The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady (32 page)

Here are some books I found helpful in creating
The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady.
You will also find numerous resources listed in the five earlier books in the series.

 

Cohen, Stan.
The Tree Army: A Pictorial History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942
(1980).

Davis, Ren and Helen.
Our Mark on This Land: A Guide to the Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps in America's Parks
(2011).

Hill, Edwin G.
In the Shadow of the Mountain: The Spirit of the CCC
(1990).

Maher, Neil M.
Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement
(2009).

Pasquill, Robert.
The Civilian Conservation Corps in Alabama, 1933–1942: A Great and Lasting Good
(2008).

If there were no other reason to live in the South, Southern cookin' would be enough.

MICHAEL A. GRISSOM,
SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD

Fried Apples

Served over waffles or with buttermilk biscuits, sausage, and gravy, fried apples are a traditional Southern breakfast dish. But they may appear as a side dish, like a vegetable, for dinner or supper—and in fact are even listed as a vegetable in old cookbooks, where they are sometimes flavored with bacon or sausage drippings. Of course, fried apples aren't fried at all—but simply braised over low heat, in a heavy skillet. Use firm, tart pie apples, such as Granny Smiths or Gravensteins.

1½ cups apple cider plus ½ cup

5 tart apples, peeled and sliced

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon cornstarch

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon cloves

Pour 1½ cups of apple cider into a skillet over medium heat. Add apple slices and cook until tender. Add butter and remove from heat. Mix together remaining ½ cup apple cider, cornstarch, sugar, and spices in a small bowl. Pour over apples, return to low heat, and stir gently as the sauce thickens.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

This traditional butter-cookie recipe appears in almost every cookbook after the Civil War, sometimes with pecans, sometimes without. (Pecans, of course, are a Southern favorite and are added to just about anything.) Children love to fill the “thumbprints” and drizzle the glaze—fun for grown-up cooks, too. Choose a single jam or several different jams and marmalades.

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

⅔ cup sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ cup finely chopped pecans

½ cup jam

GLAZE

1 cup powdered sugar

2 to 3 teaspoons water

1 teaspoons vanilla extract

Combine butter or margarine, sugar, and vanilla extract in bowl. Beat until creamy, scraping the sides of the bowl often. Add flour and chopped pecans. Beat until well mixed. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour, or until firm.

Heat oven to 350°F. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Make thumbprint indentation in center of each cookie, and fill with about ¼ teaspoon jam. Bake 14–18 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Remove to rack and cool completely. To glaze: Combine all glaze ingredients in bowl and stir until smooth. Drizzle over cookies. Makes about 3 dozen.

Ophelia's Recipe for Cake Flour

During the Depression, specialty products like cake flour were expensive and were often not stocked in the smaller stores.

Measure out the amount of all-purpose flour called for by your recipe. For every 1 cup of flour remove 2 tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. Sift 5–6 times before using. (If you don't have a flour sifter, use a strainer. Fill it with flour, hold or place it over a bowl, and tap a knife against it.) Be sure to measure the flour one more time, after it's been sifted and before you use it in the recipe.

The Diner's Special Southern Corn Pudding

Southern corn pudding is the savory, whole-kernel version of the sweeter Indian pudding made with cornmeal and molasses that was a Northeastern colonial staple. Corn pudding, also called Puddin' Corn and Hoppy Glop, is traditionally made with fresh corn, but you can also use canned cream-style
corn. Cooks developed their favorite variations, adding onions, garlic, cheese, tomatoes, and other vegetables.

2 cups fresh corn or 1 can cream-style corn

2 tablespoons flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Pepper

2 eggs

1 cup milk

3 tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Mix together corn, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper. Beat eggs with milk and melted butter, and add to corn. Pour into a greased baking dish. Bake 30 minutes. Serves 6.

Raylene's Lemon Chess Pie

Southern cooks were famous for their sweet, egg-rich custard pies, including chess pie (also called chess cake, chess tart, and sugar pie). This recipe (which includes cornmeal for thickening) is for the popular lemon-flavored variation; if lemons weren't available, vinegar was often substituted, or buttermilk. Food history expert Karen Hess tells us how this pie got its odd name: “Since the archaic spellings of cheese often had but one ‘e' we have the answer to the riddle of the name of that southern favorite ‘Chess Pie'. . . (The tradition of making cheesecake without the cheese goes back to early seventeenth century and beyond . . .)”
—The Virginia House-wife,
by Mary Randolph, with Historical Notes and Commentaries by Karen Hess, p. 289

4 eggs

1½ cups sugar

½ cup lemon juice

¼ cup butter, melted

1 tablespoon cornmeal

2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

⅛ teaspoon salt

Pastry for 9” pie

In a large bowl, beat eggs for 3 minutes. Gradually add sugar and beat until mixture becomes thick and lemon-colored. Beat in the lemon juice, butter, cornmeal, flour, and salt. Pour into pastry shell. Bake at 350°F for 35–40 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 1 hour. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.

