The 4th of July Corn Shucking Tradition

It's July 2. . .and we have a long holiday weekend for the 4th of July this year. . .People everywhere will be celebrating the day of this country declaring freedom from the tyranny of British King George. . .the beginning of the Revolutionary War. . .the war that brought independence for our country. . .

While I don't claim to have been under the king's tyranny during my childhood. . .I sometimes thought I could empathize greatly with those revolutionaries. . .because my "tyranntical" parents engaged every helping hand--child or adult--they could conscript for the task of picking, shucking, and "putting up" corn. . .Every 4th of July celebration had to take a backseat until the task was done and declared finished. . .When corn was ready, there was no putting it off. . .It might not fall exactly on the 4th every year, but always managed to be within a day or two of it. . . 

We all rose early. Daddy went even earlier to the garden to pull the ripened corn, putting them in big, galvanized tubs in the shade of a close-by apple tree. He then circled chairs around the huge pile for everyone. Shucking and cutting corn off the cob is a very messy thing, so it was always done outside. . .in the heat. . .while batting flies. . .When I was too young to cut corn and too afraid of finding worms while shucking the corn, my job was to keep a constant motion around the diligent workers to keep the flies away. I also helped pick up the mound of shucks and delivered them back to the garden to decay, adding nutrients to the soil. 

It sounds like an ominous task, but actually even I have to admit it had its fun times. Grandmother, Aunt Mamie, Daddy, Mom, and whoever else was helping, sat shucking and cutting that sweet goodness off the cob, talking downright gossip at times but a lot of the day the gossip turned to stories of family members past and present. It was times like this that I learned about the people of the Delta that was my world. 

By noon, the corn was ready to process for the freezer. Huge pans sat on the kitchen counter, filled with the golden creamy veggie. It was truly a sight. I loved it raw. Every time I found myself alone, my fingers somehow were uncontrollable, dipping in and proceeding to my mouth.

Before the women started preparing it for the endless stacks of freezer containers, we all sat down to eat and restore some of our energy for the long afternoon ahead. No hot meal on that day. Only sandwiches, salads, fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, a cake for dessert, and a lot of iced tea. We ate on paper plates for easy clean-up. 

The ladies tackled that corn afterwards, heating it in huge skillets in small batches. When it was "hot through" it was spread out in large, long pans under several fans to cool as quickly as possible. Then it was time to pack it in containers and put immediately into the freezer. In this manner, the freezer corn tasted as if freshly picked all through winter. Once all was finished and frozen, a bunch of tired souls took a rest before washing the skillets, pans, and utensils. A sense of accomplishment and pride with the count of filled containers prevailed. They knew it would help sustain us through the winter. I was happy because I knew that the 4th celebration could go on as planned, when the entire Magers clan would be gathering at Grandmother's house. Just the thought of barbeque chicken, baked beans, onion dip and chips, sliced tomatoes, fresh pickled cucumbers, corn on the cob, and homemade ice cream and cake made my mouth water.

So, actually the corn shucking tradition was worth it. There is never a 4th of July that I don't remember with a smile. And, I often feel the urge to visit a local farmer's market for a tub full of that fresh golden goodness to shuck, cut, process and freeze, thinking all the time what a gift my parents gave me all those years of watching and helping with a family tradition. 

I guess they weren't tyrants after all. . .but I still hold that opinion of King George. . .(grin).

Christmas Comes To A Delta Log Cabin

 I happened upon this iconic log cabin in Bernie, Missouri (yes, it's a part of the Delta), several years ago when we arrived at White House Creations for a unique shopping experience . . .It was an added bonus that we knew nothing about. . .Finding such a place of history representing the families of our Delta past come few and far between these days. . .There was a time. . .and not so long ago and even into the latter half of the 20th century. . .that scenes such as this were not uncommon. .but with 'progress' more and more of our farm family houses fell into ruin. . .

But there was a time when even the simplest of Delta farm houses were decorated every Christmas in as grand a style as possible for the pocketbook. . .Rows of tenant houses on the back roads of farms and the countryside sported strings of lights outlining the humble porches. . .homemade wreaths on the doors. . .and a Christmas tree always in the window. . .Everyone celebrated Christmas. . .with few exceptions. . .

