Home » Travel » Arkansas » EATING THE ARKANSAS WAY

EATING THE ARKANSAS WAY

© Bertha Sutliff

Every mountain home has a vegetable garden. This garden will produce enough vegetables to sustain an average family for the year. Mouths will water waiting for the fresh corn that will be shucked and cooked to perfection. Beans of every kind will be picked and then shelled while people sit on the front porch breathing the mountain air and taking pride in accomplishments well done.

About the middle of summer, potatoes will be dug and laid out under the shade of a tree or shed to "cure." Usually every member of the family and sometimes the neighbors would assist in this harvest.

If the weather has co-operated, a fall garden might be planted toward the end of summer. This garden will produce sweet potatoes, pumpkins and other vegetables of necessity.

One summer my garden was so productive I gave vegetables away to others. My cellar was full of canned vegetables and soups, tomatoes and tomato juice, pickles and relishes. That fall, before the first frost, I picked the more mature green tomatoes and laid them out on a table in the cellar. That year for Christmas, we had fresh sliced tomatoes. It takes a lot of work to have a successful garden, but when you can step back and see your accomplishments, it makes you proud.

Shelly Green Beans

Shelly Green Beans is delicious fixed with a piece of fat back, ham, or bacon. When green beans are too large to snap, shell them out and cut up the shells. Cook them all together with the meat until tender. This is a way of still using the snap beans after they have matured.

Leather Britches

Leather Britches is a name given to dried green beans. This is another way of preserving vegetables and is very tasty. Mothers taught their daughters early in life how to make Leather Britches. She would pick the green beans and together they usually would sit under the shade of a big tree in the back yard and string them up. She would show her daughter how to take a long needle with strong thread and run it through the end of the bean until there would be a long string of them. After all the beans were strung they would hang them where they could dry in the summer sun.

To cook them, place them in a pot of water and boil until tender. You can add side meat, fat back, and pieces of ham or bacon to the beans if you want. The flavor adds that little extra touch to the beans.