Charlie Dickens' Favorite Grilled Cheese Sandwich

The Vidalia onion is a sweet variety of onion that was first grown—by accident—in Toombs County, Georgia, in the early 1930s. The fact that they are unusually sweet is due to the low sulfur content of the soil in which the onions are grown. (Sulfur makes onions pungent.) The Piggly Wiggly food chain, headquartered in nearby Vidalia, Georgia, put the onions in their produce bins, and it wasn't long before visitors were taking these oddly sweet onions back home to their friends. The Vidalia onion is now the official state vegetable of Georgia. This recipe makes one substantial sandwich.

3 strips bacon

2 tablespoons softened butter mixed with ⅛ teaspoon garlic powder

2 thick slices bread of your choice

2 slices Swiss cheese

2 thin slices tomatoes

Italian seasoning, salt, pepper

2 medium-thick Vidalia onion slices

Fry bacon until crisp in a skillet over medium heat. Remove bacon and drain drippings, saving drippings for another use. Generously spread one side of a slice of bread with butter-garlic mixture. Place bread butter-side-down in skillet and top with 1 slice of cheese. Top with tomato slices and sprinkle with Italian seasoning. Top tomatoes with onion slices, bacon strips, and second slice of cheese. Butter the second slice of bread on one side and place butter-side-up on top of sandwich. Grill until lightly browned and flip; continue grilling until both slices of cheese are melted. (Cover the skillet to help the cheese melt.)

Fannie's Tomato Soup

2 yellow onions, diced

½ teaspoon minced garlic

5 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

1 (15 ounce) can crushed tomatoes

½ teaspoon dried thyme

¼ teaspoon dried savory

¼ teaspoon marjoram

4 cups water

1 cup half-and-half

4 basil leaves, julienne cut

In a large saucepan over medium heat, sauté the onions and garlic in butter until softened. Add sugar, salt, and pepper. Cook until the sugar is dissolved, stirring. Add the tomatoes and herbs and cook for 5 minutes. Add water. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Set the soup aside to cool. When cooled, puree the soup in a blender. Return the soup to the stove, simmer 5 minutes, and then add the half-and-half. When heated through, sprinkle the basil leaves for garnish.

Lucy Murphy's Jefferson Davis Pie

This pie, named in honor of the president of the Confederacy, is a fruit-filled, spiced version of the chess pie (above). Lucy's recipe includes granulated sugar and adds a meringue; other Jeff Davis recipes use brown sugar and omit the meringue. Perhaps it is better not to worry about the “historicity” of these recipes. Anne Carter Zimmer, in her commentary in
The Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book
(p. 131), remarks, “I began to realize that receipts [recipes] are a kind of folklore. Like folktales, they are recreated each time they are made or told, and each time they can be—and often are—changed by the taste and times of the maker.”

½ cup softened butter

1½ cups sugar

4 egg yolks

2 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon cloves

1 cup whipping cream

½ cup chopped dates

½ cup raisins

½ cup coarsely chopped pecans

Unbaked 9-inch pie shell

MERINGUE

4 egg whites

½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 300ºF. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks, then add the flour and spices and mix until combined. Add the cream, dates, raisins, and pecans, mix well, and pour into the pie shell. Bake until set but still slightly soft in the middle, about 40 minutes.

To add the meringue: Remove the pie and increase the oven heat to 350ºF. Beat the egg whites until foamy. Gradually add the sugar, and beat until the meringue forms firm peaks. Spread over the baked pie, sealing it to the crimped edges of the shell. Bake until golden brown. Serve at room temperature.

A Baker's Dozen Ways to Do It Easier, Faster, Better

1. To keep cake moist, always put a good sound apple in the cake box or tin. And lemons can be kept almost indefinitely if you put them in a glass canning jar with a tight lid.
   
2. A teaspoon of borax in the last rinse will whiten clothes surprisingly.
   
3. Keep ants out of the pantry by placing fresh sage leaves on the shelves.
   
4. Potatoes will bake faster if you put them in hot water for about 15 minutes before they go in the oven.
   
5. When you buy celery, wash the leaves and dry them until they can be rubbed to a powder. Use to add a nice celery flavor to stews, soups, meat loaf, etc.
   
6. If you have a worn-out tablecloth that you can't darn any longer, cut it into squares, hem, and—voilà!—you have napkins.
   
7. To make your cook stove shine more easily, add a little turpentine to your stove polish.
   
8. To clean copper-bottom pans, rub with a mixture of salt, fine sand, flour, and vinegar.
   
9. If the electricity hasn't got to your house yet and you're still using kerosene lamps, soak your lamp wicks in vinegar and let them dry before using. They will be less likely to smoke.
   
10. To trap the flies that invade your kitchen, you'll need a canning jar, a funnel, some bait (fruit, bit of leftover), and 2–3 small blocks of wood. Put the bait in the jar, insert the funnel, and turn the jar and funnel upside down on the wood blocks. The flies will crawl in through the opening beneath the jar and the funnel and be easily trapped.
    
11. If you're grinding aromatic or strongly flavored spices, run a half cup of rice through the grinder afterward, to remove the flavor and scent.
    
12. For a nice substitute for crackers, croutons, and breadsticks, roll out a pie crust, slice the pastry into narrow strips, sprinkle with salt, and bake.
    
13. When you're picking parsley from the garden, pick from the center. Those are flavorful leaves, and you'll help keep the plant from
    bolting.
    

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