I was so thrilled recently when I visited Dottie's White House Creations to find that true to a love of Delta history, her old log cabin close-by was decked out inside and out with Christmas cheer. . .I just had to snap a lot of photos. . .to capture a snippet of a time long gone but still in the hearts of so many of us. . .

Dottie and I share many of the same memories of growing up in Northeast Arkansas and the Bootheel of Missouri. . .It was a way of life common to us both. . .I can also relate to her childhood stories of Missouri. . .My Duncan grandparents lived in Kennett. . .I have roamed all over the Bootheel with Daddy and my Granny. . .Life in both areas was pretty much the same. . .based on agriculture and the small towns that served the communities. . .and Christmas was no different. . .Celebrated and decorated by all, it was a time of truly great joy and anticipation. . .

No matter how common and simple. . .

By the way, for a true Delta experience from the past, you can spend the night here, too. . .Just call Dottie at White House Creations in Bernie, MO, and she will give you all the details. . .

Burdette, Arkansas

Around 2008, the Hale family of Burdette donated many pieces of vintage agricultural items to the Widner-Magers Farm for use in our living history museum. Over the years, students and adults enjoyed those donations with many hands-on activities. We will always be thankful for these donations, which will remain for the education of future generations. It has been people like the Hales who made it possible for us to tell the Northeast Arkansas Delta story.

Although we played basketball against Burdette often in the 1960s, I knew little about the town or how it started, but over recent years I have collected many stories and much information. Ruth Hale also presented us with a book about the Burdette Plantation. Although it is too lengthy to reproduce here, below you'll find a couple of good sources, ending with the life achievements of Ruth Hale, who passed away in February of this year. (2020)

(To view more vintage farm equipment donated by other farms in Northeast Arkansas, go to:

 DUNCAN FARMSTEAD WEBSITE

from: The Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Burdette (Mississippi County) is located nine miles south of Blytheville (Mississippi County) on State Highway 148 just off U.S. Highway 61, known as the Great River Road. Burdette is named after Alfred Burdette Wolverton, who in the early 1900s was one of the first lumbermen to settle in the area. It was incorporated as a company town by workers of the Three States Lumber Company of Wisconsin in May 1905. Prior to Three States Lumber Company’s arrival, the area had been swampland and uninhabitable. Burdette Township split from Fletcher Township in 1908 to create the community of Burdette. Burdette proper is located within the larger Burdette Township (a township being a division of a county), which includes farming and lumber operations.

Three States Lumber Company finished construction of the first sawmill in Burdette in June 1906. By 1922, the town had a hotel, wooden sidewalks, a power plant, a cooperage company, two separate schools (for black and white children), a large park with a baseball diamond, an open-air theater, a community canning kitchen, a post office, and an ice cream parlor. The Blytheville, Burdette, and Mississippi River Railroad was incorporated in 1906 with a line from the Burdette mill to Wolverton Landing on the Mississippi River. The track was later extended from Blytheville to Luxora (Mississippi County).

During the company’s seventeen years of logging operations in Burdette Township, Three States sold its cut-over lands to farmers, and the population of the entire Burdette Township reached more than 900 by 1920.

In the fall of 1913, Three States Lumber Company hired James Feagin Tompkins to manage the company’s “home farm,” or what became known as the Burdette Plantation. While tenancy and sharecropping were already on the rise in Mississippi County, Tompkins introduced the crop-lien system to Three States’ operation. With the hiring of Tompkins and the creation of the Burdette plantation, the Three States Lumber Company town of Burdette began a transition from a company-operated lumber town to an independently owned agricultural community.

Three States Lumber Company systematically sold the land in and around the town of Burdette to local businessmen and farmers over the course of forty years. Three States invested heavily in its Burdette plantation even with major economic and environmental crises. The company maintained a viable agricultural business through the exploitation of their tenants and sharecroppers. However, Three States found a way, eventually, to get out of its agricultural interests by allowing its tenants to lease to buy throughout the 1920s and 1930s, decades that saw some of the worst agricultural depressions the United States had ever experienced.

