Latest / Family Tree Food Stories / From Shrubs to Smokehouses: Old-School Preservation Hacks You’ll Actually Want to Try

Transcript

From Shrubs to Smokehouses: Old-School Preservation Hacks You’ll Actually Want to Try · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:07
  Hey everybody.
• 0:08
  Welcome back to another show.
• 0:10
  I'm Nancy May, along with my co-host, Sylvia.
• 0:12
  Lovely.
• 0:13
  And she's down, well, she's up in the good old fashioned country,
• 0:17
  bluegrass state of Kentucky.
• 0:20
  Hey, Sylvia.
• 0:20
  How you doing today?
• 0:22
  Hey, I am doing just fine and I'm really excited about our show today.
• 0:26
  About putting up for the harvest, , , but we don't wanna
• 0:28
  talk about just ordinary things.
• 0:30
  We're gonna talk about a little bit off the beaten path.
• 0:32
  We are, we are talking about harvesting and, , three different types of
• 0:36
  preservation methods, which, , there's so many different things that we
• 0:39
  can do today, We really wanted, I mean, listen folks, if you're, I hope
• 0:44
  you're listening, Sylvia and I really wanted to also look at the things that
• 0:48
  everyday ordinary people could do.
• 0:50
  Not that you're everyday and ordinary, but some of us just don't
• 0:54
  have big gardens and, and backyards.
• 0:57
  Some of us are in the cities and we just have window boxes and
• 1:00
  herb gardens, and you know what?
• 1:01
  You can do some preservation there too, or.
• 1:04
  Preserving, maybe not preservation, because I think
• 1:07
  I wanna . Preservation myself.
• 1:09
  Yeah.
• 1:10
  Yeah.
• 1:10
  And we talk about things that you, like you said, on window boxes and things
• 1:14
  like that, like herbs and all of that kind, or maybe even just your yard or, or
• 1:18
  wherever you're kind of looking around.
• 1:21
  You don't have to have massive gardens.
• 1:22
  So let's, let's talk about shrubs.
• 1:25
  Shrubs.
• 1:25
  We're not talking like you're shrubs in your, like there's a shrubbery
• 1:30
  I'm thinking, , Monty Python?
• 1:31
  Shrubbery?
• 1:32
  No, we're not talking about shrubberies.
• 1:34
  We're talking about drinking vinegars.
• 1:36
  Ugh, well, whatever.
• 1:37
  Sounds kind of yuck.
• 1:38
  , But here's an interesting thing.
• 1:40
  I wondered, where did shrubs come from?
• 1:42
  'cause it's not about those bushes things, you know, but it's arabic for sharabe.
• 1:47
  To drink.
• 1:48
  Yeah.
• 1:49
  So, but fruit, sugar, vinegar, or even alcohol, and we all know that has
• 1:54
  preservation qualities or preserving qualities, in a jar that turns
• 1:58
  into a really good flavored syrup.
• 2:00
  . My grandmother in the Kentucky hollers didn't make shrubs, , but she had
• 2:03
  her own versions , of drinks . And this one's kind of exciting.
• 2:07
  , Appalachian style tonics is what she did, , she had jarred,, grape juice.
• 2:11
  I don't know where she found the grapes.
• 2:12
  I hear they grew wild.
• 2:14
  But, a, here's a story, Nancy, and I think you even have one
• 2:16
  to share with about this one.
• 2:19
  My mother often spoke of getting into the hills.
• 2:22
  Picking wild sassafras and making teas and soups and preserving , , the
• 2:28
  leaves by freezing them.
• 2:29
  And she loved that tea and she spoke of it so often.
• 2:33
  And then the FDA banned.
• 2:36
  , The sassafras because it was deemed car.
• 2:39
  Car.
• 2:39
  Carcinogenic.
• 2:41
  Carcinogenic.
• 2:42
  Okay, there you go.
• 2:44
  It sounds like I've had a little bit of that Alcohol preservation.
• 2:46
  So, , you can think of my mother's tea as the equivalent of moonshine, which
• 2:51
  Appalachians talk about as if it were religion, and that's a preserving agent.
• 2:55
  You drink enough moonshine and you'll , be preserved forever, as they say.
• 2:58
  But don't you have a, , sassafras story
• 3:00
  Yeah, I decided I, I would've liked your mom because the two is probably
• 3:05
  would've been sitting in the moonshine, bathtub, drinking that stuff.
• 3:08
  But yes, sassafras.
• 3:09
  So up in the woods in Connecticut, and I haven't seen sassafras down here.
• 3:14
  It's kind of interesting, learning, all the different sort
• 3:16
  of flora and fauna in Florida.
• 3:18
  , Which is beautiful, but it is totally different as far as zone.
• 3:21
  We're in zone nine and I think they were zone six or seven up there,
• 3:26
  but Sassafras grows wild up in the woods pretty regularly, and we'd hike
• 3:31
  around the woods, especially in the fall time, and he'd take a branch and
• 3:35
  skin the bark back and you smell it and it's, oh my God, it's root beer.
• 3:39
  It smells so good.
• 3:40
  Right?
• 3:41
  You've done that, haven't you?
• 3:42
  Oh yeah.
