NEWS

Over the Garden Fence: Remembering an earlier time

Mary Lee Minor

Families gather as we pause to remember an earlier time and to be thankful in spirit. Most will be busy preparing the dishes that come to have meaning for them from Grandmother’s recipes, or mom’s versions of corn, pumpkin, cranberry or potato casseroles.

We should sing and stand in awe of how we have arrived at this day. The first Pilgrims traveled for weeks on the ocean with meager provisions and managed a little cooking from iron containers with sand in them. Quarters were crowded; passengers often dined on moldy cheese, dried peas, salty beef, dried fish, smoked herring and ship’s biscuits.

The biscuits were hard as rocks, made with wheat flour, pea flour and water, and were about the size of a dinner plate. Impossible to chew, folks had to suck and then nibble on the food. Doughboys were fat little dumplings made by frying wet flour in pork fat, “yummy.” Burgoo was an oatmeal blended with some molasses. There were even pudding-like blends of raisins and dried prunes called “Plumduff.”

The Pilgrims landed at a frightful time, the day after Christmas, and by the end of that first year many had died. Half of those who made it to the first Thanksgiving were children. The Native Americans had shown them sweet potatoes, cranberries and other fruit, corn, wild turkey, squash and venison. Much of this came together for that first Thanksgiving and was a much better fare than what had been ate on the ship.

Indians practiced a procedure called “three sisters,” a relatedness of beans, squash and corn. Beans climbed the stalks of corn, and the corn shaded the squash. Squash was like a living mulch, its large leaves shading and conserving ground moisture for all three crops — smart. These three crops cover nearly all nutritional needs. There is a Three Sisters Corn Casserole that brings together frozen green beans, a summer squash, cornmeal, butter, sour cream and eggs. It may be a new arrival to our family’s feast. If the corn grown was Indian corn, then all those kernels would have come together, multi-colored and cooked or roasted; you never see drawings of this meal, today we use sweet corn.

As you sit down to a table full of delights, be thankful for the progress brought to our lives through farming breakthroughs. This process goes right back to the native Americans whose discoveries made for an interesting eating more than 300 years ago.