

This is a great post Kristi.

I spent my childhood summers in the Panhandle, wandering the farm and scrub my grandparents bought after they sold their place outside Plant City. Dad always said that a tiny little place called Springhead just got too crowded for my grandfather, though when we would go visit the rest of the family there, the dirt roads, orange groves and woods never seemed terribly crowded to a city kid. But my grandfather was one of those people who really enjoyed being able to fend for himself, and was very good at it. He could look at deer tracks in sand and not just say whether it was a male or a female, but if the female was pregnant, just by the way her tracks splayed. My brother and I caught a lot of catfish in his ponds, sitting around swatting mosquitoes and watching a bobber at the end of a cane pole for hours, and loving it.

My father, born and raised in Florida, still walks around city streets looking down all the time. Mom says he's looking for snakes.

My grandparents were of the generation who came of age during the Depression, both born in rural Florida. My grandmother always said they didn't feel the Depression like people up north did (Yankees, as she referred to them) because they had never been rich, and because they had vegetable gardens so they never went hungry, before, during or after. I think the truth was that the South she was born into was so poor, it couldn't get much poorer when banks they had no money in anyway collapsed.

When she was still alive and I was living in Jensen Beach, I used to talk to her every weekend about my efforts at gardening. She knew so much about what we now call organic or sustainable gardening because she had never thrown out an eggshell or the morning's coffee grounds. The nutrients those represented were vital to her work feeding her family on this poor soil. She also wouldn't have considered wasting precious well-water on the grass. Her father was a share-cropper and waste-not want-not was taught early on.

She knew things that just blow my mind, like how to make soap, how to quilt intricate and time-honored patterns and how to skin and cook just about anything.

She was just 11 years old during the flu epidemic of 1918-1919, and was the only person in her family who didn't come down with it (she had had malaria and polio, so she did get her share of pestilence. Florida still had malaria back then.) She told me several times a lovely story about the flu epidemic. She was a little girl struggling to keep everyone fed, with the adults and her older siblings sick. And the cat brought in a rabbit. And she felt terrible about doing it, but she took the rabbit away from the cat and skinned it and made stew. She said after that, the cat brought her everything she could catch, lizards, snakes, frogs. The backyard wildlife was apparently devastated by the sweet mama cat's desire to help out in a clearly dire situation.

I've always thought of that story when my silly cat brings a lizard into the house. He's just trying to help feed the family.

My mother-in-law didn't feel quite so charitable about his overwhelming instincts. She grew up in cities, the child of Jewish Polish immigrants fleeing persecution. So when she was visiting and we were both at work and the cat brought in a snake, she wasn't thrilled. She was as resourceful as you would expect from someone of her generation, however. She knows nothing about snakes or which ones might be poisonous. So she grabbed a cookpot and turned it upside down over the poor creature, trapping it in the living room for us to inspect and dispense with.

(caveat, the cat wears a bell now so he's not such a danger. it seems that only lizards and butterflies are unable to hear it because he hasn't caught a bird or snake or frog since I put it on him.)

My father, a journalist like me, got my grandmother to write her "memoirs" after my grandfather died. He mostly wanted to give her a project to help her occupy herself after spending a lifetime caring for him as he cared for her. But he also wanted to make sure that some of her wit and wisdom wasn't lost. And she left me a lovely book, including recipes for things like hoe cake (traditionally, the dough was sent out into the fields and cooked up over a fire on a hoe. but you can do it in an iron skillet.)

There is so much wisdom we have lost and forgotten from her generation, stuff we're trying to recover now after we've finally discovered that fertilizer and bread that can keep for weeks because it's full of chemicals aren't the answer to everything. Wish she were here to tell us how she did it.

Susannah

Sign me up as a new "fan" Susannah, loved your post, thank you so very much for sharing. I would rather read this any day of the week than anything by Carl Hiaason again. (Sorry, he just wasn't my cup of tea and seemed like a Dave Barry wannabee.