• 3:43
  Yeah,
• 3:43
  I mean, what, child hasn't done it and even, I'll say adults, but the
• 3:47
  interesting thing is that , you can actually make homemade root
• 3:51
  beer with it kind of like soda with sassafras root, not the branches.
• 3:55
  'Cause you would think that the smell on the bark , would be what you want.
• 3:58
  But , remember the show where we ate the Christmas tree?
• 4:01
  Yeah.
• 4:02
  Right.
• 4:02
  You did.
• 4:04
  I, well, I drank the Christmas tree back to back to those roots with your mom
• 4:10
  , And the moonshine.
• 4:11
  Although Christmas tree moonshine doesn't quite work.
• 4:13
  But anyway, you can make homemade root beer and you wanna know how to do it.
• 4:18
  And it says Root in the very name,
• 4:20
  Right, . , But like you said, yes, it was banned.
• 4:22
  , But however, I have to laugh back in college years back, the, , the
• 4:27
  aspartame, you know, like that sweet and low stuff had the same thing.
• 4:30
  , They had said that it was carcinogenic and I was dating this guy in college and he
• 4:34
  said, you shouldn't drink so much of that.
• 4:36
  , It's poisonous.
• 4:36
  And I said, yeah, it's poisonous to lab rats and I'm not a
• 4:39
  rat and I'm not in a lab.
• 4:40
  So, yes, thank you very much.
• 4:41
  I will stick to, to drink and eat.
• 4:44
  Sweet and low, but , back to our root beer.
• 4:46
  So here's how you make it.
• 4:48
  First of all, you gotta dig up the trees.
• 4:50
  Well not the big trees, but the small ones,, the small little saplings.
• 4:54
  And then you take the root and you cut the root into little.
• 4:58
  Pieces, little small like chunks.
• 5:00
  . Then you add that to a big pot of water and you add all sorts of spices like
• 5:05
  ginger and cloves and star anes and all spice berries and a cinnamon stick, and
• 5:10
  you let it boil for about 30 minutes.
• 5:13
  It's gonna get kind of dark and syrupy looking, and then you turn that down for,
• 5:18
  well, once it's all boiling , sort of.
• 5:19
  Gooey looking.
• 5:20
  Then you turn it down and you add anywhere from between a half a cup to
• 5:24
  a quarter cup of molasses and let that simmer for another five to 10 minutes.
• 5:27
  So now you've got this really good broth going.
• 5:30
  Then you take it off the heat and you strain it, get all that stuff of
• 5:34
  it, like just kind of as you would be making tea, like, , loose teas.
• 5:37
  And then you put the liquid in a fresh, clean pot, and
• 5:39
  then you add one cup of sugar.
• 5:41
  And simmer that till all the sugar is dissolved.
• 5:43
  Kind of like making a simple syrup concept.
• 5:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 5:46
  Then you take that, it's a long process, but trust me, it's worth it.
• 5:51
  , And fill a glass of, with ice cubes and you put one portion of the concoction that
• 5:57
  you've made to two portions, so one to two to sparkling soda or sparkling water,
• 6:03
  and there you've got your root beer.
• 6:05
  Wonderful.
• 6:06
  know, , we had cousins who used to make that in Massachusetts and they'd buy the
• 6:09
  syrup already made and then they'd add it.
• 6:12
  But they used a fermentation method.
• 6:14
  I'm not exactly how sure how it worked, but it sat in , basements for a couple
• 6:17
  of weeks till it started to bubble, then you just add the soda to it.
• 6:21
  Same kind of thing.
• 6:22
  But oh my God, the smell is intoxicating.
• 6:25
  Oh,, I wish sometimes I could go backwards and interview my grandmother.
• 6:29
  You know, so many cool things going on.
• 6:32
  But anyway.
• 6:33
  And then we have other stuff like you mentioned.
• 6:35
  And also my mom and dad used to make rhubarb wine.
• 6:38
  And rhubarb it's a vegetable, it's not a fruit.
• 6:41
  So you know, I guess vegetable wine, but we talked about that in another show.
• 6:46
  And then of course there's always peaches.
• 6:49
  This time of year I just bought a whole bunch of white peaches that
• 6:51
  are just delicious and you can make,.
• 6:54
  Peach brandy.
• 6:55
  With that, you just add a bunch of peaches that are sort of, on the
• 6:57
  rotting stage , cram 'em into a jar and fill it with vodka and throw it
• 7:02
  in the dirt for a couple of weeks.
• 7:03
  I'll bury it and, , you should have a few more other intoxicating,
• 7:09
  delicious ways to put stuff up.
• 7:10
  Is that fermentation
• 7:11
  and I guess it's a kind of fermentation.
• 7:13
  I mean, it's, alcohol, so I don't know.
• 7:16
  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
• 7:18
  Then can I tell my peaches story?
• 7:20
  Yeah, tell your
• 7:22
  From Letcher County, Kentucky.
• 7:24
  Please, please do.
• 7:25
  So on the news this morning, there was a young woman who worked for the
• 7:29
  health department in Letcher County.
• 7:30
  Now that's the home of Loretta Lynn.
• 7:32
  I mean, these are country folk, right?
