The Appalachian Diet

When I woke up yesterday morning I felt a little strange. Before I finished my first cup of coffee, I knew what was wrong. It had simply been too long since I'd had cornbread....

Diet defines culture to some extent throughout the Appalachian region: green beans with pork fat, hominy (no grits please), salted country ham boiled in coffee to make red-eye gravy, biscuits, corn - mountain people know how to eat.

Cornbread was an easy problem to solve; I mixed some batter at dinner time, heated some oil in our small cast iron skillet on the stove, and let the oven warm. When I knew the oil was good and hot and the oven was ready, I poured the batter into the skillet; the sound of corn batter sizzling in the hot oil is one of my favorite kitchen noises; it ensures that the outside of the cornbread will be nice and crunchy. That night, as a small concession to my children, I added a tablespoon of brown sugar to the batter. I prefer cornbread without the sugar, though...

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One of the essentials in an Appalachian diet is Chicken and Dumplings. The recipe below is from my wife, who teaches in the middle school grades in McDowell County, West Virginia:

• Boil chicken meat in enough water to cover all the pieces until the meat is tender. Add salt.

• Mix together self-rising flour and shortening. Use more shortening than for biscuits. This is the key to fluffy dumplings. The mixture should look crumbly. Add enough milk to make it look like dough. If it is sticky, add more flour.

• Remove the large pieces of chicken from the broth. Roll them in flour and fry until brown.

• Drop dough by the spoonful into boiling broth mixture. Cook at medium temperature until it becomes thickened.

While chicken and dumplings is an important standard, some of the best things in the mountains can't be bought at the grocery store.

Squirrel

One of my great uncles who now lives on flatland comes up here a few times a year to visit. And one of his main goals appears to be to kill and eat a squirrel or two. He's pretty good at it. I've went out to shoot squirrels once and drew the conclusion that most people hunt the animals for exercise. But plenty of the animals do get eaten in central Appalachia.

Squirrel and Gravy seems to be the most common way of preparing squirrel. I don't get squirrel much - probably in part because I don't go shoot squirrel much.

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