Three States Lumber Company leased the 2,200-acre Burdette plantation to James Feagin Tompkins and a group of investors in 1922 with the option to buy. The Burdette plantation served as a testing ground for agricultural research development by the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) beginning in 1923. Burdette became known for its advancements in agricultural production in the mid-twentieth century. In conjunction with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant Industry, agronomists conducted cotton and corn varietal and fertilizer experiments. They tried new types of seed and fertilizer to improve cotton yields. Several different cotton varieties and strains were developed by breeders through these testing trials located west of the plantation headquarters. These included Burdette Express, Burdette Lone Star, Burdette Trice, Burdette Acala, and Burdette Delfos. As a result, Burdette became locally celebrated for its many different varieties of cotton and corn.

Three States offered a lease-with-option-to-purchase cotton contract to Burdette farmers and the Burdette Plantation in 1932. The contract called for 100 bales of cotton in payment for forty acres of land and was not contingent on the price of cotton. This unique plan for agricultural development in the Mississippi River Valley was seen as progressive for its time but also served the interests of Three States in removing itself from its agricultural enterprise in Burdette. Cotton prices increased as a result of the New Deal programs, and cotton growers like Tompkins received government subsidy and parity payments. Tompkins and his investors were able to purchase the Burdette Plantation by 1935.

Burdette thrived as an active farming community until the 1960s, when the mechanization of agriculture and development of chemical weed control decreased the demand for labor. The Blytheville School District and Burdette High School consolidated in the early 1990s, and the Blytheville School District closed the Burdette schools in 2001. The Burdette School Complex Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places for its historic architecture and significance to a once thriving lumber and agricultural community. There are currently no churches or businesses in the community.

from: The National Register of Historic Places

In the early part of the twentieth century rural communities in Mississippi County were relatively isolated because of poor transportation. Roads were unpaved and mostly unimproved. Automobiles were rare and most travel was by mule-drawn wagon. It was in this environment that Burdette was founded. It was originally a company town owned by the Three States Lumber Company. The town was incorporated in 1905 when the company opened a mill there. When workers began moving into the town with their families the growing need for a school was felt throughout the community. 

In 1922 the timber and lumber operations were complete and most of the town's buildings were moved to other locations. Before that time Three States had developed a farming operation on its cleared land and had begun to sell the newly cleared land for agricultural purposes. James Feagin Tompkins, who had been the farm manager for Three States, formed Burdette Plantation Incorporated in order to purchase a large block of land. The town continued on a reduced scale, but was still essentially a company town, this time supporting the plantation operation. Burdette Plantation continued to support the school. James Tompkins became a Board member in 1918 and served on the Board until his death in 1936.  

The town of Burdette was once a thriving lumber company town that successfully made the transition to an agricultural town when the timber was all cleared. With less labor-intensive agricultural practices the town's population has drastically declined. The Burdette School Complex is the most intact group of buildings that survive from the town's heyday. The school grew and declined with the town for almost eighty school terms. Although this year's class will be the last, the complex will continue to be held in high accord by generations of town citizens who were educated at the facility. The Burdette School Complex Historic District is being nominated to the National Register with state significance under Criterion C for its varied architecture and as the most extant historic school complex that is known to exist in Arkansas. It is also being nominated under Criterion A for the educational role it has played in the town of Burdette. 

from: Blytheville Courier News

Ruth Carlton Hale, age 86 of Burdette, Arkansas passed away peacefully on February 27, 2020.

Ruth was born in Griffin, GA in 1934. She graduated from Blytheville High School in 1951 and then attended Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans. Later, she transferred to the University of Arkansas where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education and went on to receive a Master of Science in Library Service from Columbia University in New York City.

Upon graduation Ruth moved to Austin, TX where she worked as a librarian at the University of Texas. She later moved to Atlanta, GA as an archivist in Georgia Tech’s library. After her retirement, she returned to her beloved home in Burdette, AR.

Ruth volunteered countless hours at the Delta Gateway Museum in Blytheville and Mississippi County Museum in Osceola.  She was a prolific reader of all types of literature and appreciated classical music. Ruth was the epitome of a historian. She worked tirelessly to have architecture from her hometown of Burdette preserved on the historic register. She archived and preserved everything from historic documents and local buildings to a box of photos, clippings, and awards for each and every family member.