• 7:34
  They take good, great joy in nature and what's out there.
• 7:38
  So anyway, she goes out and I cannot replicate her voice.
• 7:41
  Uh, maybe a little bit.
• 7:43
  I went out and I found.
• 7:45
  Two raccoons in the dumpster.
• 7:48
  And so she goes on to say that she goes out with a friend and they fish these.
• 7:53
  Two raccoons out.
• 7:55
  One's a baby, and the mom is face down in water and they can't
• 7:59
  figure out what happened to mom.
• 8:00
  So they get her out and the woman announces that she did CPR, which
• 8:04
  Mo totally made me gag a maggot.
• 8:06
  I mean, you know, okay for a moment.
• 8:08
  And she said no.
• 8:10
  She said, I didn't do that.
• 8:11
  She said, I wouldn't do that.
• 8:13
  They have rabies.
• 8:14
  But she said she, and it shows on the news clip of her compressing the chest of this.
• 8:20
  Upside down raccoon.
• 8:23
  And then she says, . It finally came back to life and I'm so happy that
• 8:27
  I was able to save those raccoons.
• 8:29
  And here's what she thinks happened.
• 8:30
  There was a distillery nearby and they were distilling peaches to
• 8:34
  make a peach flavored spirit, I assume, and they had thrown out
• 8:39
  some of those fermented peaches.
• 8:41
  The raccoon was drunk.
• 8:45
  I love that.
• 8:46
  A drunk raccoon.
• 8:47
  He saved the raccoon
• 8:49
  down in the barrel of
• 8:51
  Yeah.
• 8:51
  I mean, you
• 8:52
  peaches.
• 8:53
  Oh my God,
• 8:53
  only in Letcher County.
• 8:55
  Only in the, well, I don't know, maybe the name is appropriate, Letcher County,
• 8:59
  Yeah.
• 9:00
  but Grandma's Wine and, and Bob's Peach Brandy always had
• 9:04
  a few extra bugs in it too.
• 9:05
  Which of course you can drink.
• 9:07
  The Bobs Bugs.
• 9:08
  B Bob's Bugs.
• 9:10
  I think we should do a show called Bob's Bugs.
• 9:13
  Yeah,
• 9:13
  What's a few gnats between friends and family, right?
• 9:17
  Well maybe you probably have other bigger right bugs, but still we
• 9:20
  did that in another show too.
• 9:22
  Anyway, back on the subject of shrubs, I think I keep on wanting
• 9:26
  to call 'em scrubs, but, , colonial days, you know, they were kind
• 9:30
  of like the go-to in taverns.
• 9:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 9:32
  And,, I think we should probably do a foodie episode on what happened?
• 9:35
  Well, we already talked about taverns, but in the day, apple cider vinegar was mixed
• 9:39
  with cranberries and currents to make it safer because the water wasn't good.
• 9:43
  We kind of said that earlier, but you know, scrubs here in Florida or
• 9:47
  shrubs, scrubs, you can wanna call 'em
• 9:49
  the scrubs here in Florida.
• 9:52
  I think I haven't made anything like that and I haven't seen anything like
• 9:55
  that, but I've done something similar with a simple syrup where you add herbs
• 9:59
  and oranges, and now that's a go-to in my pantry because I've got, this simple
• 10:04
  syrup with oranges in it, and it's been sitting there for almost a year now.
• 10:08
  It is.
• 10:09
  It's a beautiful orange color, and you throw that in a little bit
• 10:12
  of hot tea or a splash of seltzer and or proses, proco, Prosecco.
• 10:17
  You know,, maybe I'm having too much pe, too much peach brandy during this show.
• 10:23
  No,
• 10:23
  You and the raccoons.
• 10:24
  right.
• 10:24
  It just sounds like it's, you ready to start a party anywhere, right?
• 10:29
  Yeah.
• 10:29
  yum.
• 10:30
  Now that's a drink that I'll sit on the porch and raise a glass
• 10:34
  to a raccoon who knew how to drink peach, whatever, you know?
• 10:39
  But, , seriously, we forgot and we have forgotten how perilous
• 10:43
  life was in colonial times, , and.
• 10:46
  , I still keep wondering about Arabic, but go on Sylvia.
• 10:49
  So back on track.
• 10:51
  , You don't need a garden for this.
• 10:53
  And as Nancy has described a lot of different things, grab a bag
• 10:57
  of rosemary, oranges sliced up or cranberries at the grocery store.
• 11:01
  Little sugar, little vinegar.
• 11:02
  Or alcohol, wink, wink.
• 11:04
  And you've got yourself a fall shrub, low effort, big payoff.
• 11:09
  And it sounds a little bit like those mocktails that we grow,
• 11:12
  listen to me in the restaurant, it's like growing them.
• 11:14
  I mean, they're concoctions of a lot of different things.
• 11:18
  , So we , flavor the water,
• 11:20
  Well, and, good things do tend to multiply, don't they?
• 11:24
  Especially if they're on the bar.
• 11:26
  , , So , that's one type of preservation.
• 11:28
  But then we've also got the smokehouse idea, right?
• 11:30
  And you've talked about , your family smokehouse in
• 11:33
  Kentucky, and we had actually.