Tom, did you eat the sabal palm's heart, or were you after poke? Loved your post too.

I saw on the news that people who survived the great flu epidemic of the early 1900's have exceeded normal life expectancy and are healthier than average in advanced years. The news noted that it was a bird flu, too.

Marcia, haven't seen you for a few days. Hopw you're surviving foot surgery and Fay. Blackheads. Thank you for pinpointing a readily discerable trait for the coral snake. Who likes blackheads?

Best wishes to all,

good night
m

Thanks M, that's very sweet. Of course, Hiaasen makes considerably more money with his books (which, for the record, I love) than I possibly could with my memories of my dear grandmother. But it's fun for me to share them.

Susannah

For the record, the day I met Susannah and found out she had been a war correspondant,I wanted to make her sit and tell me stories.Alas, not enough time. Little did I know she had Florida Cracker stories as well. I would love to hear more grandmother stories while eating fresh baked biscuits (with Cherie's Gran's preserves)
You are all blowing me away with your histories!
Thank-you, thank-you.

Thanks Kristi,

We'll have to get together some time when we have more time, and I'm not racing the sunset to plant all the treasures you shared with me. By the way, I've managed not to kill any of it, except the pot of lillies. I think too much rain may have done them in, something did. For awhile I thought I had screwed up the brugs, but then they started sprouting! I've even kept the broms out of the puppy's mouth, which was work until they grew some roots and he grew some sense.
The crinum is the centerpiece in a bed I re-did right out front, though it's probably too close to the wall and won't have the right pH it wants. I threw some coffee grounds on it this morning after reading here that would be a problem.

I've learned so much here! Someday, I'll have stories about successfully growing something harder than crotons. :)

Susannah

Susannah, I just have to say once again that I love your writing. Wow.

I don't want to eat polk Salad I want to get it out of my yard. Any suggestions? This stuff is very hardy. Thanks and good eats to those of you who want to eat it.

What wonderful stories and what a wealth of information! Being a transplanted Yankee for the past 50+ years, so much of this sounds like the tales my MIL would tell. She was born and raised down around Punta Gorda, the only girl in a family of five boys. My FIL said she was the wildest of the lot. (Her name was Helen, he frequently called her Hellion). She could outshoot both of her sons and FIL swore she could drive anything from a mule to an earth mover. (HE was an engineer for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad) Whenever they traveled between Tampa and Jacksonville, Helen drove. Stark and Lawtey were speed traps back then, too, but she never got a ticket.
Swamp cabbage is called "hearts of palm" nowdays, and you can buy it canned in the supermarket. It's yucky compared to the freshly harvested. But as pointed out earlier, the palm's protected in FL as it should be.
Never had poke salat, but have tried just about everything that lives in the ocean. And yes, fish heads and guts make great fertilizer - my husbands roses were testament to that!
My family and I are taking the first steps toward going back to the land, to live gently on it and "do no harm". The well should be in sometime this month, along with the utility pole. The pump house will be a 22' diameter dome in which we can camp out and store equipment and materials while we build the house and green houses. Our ultimate goal is to be completely off the grid and to provide organic foods and fish to north Florida. We are so excited to finally be taking the first steps. God willing, I will live long enough to see this come to past!
We will be taking photos from Day One, so there should be some worth sharing. Wonder if my great grandkids will be as impressed with our skills as we were with our grandsparents?
cora

Cora, I would love to see/hear about your progress getting off the grid. You should put up a website on that. You are doing what many of us have only dreamed of. Congratulations. We need more pioneers in that area.

Thanks for these posts.My grandma was Russian and lived in PA so my stories would be about eating Borscht(beet and cabbage soup)And curing a cold with a mix of Honey,whiskey and chicken soup.BLECH!
I'm sure Florida was Heaven on Earth back in the day. I still love it but am thankful for any glimpse of its History.