She was preceded in death by her parents, George Albert Hale Sr. and Sara Tompkins Hale, of Burdette, AR. She leaves a brother, George Albert Hale Jr.; a niece, Charlee Hale Moore and her husband Tim; nephew, George A. "Trey" Hale III and his wife Stephanie, all of Burdette; five great nieces and nephews, Sara Allison Goff  and her husband JT, Kathryn Hale Knuth  and  her husband Chad, Christopher Gregory Predmore, George Albert "Bo" Hale IV and Kate Stevenson Hale; 5 great great nieces and nephews Leah Jett Goff, John Oliver Goff, Layla Lynn Huffman, Luke Bennett Knuth and Braxton Hale Predmore.

A Company Store Spring

 *Note: This article was written for the Spring Issue of Coumtry Rustic Magazine in 2018. Parts of it are fiction, but it does present the real workings of a company store. As far as I know, Granddaddy never owned a company store, although he did have farm complexes at each of his farms. The store at the historic district was originally built by Granddaddy for the black community in Dell ca. 1919. The rest of the history is true as it was related to me by Mom in the 1990s. 

Permission to reproduce must be granted by Country Rustic Magazine. Link at the bottom of the page.

Story and Photos by Dru Duncan
In Memory of My Grandparents. . .

On a cool spring morning in 1919, Earl Magers stood on the porch of his newest company store. It had only been three years since he and his wife Alice, along with his two toddler daughters, arrived from Missouri to the newly opened farm land in northeast Arkansas.

  

They came in a Springfield covered wagon, drawn by oxen on roads that were little more than logs and mud. All their possessions were in that wagon. The money from the sale of their forty acre Missouri farm was well-hidden among barrels and house goods. On every side of the corduroy road was cut-over forest land, going for as little as fifty-cents per acre. It was the only land that Earl could afford. They were moving from a place of poverty to a farm of hopes and dreams. To an untrained eye, the land was a big gamble. It was nothing but swamp, filled with stumps left by the out-of-state loggers who came through and cut the vast forests. Only a farmer could see the possibilities beyond the present scenery, but Earl knew it would be choice cotton land one day. The soil was said to be so rich a person could plant a broomstick and it would grow. Now the stumps were cleared and the acres upon acres of swamp drained. The fertile farmland was finally ready for planting. He would rely on tenants to farm his land for many years to come, since he had been able to acquire more acres than he could personally work. Earlier in the year he mapped out the forty-five acre plots. He knew then, as now, that when the weather begins to warm after a long cold winter, the farmers are impatient to get into the fields, to plant the 'White Gold' that we know as Cotton. It wouldn't be long before the season began.

Almost one hundred years later, I stand on the same porch, looking out over farmland as far as the eye can see, just as my Granddaddy did that spring day. I'm anxious to hear the giant tractors arrive to plant this year's cotton crop and to smell the sweetness of the rich Delta soil as the discs break ground. The same excited hopefulness for the coming farm year hangs in the air. Yet, as nostalgic as it is on the old company store porch, it's even more so inside.

If you have never visited an old country store, no words can fully describe how it touches the senses. The well-worn wooden floors creak underfoot. A distinct aroma of a wood stove permeates the building, mingling with the scent of kerosene and leather, produce and fresh meat. Brightly colored cans, boxes and bags line the shelves with coffee, flour, sugar, cornmeal, spices, and tobacco. In the spring, bags and barrels of crop seed line the walls, their burlap and paper bags adding an earthiness to the mix.

Spring is the time of new beginnings for the farmer, and our old company store has seen many seasons come and go. Stories from its past seem to linger in the air. It was here that Granddaddy secured contracts with the tenants to farm his company land. A line of credit was also established so that each one was able to buy seed, hoes and farming supplies, knowing that charges would be settled in the fall when the crops were harvested and sold. Tenants couldn't plant their crops without the credit extended them. By spring, the money made from the previous fall was pretty much spent. They would live on credit until another crop was raised and taken to market.