• 11:35
  Our neighbors up north.
• 11:36
  Hello Jackie and Keith.
• 11:38
  I'm gonna make sure they get a hold of this show episode
• 11:41
  so they can listen to it.
• 11:43
  But our neighbor Keith, used to smoke turkeys and he'd dig a big
• 11:46
  pit in the backyard or in the front yard, and we lived in the woods.
• 11:50
  So I was always worried that, oh my God, we're gonna start a root fire in it.
• 11:53
  Anybody has ever seen the damages done by root fires?
• 11:56
  Please be very careful.
• 11:58
  Oh yeah.
• 11:59
  The whole hill's up by West Point when you're.
• 12:01
  We're totally inflamed because a root fire had started and the fire
• 12:06
  actually , goes underground from tree to tree in the roots, and the
• 12:09
  trees get destroyed and damaged.
• 12:11
  So if you are smoking something in the ground.
• 12:14
  Not in your hand.
• 12:16
  Another form of preservation, then, , please be careful, , where the roots are.
• 12:20
  , However, before we go forward, let's, we smoke this one out a little further.
• 12:25
  Let's take a quick break and we'll be back.
• 12:38
  So Sylvia, we're back at the Smokehouse , and I'm really interested in hearing
• 12:43
  a little bit more about Kentucky Smokehouses because they're not
• 12:46
  typical in New England, I guess, unless you're smoking fish, but even still.
• 12:50
  Yeah, you know, there's probably different versions of this kind of thing, but
• 12:53
  here's about smokehouses because , it was part of a culture of Eastern Kentucky
• 12:58
  and probably Appalachia in general.
• 13:00
  It was actually a structure the size of a shed.
• 13:02
  I never looked inside.
• 13:04
  Because probably was like, I think by the time I was around they weren't
• 13:08
  using it very much 'cause food was more available and it was like out
• 13:11
  of a Stephen King novel, I'm sure.
• 13:13
  But the ritual would go like this.
• 13:15
  , You'd get a hog in the spring, fatten it up until November, and
• 13:18
  then it was slaughtered and put up for winter survival of a family.
• 13:22
  , And it was up above the house a little ways.
• 13:24
  , And why was it called a smokehouse?
• 13:26
  Well that's interesting 'cause it was, there was a small fire usually
• 13:29
  kindled for a certain amount of time until the air was saturated with smoke.
• 13:34
  Why?
• 13:35
  Well smoke is another preservation method.
• 13:37
  So it assisted in the salt curing that they went through.
• 13:41
  But it was also, this is interesting to ward off thieves and vermin.
• 13:45
  The smoke.
• 13:45
  Yeah.
• 13:46
  'cause people would steal your hog.
• 13:48
  Think about it.
• 13:49
  so I'm gonna stop here a second.
• 13:51
  'cause I'm thinking, you hear the smokehouse, or you see the
• 13:53
  smokehouse and you see the blue smoke.
• 13:55
  I kind think like electing a Pope, right?
• 13:57
  Yeah.
• 13:58
  Yeah.
• 13:58
  Electing a pig, a hug.
• 14:00
  I would think that would be a sign that your pig is ready to eat if
• 14:04
  somebody's smoking it in the smokehouse and you would steal it right.
• 14:07
  Yeah, I think it was just for a little while and that it
• 14:11
  was helping and preserving it.
• 14:13
  , , , but, , it's, , the smoke and the chemicals provided extra preservation,, and.
• 14:17
  My mother said that the hog was really their only source of meat.
• 14:21
  And so they would keep slicing, , pieces and parts off this hog.
• 14:24
  I don't even wanna picture it., And , it was just an interesting way that
• 14:28
  families in that era, , lost to us because, you know, I would, if I'd known
• 14:33
  if I could go back in time and take.
• 14:34
  Photographs and do the kind of thing that, , would bring it up.
• 14:37
  And I know there's probably Facebook pages devoted to smokehouses.
• 14:41
  There is for everything, isn't there?
• 14:43
  So anyway, that's , kind of the general story of the smokehouse.
• 14:47
  I'm thinking Appalachian, prosciutto,
• 14:50
  Yeah.
• 14:51
  Instead of Italian, prosciut or prosciutto, oh, depending upon
• 14:54
  how you pronounce it, so that the Appalachian, Kentucky, that
• 14:58
  actually sounds pretty good, but.
• 14:59
  Anyway, we'll leave that to Stephen King and he can figure that one out.
• 15:03
  But salt, you mentioned salt preservation, that's another
• 15:06
  type of form of preservation.
• 15:08
  Do they actually do the salting and the smoking together or was
• 15:11
  that a totally different method
• 15:12
  No, I think they are usually used in tandem, but it takes a lot of salt to
• 15:17
  preserve meat, and that's why you have country ham to this day is very salty.
• 15:22
  Or you have city ham and that's a very different thing.
• 15:25
  , But 10% or more of the animal's weight.
• 15:27
  Is the salt that they use, salt curing.
• 15:30
  And it's used on other meats as well.
• 15:32
  And so then a lot of meat has to be desalted.
• 15:35
  And you have to soak the meat in order to do that.
• 15:38
  I'm sure there's a more elaborate
• 15:40
  You soak it in water or do you soak it in alcohol.
