A modern Appalachian woman's kitchen adventures
Growing up, this fruit salad was always on the table for Christmas dinner. I think it might have been the only day of the year that we had it. I hadn’t thought about it in years until last year when I was hosting my annual Christmas lunch for my family. I asked my mom for…
Salmon Patties are one of my very favorite Appalachian foods. Fresh salmon wasn’t something that was available in grocery stores in the area that I grew up and I don’t think I’m alone when I say my first experience with salmon was the canned variety. I always loved when my mom would fix Salmon Patties,…
I’ve written before about my great love of fresh peas and how hard it is to find them here. You can imagine my excitement then when I found fresh “picked this morning” salad peas at the campus farmers market on its opening day. So what exactly is a salad pea? Good question. In my growing…
Although the calendar says that Summer is still about a month away, here in Kentucky, it feels like it’s well under way. Due to an unseasonably mild winter, schools are finishing up for the year. My Facebook feed is full of graduations, awards days, and proms. Summer is a wonderful time to be a foodie…
As you may have noticed if you’re a regular around here, I am very fond of pie. It’s not as mainstream, it seems, as cake or as trendy as cupcakes but to me, pie is the quintessential Appalachian dessert. My mom makes delicious made-from-scratch cream pies like chocolate and coconut. She doesn’t have a recipe…
Pea Salad is one of those great side salads that you often see on salad bars in these parts. (The really good salad bars, you know, that have like a dozen varieties of creamy, fatty salads.) I’ve always been a fan but then I’m also a fan of peas. And salad. So pea salad is…
This is my mom’s apple pie recipe. It’s pretty simple and just perfect in my opinion. I know many people prefer the tart taste of Granny Smith apples for their apple pies but I like a sweeter apple like Red Delicious. If you go apple picking this fall, ask your apple farmer for a recommendation.…
Roadside vegetable and fruit stands were pretty common when I was growing up. It wasn’t unusual at all to see a make shift stand set up on a open spot near a highway, or even sometimes just a guy with a pickup truck parked somewhere with enough space for a car or two to pull…
It’s a cliche in Appalachian/Southern cooking that we fry everything. And while it’s true that most traditional country cooks believe in frying first and asking questions later, many times the word “fried” simply means it was prepared in a frying pan. Such is the case with Fried Cabbage. While the name conjures up images of…
My rules on cornbread are pretty simple. It must be baked in a cast iron skillet. It must be crunchy on the outside. It must not be sweet. That’s my cornbread philosophy in a nutshell. Now, I’ve had perfectly passable cornbread baked in a square pan but to me, the authentic cornbread experience is cast…