The wives also appreciated the credit as they shopped for items such as wide-brimmed straw hats, sturdy gloves, and possibly a new, cotton everyday wash dress, since the old ones were faded and full of holes. In general, though, country people bought what they couldn't grow, shoot or make themselves. In buying seeds for the home garden, farmer's wives were particularly frugal. Throughout the growing season of the previous year, the ladies saved and dried as many seeds as possible to plant the next year. Okra, peas, squash, green pepper, tomatoes and watermelon seed were among the home inventory. At the top of their 'buy' lists were the seeds necessary to round out their own garden, seeds such as turnip, mustard and collard greens, celery, green beans, eggplant and hybrid corn. They knew far too well that vegetables would feed and nourish their families cheaply throughout the summer. Canning the extra produce would sustain them through another winter. For the farm wife, home gardens meant survival. The storekeeper knew this. In the spring, eye-catching seed boxes with their bright packets were brought to a prominent place along the aisle to tempt even the most frugal gardener. Seeds attractively packaged stimulated more interest and offered visual hope that this year's garden would be generous in produce. Seed boxes were packed according to regional interests and eye appeal, with much competition among various companies such as the Ferry-Morse Seed Company of California, the Shaker Seed Company of Pleasant Hill, or the W. Atlee Burpee Company of Philadelphia. Although the stores made little profit, the colorful open display drew the eye and imagination beyond the everyday staples.

 

The storekeeper also strategically placed more purchase possibilities among those boxes of seed. Nearby there were the pungent smelling onion sets, seed potatoes, and kitchen herbs in large crates and bins. Bee skeps stacked high were a temptation to spend a few extra dollars, knowing that nothing was better than cotton blossom honey drizzled over hot, buttered biscuits. New and shiny garden tools filled barrels, claiming to make the garden weeding more enjoyable. In the 1920s and on, a visit to Granddaddy's company store was like an adventure. At no other time was the store so well stocked with the promise of a new farming-and gardening-year.

        
Those days are gone, but Granddaddy's old company store remains the heart of our farmstead, now an historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. As in bygone days, the old store displays items appropriate for the seasons of a former time and teaches private tour groups about our Southern cotton culture. The senses are still touched with the lingering sights, sounds, and smells from decades of seasons coming and going. I often wonder what Granddaddy would think if he could see it now. Not only does the family continue to farm his land, but the history of his hard work and diligence has enriched so many others with our Delta history. I'll have to admit that many times, while working in the still, quiet of the store at the end of the day, I feel he is around, smiling and proud that after almost one hundred years, his legacy lives on.

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SEASONED SOUTHERN STYLE: Mom's Southern Rice Dishes and A Short History

Rice was a staple in our home, more so than potatoes. Riceland Rice, from an Arkansas-based company, was readily found in grocery stores and inexpensive. Unlike present day, foods that were grown and processed in our Delta area were much less expensive than brands shipped from other parts of the country. We received a price break at the grocery stores not only with rice but also with other foodstuffs grown in the area.  At the local Bush Cannery, dented canned goods could be purchased for 5c each of less. Daddy brought home cases of various canned goods for little money.  He also bought huge bags of Riceland Rice (and I'm not sure exactly where he got it) for a few dollars and shared them with my aunts and Grandmother. 

Rice is not native to this country and has an interesting history.  The influx of African slaves coming into the entire South brought this unknown food to the American and French colonies in the late 17^th and early 18^th century.  In Marvin Woods book The New Low-Country Cooking, he speaks of this and the important part rice played in the early foodways of the Carolinas, where rice was first produced.

“Rice played a vital role in the economic development of the Low Country and continues to be a daily menu item for most folks of the region. Rice has been cultivated in Africa since about 1500 B. C. as revealed in Daniel C. Littlefield’s book Rice and Slaves. English settlers knew nothing about rice, but they knew of the skills of the West Africans. Slaves were brought to the Low Country of the Carolinas by the tens of thousands, and with them came plants from their homeland. They could clear and prepare the rice fields, construct the canals and dikes, as well as manage the intricate flood-and-drain systems. 

By the early 1700s the production of rice was hugely successful. Over 300 tons of the grain were shipped to England during the first years. The rice was quite beautiful in the fields, looking like a sea of molten gold. A rush of travelers, traders, and settlers moved to the Low Country to share the large profits of the rice called “Carolina Gold.” *

One source states that the first record of rice in North America dates from 1685, when the crop was produced on those coastal lowlands and islands of what is now South Carolina. Seventeenth century accounts show that a severe Atlantic storm inflicted damage to a brigantine sailing from the Island of Madagascar to Europe. The ship sailed to the port of Charleston for repairs. There, the vessel’s captain, John Thurber, gave a local citizen, Dr. Henry Woodward, a sample of seed rice. Dr. Woodward distributed the seed among his friends, and witnessed its successful cultivation. This seed from Madagascar became known as "Carolina Gold Rice." Its successful cultivation and high quality were responsible for the launching of a new agricultural staple for the Carolinas.