• 15:42
  It's water.
• 15:43
  Yeah.
• 15:43
  Right.
• 15:45
  Let's say water for now.
• 15:47
  country ham known for its saltiness, and if you're salt sensitive, it's really
• 15:52
  good, but city ham may be your jam.
• 15:54
  It's curated by injecting brine, which is sugar, salt, and maybe
• 15:58
  preservation of, other kinds.
• 16:00
  , And that's, , well, such as sodium nitrate, which is very,
• 16:03
  again, talk about carcinogen.
• 16:05
  And that's why you see now in the grocery store.
• 16:07
  Uncured.
• 16:08
  Yeah.
• 16:09
  We only buy the uncured stuff.
• 16:10
  Well, we do too, but you know, this needs to be researched sometime.
• 16:13
  Is that they say it's not that much different from sodium nitrate?
• 16:18
  Really The salt.
• 16:19
  Curing versus the sodium nitrate,
• 16:21
  huh?
• 16:22
  the sodium nitrate is added as an extra preservative in food, , in
• 16:26
  city ham and, other things.
• 16:28
  Bacon and whatever.
• 16:29
  , So anyway, it's just interesting 'cause I always buy the uncured.
• 16:33
  I mean, I just do, , 'cause I, I, long ago knew sodium nitrate is not necessarily,
• 16:38
  again, as you said earlier, it's kinda like, enough lab rats get fed enough stuff
• 16:43
  Yeah.
• 16:44
  And enough sweet and low
• 16:46
  Uh, , but salt is and is a way to preserve food.
• 16:49
  And it wasn't just for hogs.
• 16:50
  , We did it with other meats as well.
• 16:52
  And,, in the deep south, people packed citrus and salt to stretch the
• 16:56
  harvest, preserved lemons, ended up flavoring greens, beans and fish dishes.
• 17:00
  And so there's , a lot of iceberg berg below the tip on preservation,
• 17:04
  but that's sort of the high points.
• 17:06
  So,, I'm gonna ask you this little question.
• 17:08
  You may not know the answer.
• 17:09
  So they put, the lemons in the salt or the green beans in the salt with
• 17:15
  I don't understand how that worked
• 17:16
  I think it is that the citrus is put in salt to preserve it, and then
• 17:21
  it's added to flavor, the preserve.
• 17:24
  Lemons.
• 17:24
  You have that, as a flavoring agent for greens, beans and fish dishes,
• 17:29
  ugh.
• 17:29
  is how I think that works.
• 17:31
  Okay.
• 17:31
  Okay.
• 17:32
  Well, and then,, I guess it depends upon where you're located.
• 17:34
  Salt was the preservation method based on a regional thing in the
• 17:38
  coastal areas, primarily in the south.
• 17:40
  , I'm thinking like salt pork, right?
• 17:42
  But.
• 17:43
  You didn't see a lot of it up north.
• 17:44
  Again, I, I'm, I think most of our preservation was done in root cellars and,
• 17:49
  , I guess maybe we just went hungry in the cold up north in those day and age,
• 17:53
  but, . Most of our preservation was done with canning, as I remember but,
• 17:57
  , that I'll talk about canning with my
• 18:01
  Which is, you know, yeah, we'll talk about that because they're
• 18:04
  actually canning is coming back,
• 18:06
  making a comeback.
• 18:07
  'cause they ha they have more equipment now for canning.
• 18:10
  But I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole.
• 18:12
  But if you're looking at tr yeah, if you're looking at traditions around
• 18:16
  this time of year in other parts of the country, , thing is, it's a
• 18:19
  much simpler process for home cooks.
• 18:21
  You're not gonna salt an entire hog and put it in a smokehouse.
• 18:25
  It's just not.
• 18:26
  Going to happen?
• 18:27
  Is it like in the southwest?
• 18:29
  Do you know those really beautiful, , what they call RAs?
• 18:32
  Yeah, the
• 18:33
  That's the peppers, little chili peppers, those gorgeous, and
• 18:37
  they're not just for decorations.
• 18:38
  They're sometimes dried in well ventilated areas and made into decorations and then
• 18:43
  repurposed to spice up winter stews.
• 18:46
  I love that.
• 18:47
  And they're so beautiful and even.
• 18:48
  Thought about how they're preserved.
• 18:50
  and one of my favorite Appalachian preservation methods
• 18:53
  is 200 years old, maybe more.
• 18:55
  And I saw this, , in action once in Berea, Kentucky, which is a very artsy community.
• 19:01
  , A lot of, natural ways of doing things like green beans, green beans,
• 19:05
  you string them up in a dry area.
• 19:07
  And during the harvest, and they eventually dry out as a lasting treasure
• 19:12
  if they're kept in a cool, dark place.
• 19:14
  And I love the name, they're called Leather Britches.
• 19:18
  I had never heard that term leather britches before, but after talking to
• 19:22
  you, I did a little, , checking and looking at the pictures to see how the
• 19:25
  beans were strung up on the strings.
• 19:27
  Kind of like those peppers they're beautiful.
• 19:30
  So I get how that is, a
• 19:32
  I love.
