This post is authored by Zerobear Polybear.
My parents grew huge gardens when I was a kid (many years back), The vegetables they grew pretty much every year included pink eyed purple hull peas, bunch and pole butter beans, Contender green beans, lady peas (my Dad’s #1 favorite vegetable), Texas cream peas (better yield than lady pea, but not as good), speckled butterbeans (for my mom), peanuts (for my dad), sweet corn, tomatoes, several different varieties of squash, cucumbers, okra, sweet potatoes (always) and red potatoes (sometimes), and surely some I have forgotten. These were grown on a neighbor’s otherwise unused land on what seemed like eternally long rows to a kid holding a weed chopping hoe.
7 comments:
I remember many Summers spent shelling butterbeans and peas while watching General Hospital, All my Children and One Life to Live. Today I blanch my own Pinkeye purple hull peas, speckled butterbeans and a few white butterbeans. I freeze tomatoes and Okra for soup this Winter.
You watch your Mother and Grandmother do these things for many years and it comes natural to you.
The younger folks under 40 don’t do the Summer ritual with canning and freezing. They don’t know what blanching is. Hell I’m 58 and a lot of my own generation is too lazy to plan ahead and fill the freezer for the Winter months.
My grandmother and granny-neighbors wore long, blousy print dresses, lace-up "granny boots" and bonnets to go chopping in the garden in Oklahoma small town, even into the 1960s. They would get excess vegetables canned and down into shelves lining the Storm Cellar, an underground shelter a few degrees cooler than above ground. No time wasted for that generation.
Gardens are great if you can get some dang help picking the crop. Lol.
I never inherited the green thumb. I could kill a cactus. But I love going to Brenda at the farmers market and picking up fresh vegies. Pink eye purple hull peas were mom's favorite so we shelled a many of those. And turnip greens. Tons and tons of turnip greens. We use to cut okra, flash freeze it on a cookie sheet, then into a storage bag. Comes in handy when you just have to have some good fried okra. I never learned to can veggies, we just cleaned, blanched, and froze.
vegetables for for liberals
Your Grandmother and my Grandmother lived through the Depression. The generation that built this country with hard work and no modern conveniences.
I remember my Mother and Grandmother cutting corn off the cob because we loved fried corn cooked in an old iron skillet especially on cold Winter days. I mean 500 or 600 ears of corn at once usually around 4th of July every year. No trips to the beach or Disney World for us.
The women canned green beans, jellies with whatever was available; usually blackberries, Muscadines and Plums. I miss the homemade pickles and pepper relish too.
What?
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