More important to our Delta area, the rice culture was introduced into Louisiana by Bienville’s French colonists as early as 1718, when Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville founded the colony that later became New Orleans. With the colonists came those enslaved people from West Africa whose varieties of rice and bean dishes remained a staple among them and their descendants in the French and Spanish New World colonies, as well as in the Americas. Yet, during the early years of these colonies, the grain was cultivated on a limited scale and used primarily for home consumption. Production required very little capital. After the Civil War, the Carolinas produced less commercial rice.  It was then that a small number of parishes in Louisiana began to grow rice for marketing purposes. The parishes bordering the Mississippi River benefited from the westward shift in rice production as planters utilized the desolated cotton and sugar plantations to grow rice.

It wasn't long after that time that rice began to be grown and marketed in Southern Arkansas and East Texas. Early in the 20^th century it began to reach into the northern Arkansas Delta area around Jonesboro, Arkansas. Founded in 1921, Riceland Foods is now the world’s largest miller and marketer of rice. Riceland's headquarters is in Stuttgart, Arkansas and the company owns the largest rice mill in the world, which is located in Jonesboro.

We again have the African American culture to thank for a foodstuff that was so vital to our Delta foodways. The number of rice recipes in vintage cookbooks and personal recipe cards that surface in Arkansas can be overwhelming. On Pinterest there are thousands of modern-day dishes. But, in order to stay within the parameters of our family meals, I have chosen a few of Mom’s often served rice dishes to share with you.

HERE ARE A FEW OF MOM’S RICE RECIPES:

Rice and Broccoli Casserole

This recipe is my absolute favorite side dish. It is a wonderful combination of flavors. I often make it the central dish on meatless days. Or, add chopped ham, cooked chicken or turkey for a full meal.

1 cup rice, rinsed. Simmer in saucepan with 2 cups water until all liquid is absorbed.

In separate pan, sauté 1 medium chopped onion with ¾ stick butter. Add to rice, along with 1 pkg frozen chopped broccoli, thawed and drained; 1 can cream of mushroom soup combined with ½ cup milk; 1 cup grated cheddar cheese; 2 tsp. salt; ¼ tsp. pepper.

Combine all ingredients well and place in a greased casserole. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30 minutes. May top the last 5-10 minutes with more grated cheese.

Spanish Rice

There are as many versions of Spanish Rice as there are cookbooks and people. Other names for it is Creole Rice, Red Rice, and Tomato Rice. This was Mom’s recipe, passed down from Grandmother, using her canned tomatoes and home-cured bacon. On “almost meatless days” she topped it with more bacon or a little diced fried ham—home cured, of course.

Fry 2-3 strips of bacon. Remove and drain on paper towel. Chop into pieces and set aside. With 1 T of the bacon grease, brown 1 cup long grain uncooked rice, with 1 large chopped green pepper, 1 large chopped celery stalk, 1 chopped medium onions. Add 1 tsp. crushed cumin seeds (optional), ½ tsp salt, 1/4 tsp ground pepper, 1/8 to 1/4 tsp garlic powder. Then add 1 pint (or can) chopped tomatoes undrained, 2 cups chicken stock and 1 T. tomato paste, and 1 tsp vinegar (optional). Bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Cover and cook until rice is tender and liquid has been absorbed. Let stand covered for a few minutes. Fluff rice. Top with bacon pieces.

Stewed Okra, Tomatoes, Onion over Rice
I know many people do not like okra at all. I am not one of them. But, I am a little picky about the prep because if you don’t know what you are doing, it can turn into a gluey mess. Few people know that okra is high on the list of healthy foods. It is high in calcium and contains some potassium and a modest amount of vitamins A and C. It also contains as much protein as soybeans. I make this recipe for Stewed Okra over Rice often on meatless days.