• 19:33
  Yeah, and I love the Appalachian kind of way of naming things.
• 19:37
  I think it's our Irish heritage.
• 19:39
  , Ireland is filled with folklore, magical kinds of labeling and stuff, so you
• 19:44
  know, they look like leather britches.
• 19:46
  And that creates an image in your mind, doesn't it?
• 19:48
  It certainly does.
• 19:49
  , , I looked at those pictures and I don't see quite the connections to
• 19:53
  how they look like leather bridges.
• 19:55
  But, , the Irish is big in Boston area too, and.
• 19:58
  I think they just stuck to drinking beer as opposed to
• 20:01
  naming things in the weird ways.
• 20:03
  that's different kind of Irish, but the key words that we're talking about
• 20:07
  right now are just dried and salted and, , salting can be used on a small scale
• 20:11
  where you can, drying on a larger scale.
• 20:14
  , It's interesting to see how the two are used in the different methods and, how
• 20:18
  they're popularized, but now also dehydration.
• 20:22
  , We've got a new kitchen as we moved in.
• 20:25
  We've got this double kitchen.
• 20:26
  It has a dehydration kind of option on it.
• 20:29
  I haven't tried it yet, but I have one way to dehydrate things and which.
• 20:35
  People may not know.
• 20:36
  It's pretty easy to do if you just turn whatever it is you want to dehydrate
• 20:40
  on, , into the oven, and you turn the oven light on and just leave it there and
• 20:45
  put it on like a, like a rack, like a, like a cake or a cookie,, cooling rack.
• 20:51
  Give it a, I say give.
• 20:52
  24 to 48 hours and you're gonna see them desiccate and they will dry out.
• 20:57
  It's interesting.
• 20:58
  So we've done that with olive leaves and you make olive leaf tea , and other herbs.
• 21:01
  But anyway, a few years back, back up in Connecticut, Bob got the dehydrator
• 21:06
  machine from, I don't know, somewhere on
• 21:09
  Yeah.
• 21:09
  Yeah.
• 21:11
  our oven back there was 1955 oven Frigidaire made by General Motors.
• 21:15
  So no, it did not have a dehydrating device on it, and
• 21:19
  the light wasn't so good either.
• 21:20
  So he decides to dehydrate all these onions in our kitchen.
• 21:25
  Need.
• 21:25
  I tell you more, our entire house stunk of onions for probably
• 21:29
  about a month and a half.
• 21:31
  It was, oh my God, you couldn't get the smell out of the house.
• 21:35
  But now he's into experimenting on other things.
• 21:38
  So he we're taking rosemary, 'cause rosemary grows like a weed in
• 21:40
  Florida., It doesn't die out in the wintertime like it does up north.
• 21:43
  And he's been.
• 21:45
  Drying out the rosemary and adding it to salt.
• 21:48
  So it's like rosemary salt.
• 21:50
  Not a big fan of how the flavors come out.
• 21:52
  I prefer just the straight rosemary, but it's interesting and it certainly
• 21:56
  tastes a little bit more interesting that what you get at Publix or Winn-Dixie.
• 21:59
  So, anyway.
• 22:00
  now drying, drying iss a whole nother thing.
• 22:02
  Of course, we've all been to the fancy, well, you may not
• 22:05
  have been to a fancy steakhouse.
• 22:06
  I'm not a big steak eater anyway, but the big steakhouses, you always see
• 22:10
  how they have the drying rooms and how those are dry cured and aged.
• 22:15
  I guess it's a combination of rubbing salt and other spices
• 22:18
  and vinegars and sugars into it.
• 22:19
  . And then brining, we are big briers.
• 22:22
  bring your brine.
• 22:23
  if you ever wanna taste a a really good brine Turkey, come to our house
• 22:27
  at Christmas time or Thanksgiving.
• 22:29
  So the first time we did it, we just got a giant bucket.
• 22:32
  And so now we're always keeping the big buckets from Home Depot.
• 22:35
  And you can get those buckets by the way, just so that they are actually food grade.
• 22:40
  And then you put all your brining water and we put a. I guess it's
• 22:44
  apple cider and all the other things, lots of salt, and then you brine
• 22:47
  it, , for about 24 to 48 hours.
• 22:50
  The Turkey is delicious.
• 22:51
  Trust me, it's one of the best ways to , Put up a Turkey that you wanna cook and
• 22:56
  make sure it's really good, but now we need to move on to something else because
• 22:59
  these are fermented nuts and seeds and , a whole new world of other things that
• 23:03
  I hadn't even heard about before, other than a friend had something that she used
• 23:08
  with nuts, with egg whites and spices and sugar, and she called those Mosettes.
• 23:11
  I'm not sure it was a form of preservation because I have to
• 23:14
  tell you, they didn't last long.
• 23:16
  So.
• 23:17
  Reservation was not in the MO even when they were sold at Stew Leonard's, but
• 23:23
  you've got some ideas on what to do there.
• 23:25
  Yeah, with walnuts, pumpkin seeds, walnuts are interesting to me 'cause
• 23:29
  I still have an image of my father.
• 23:31
  We have lots of walnuts here.
• 23:33
  In fact, on some trails in the fall, you have to be very careful
• 23:37
  not to get knocked on the, noggin, they can do serious damage.
