Down-Home Cookin'

Down-Home Cookin'

Traditional mountain cooking is rib-sticking fare, intended for people who work hard on the farm all day. It dates to a time when the biggest meal of the day was dinner, taken at noon, and the food was heavy: country ham with red-eye gravy, pan-fried chicken, and vegetables from the garden such as half-runner beans seasoned with fatback, creamed sweet corn, and new potatoes. With it came cat-head biscuits (so called because of their size), fresh-churned butter, sourwood honey (light-color honey from sourwood trees that bloom in late spring), and tall glasses of springwater and buttermilk. Some the more unusual mountain dishes, only rarely available at local restaurants, include ramps (a smelly cousin of the onion) with eggs; baked groundhog; bear meat (prepared as a roast or stew); creases or creasie greens (a salad of wild wintercress); leather-britches (beans dried in the pod and boiled with salt pork); and dried-apple pie.