You’ll read in many recipes to sauté okra in a little oil before stewing. However, Mom never did. She LAYERED in a shallow pan (skillet) first okra (whole or cut), tomatoes coarsely cut in chunks, and a sliced onion on top. Salt and pepper. Add just enough water to simmer slowly. Cover. Once vegetables are tender, uncover and reduce any liquid. Mom’s Stewed Okra was always sweet tasting prepared in this manner. She claimed the tomatoes and onions added in this manner reduced the okra’s mucilaginous juice. Serve it over rice that has been cooked in chicken stock and 1-2 tablespoons of butter for a further reduction of the thick juice.

Pecan Rice-- Daddy’s Sweet Rice with Bacon Supper

If you check online for Pecan Rice recipes, more than likely you’ll find that the ingredients include onions, peppers and herbs. We never ate it that way. When Mom was away for a meal, Daddy had to cook for us. The only two choices were rice or pancakes. We tried to steer him clear of pancakes, for he would push all the air out of them. We loved his rice, warm and coated with real butter and a little sugar. For a special treat, he added toasted pecans. Home-cured bacon was fried to go with his pecan rice, too. The salty bacon with the sweet rice was a taste combination I thought out of this world. Of course, Mom taught him how to make the Pecan Rice, which is very simple but tasty. She often served it as a side dish. The following are approximate ingredient amounts to get you started. Add or subtract according to your taste.

1 cup Pecans, 2-3 tablespoons unsalted Butter, 2 cups cooked Rice, Sugar (White or Brown), pinch of Salt. . .Toast pecans in a single layer in a 250 degree oven until a golden brown. Remove and coarsely chop. Meanwhile, cook rice according to instructions. When rice is done but still warm, heat butter in a separate pan and add chopped pecans. Let butter coat them well. Add to rice, along with sugar and salt to taste. Serve warm.

Dirty Rice with Sausage or Hamburger (no Liver)
This is a version of Louisiana Dirty Rice. Mom didn’t care for the sharp taste of cooked and mashed chicken livers. I, on the other hand, enjoy the Creole version, complete with livers, which I will share later. Either way, she liked to serve it with beans and ham, and/or turnip greens. And, of course, cornbread goes well with all.

Brown ½ - 1 lb Pork Sausage or Hamburger in a large skillet. Pour off fat. Add to meat  ½-1 medium dice onion, 1 diced stalk of celery, 1 diced green bell pepper, and 1 minced garlic clove. Cook until vegetables are soft. Mix in ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper, ¼ tsp chili powder, 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper. Add 2 cups chicken broth and 1 cup long-grain rice. Cover and simmer 18-20 minutes or until rice is tender and most of the broth has been absorbed.

Chicken (or Pork Chops) and Rice

This one came from Grandmother Magers to Mom and then to me.

Salt and brown chicken parts in a bacon grease if needed. Set aside. Pour off grease, leaving brown in skillet. Add 1 can mushroom soup, 2 cans water, 1 tablespoons flour, 1 package onion soup mix and combine in skillet. Spread 1 cup rinsed rice on the bottom of a 9 X 13 pan. Lay chicken on the rice. Add soup mixture. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for at least an hour, or until chicken is done and the rice has soaked up the liquid.  Grated cheese on top the last 10 minutes, if desired.

Mock Filet Mignon with Mushroom Sauce

1 ½ lbs ground beef

2 cups cooked rice

1 cup minced onion

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 T. Worcestershire sauce

1 ½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp pepper

8 slices bacon

Combine meat and rice ingredients. Divide into 8 parts and form into patties. Wrap bacon slices around the patties. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Serve with Mushroom Sauce.

Mushroom Sauce: 1 can cream of mushroom soup with ¼ to 1/3 cup of milk. Simmer.

Fried Rice Patties

Left-over rice combined with egg, salt and pepper; sometime a little sugar, too. Form into patties and fry in bacon grease. If you have any bacon or ham left-overs, chop and add to patties before frying.

Rice Pudding
This is the old-fashioned, smooth and creamy style. The delicious flavor is due to the slow cooking. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

 

Wash ¼ cup rice** and add remaining ingredients. Pour into a greased Pyrex-type dish. Bake at 325 degrees for 2 hours, stirring several times. It should never boil. Can be served hot or cold. 

**It’s not a typo. You’ll only need ¼ cup of rice.

COMING IN FUTURE POSTS:

Creole Rice and Pork Chops

Red Beans and Rice

Jambalaya

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo and Rice

* The New Low-Country Cooking by Marvin Woods, HarperColling Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, New York 10022, 2000

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