• 23:41
  Uh, big old walnut falls from high up in a tree and, I, actually
• 23:46
  avoid a trail that's near my house.
• 23:49
  Because there so many walnut, trees all there around there.
• 23:52
  But my father would be sitting out, , he called his garage his barn hearkening
• 23:57
  back to his old days in eastern Kentucky, and he'd be cracking his walnuts.
• 24:01
  I'm sure he never heard of a modern spin on the walnut, wisdom.
• 24:06
  But we also chestnuts, , we are big into,, chestnuts here.
• 24:09
  But anyway, tell us about making nuts into paste.
• 24:12
  So I'm thinking Walnut was in wisdom.
• 24:14
  Say that three times fast, right?
• 24:16
  If you get knocked, knocked on the head with a walnut.
• 24:19
  Anyway, making nuts into a paste is actually an ancient way of preserving
• 24:22
  and enjoying nuts for longer thought you could freeze them, but I guess this
• 24:26
  is a different kind of way of doing it.
• 24:28
  . So here's what you need to do.
• 24:30
  There's a big interest, first in these and . The fermentation process inhibits the
• 24:34
  bad bacteria that might grow in this goo.
• 24:38
  So first of all, what you do is you simply grind the nuts.
• 24:40
  You can use a peanut, sesame, soybeans, any kind of nut that would work . Maybe
• 24:45
  the chestnuts or the walnuts that.
• 24:47
  You get knocked and you're knocking with or pumpkin seeds, and then you
• 24:51
  soak them in warm water for oh, 24 to 48 hours, and then you add a tablespoon
• 24:57
  of acid, something like lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to the cup
• 25:00
  of nuts, and then you drain them.
• 25:02
  Make sure , the liquids out of it.
• 25:04
  And then you start smoothing them, or grinding them by adding a little bit more
• 25:10
  water, and , the water actually ferments them when they become a smooth texture.
• 25:15
  Then you add some natural sugars, like, actic acid and then you
• 25:18
  freeze them, and that's it.
• 25:20
  But, , I thought that maybe peanut butter is the same thing, but
• 25:23
  apparently it doesn't do that, which it's just ground peanuts like you
• 25:26
  can get in the grocery store too.
• 25:28
  So I'll have to give this one a try.
• 25:30
  Maybe , I'll try this on other friends, kind of like the zucchini pie or not.
• 25:35
  Yeah, keep in mind too that,.
• 25:37
  The peanuts used in the Jif peanut butter plant here, which has a whole history,
• 25:41
  are not made with fermented peanuts.
• 25:43
  ' cause you ferment stuff first and then you do it
• 25:46
  into the paste.
• 25:48
  Yeah, You just roast peanuts and to make the peanut, it probably can make
• 25:51
  that, probably can easily do that.
• 25:54
  , Actually, Nancy, I gotta observe in life what little scientific
• 25:58
  knowledge I have of this.
• 26:00
  More and more people are making their own stuff.
• 26:03
  be it quilts, be it, pencil holders, , or be it food and I don't
• 26:07
  know what . Is in the atmosphere.
• 26:09
  , But , I think it is about heritage and reaching back, even younger
• 26:14
  generations and especially younger generations want that sense of nostalgia
• 26:19
  and doing things with their hands.
• 26:21
  , 'Cause we've gotten so away from it.
• 26:23
  Our hands are just about genetically going to be, , built.
• 26:26
  So that only our thumbs work, , 'cause that's what you use on these devices.
• 26:30
  But I just have noticed it.
• 26:32
  It's very interesting.
• 26:33
  , But.
• 26:34
  Anyway, I wanna go back to chestnuts.
• 26:36
  Think about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
• 26:39
  They're making a comeback.
• 26:41
  Oh, they are, , smelling chestnuts.
• 26:43
  . In New York City.
• 26:44
  , It just always brought me back to the holiday times and , I'm not a fan of
• 26:48
  roasted chestnuts, but Bob loves them.
• 26:50
  And, , you were looking for a roasted chestnut recipe, I think for
• 26:54
  stuffing at one point, weren't you?
• 26:56
  Yeah, I keep trying to find, that's another thing I would admonish every one
• 27:00
  of you out there, get those recipes now.
• 27:03
  Trust me.
• 27:04
  If you don't, you will regret it.
• 27:06
  , , of dressing that my mother-in-law made, I mean, I would have a plate
• 27:11
  of dressing and a couple of things of Turkey, but it was that dressing that
• 27:15
  I loved and she didn't have a recipe.
• 27:19
  She just made it.
• 27:20
  But I could have badged her till she gave me one.
• 27:22
  , There's something , that's really nice about going back and looking
• 27:25
  to all these stories that our families or inherited families or.
• 27:29
  Married in families , have given us over the years, whether it's shrubs
• 27:33
  or salting or smoking or dehydrating, onions, it could be this generation.
• 27:39
  Certainly the memories are, strong and , you talked a little bit about
• 27:44
  heritage , and what we're doing in the kitchen and other places, just other
• 27:47
  ways, making things with our hands and.
• 27:50
  I don't know about you, Sylvia, but, there's something that is
• 27:52
  very satisfying about having.
• 27:54
  Something you can show that you've created versus just on the computer.
• 27:59
  Certainly we love doing the podcast, but , it's not as tangible as
• 28:03
  being able to, to make a, cake or a pie or, , maybe grandma's rhubarb
• 28:09
  wine or your mom's grape juice.
• 28:11
  There's something that's just very satisfying to be
• 28:14
  able to have that at the end.
• 28:15
  Yeah.
• 28:16
  And , I'm not a big, , the good old days kind of person.
• 28:18
  ' cause I do think that technology has brought us the ability to
• 28:22
  do a podcast that talks about things that can reach anywhere.
• 28:26
  so that's good.
• 28:27
  , That's real good.
• 28:28
  So you couple that with the old.
• 28:31
  You actually have a pretty good marriage there if you do it right, , you can't
• 28:35
  just spend all your time exercising your thumbs, , you need to go in and
• 28:39
  exercise everything, , in every way.
• 28:42
  So , I'm a big proponent of moving forward, but with some of the
• 28:45
  good stuff that we left behind.
• 28:47
  Yeah, , a little bit of the old and the new go a long way because we
• 28:51
  can't forget where we came from.
• 28:52
  if we did, I think we'd all be pretty boring.
• 28:54
  So on that note, we are not boring.
• 28:57
  I'm just letting you know, right Sylvia?
• 28:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:00
  Yeah.
• 29:01
  So with that, thinking about what we're gonna do to preserve our
• 29:04
  heritage Preserve stories that we can share from time and time again.
• 29:08
  And that's what Family Tree Food and Stories is all about.
• 29:10
  We hope you'll join us in the
• 29:12
  Oh,
• 29:12
  but wait a minute.
• 29:14
  Okay.
• 29:14
  were gonna tell us a canning episode?
• 29:16
  Alright, so before we go, I will tell you a canning episode back in Massachusetts
• 29:22
  when, , my mom and dad were living there and my sister and myself, we
• 29:24
  moved from Long Island to Massachusetts.
• 29:26
  , When, I was in high school, mom was, , trying to preserve a little bit
• 29:30
  of what dad was making in the garden.
• 29:32
  We went through some hard times and they were really good about
• 29:34
  not letting us kids know about it.
• 29:36
  We ever thought everything was fine.
• 29:37
  We didn't know any difference.
• 29:39
  So mom decides to can.
• 29:40
  Well, that was the, that was back in, I'd say , the late seventies before
• 29:46
  there were really these electric,
• 29:48
  . Mm-hmm.
• 29:48
  cookers that, that were safe.
• 29:51
  Mom didn't have a safe pressure cooker, so we're boiling up these things,
• 29:54
  these, these jars, and scared to death that , the whole lid was gonna go splat
• 29:59
  out of the kitchen, but the amount of work that goes into canning, We did
• 30:04
  it once and mom and I sort of looked at each other and said, Hmm, okay.
• 30:07
  That was an adventure that I think we can do without.
• 30:09
  But my sister does a lot of canning.
• 30:11
  She's out in Oklahoma, they can, I say can, it's in jars and bottles,
• 30:16
  but their meat and their cows and the cattle that they put up.
• 30:19
  And I don't know, I don't, I don't wanna go, into her pantry
• 30:21
  and say, this one's name is Joe
• 30:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:26
  they have all sorts of things that they put up and, no, I
• 30:29
  don't think that's my thing.
• 30:30
  Yeah, there's like three things that are trending right now
• 30:33
  and , and they are fermentation.
• 30:35
  That's huge.
• 30:36
  Making your own stuff and drinks and kimchi, isn't that what that stuff
• 30:40
  is?
• 30:40
  Anyway, we've
• 30:41
  talked about that before.
• 30:42
  Sourdough.
• 30:43
  There are clubs, sourdough clubs, so it's growing, dehydration.
• 30:47
  is a growing phenomenon too.
• 30:48
  , Think jerky and I used to think jerky wasn't good for you, but it actually is.
• 30:53
  Okay.
• 30:53
  You could eat jerky, dehydration, pickles.
• 30:56
  Pickling is the rage right now too.
• 30:58
  So interesting stuff that's
• 31:00
  I, I tried pickled eggs for the first time a couple months ago.
• 31:03
  That's actually pretty good.
• 31:05
  Yeah.
• 31:05
  They're, they're not so pickely . Yeah,
• 31:06
  but
• 31:07
  Yeah.
• 31:07
  So anyway, there you have it.
• 31:09
  . We've had a good time today.
• 31:10
  We have had a great time and we preserved memories and stories and
• 31:14
  given you hopefully a few new tips that you can add to your own book
• 31:17
  of My Family Tree Food and Stories.
• 31:19
  So on that note, Sylvia, I think it's time to wrap this one up and tell the folks to
• 31:23
  say, Hey, tune in, listen in, share, and.
• 31:26
  Tell us your own stories of preservation or that you've made and shared.
• 31:31
  And we hope you'll tune in next week as every Thursday we drop a new episode
• 31:35
  of Family Tree Food and Stories.
• 31:36
  We'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon.
• 31:38
  Take care.
• 31:39
  Bye-bye.