I regulary say here in blog posts, for one reason or another, that I regularly go to low end resale stores, junk stores, such as Goodwill, Salvation Army Stores, and little local places which do the same thing to browse for and buy used books. I happened to be in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, yesterday, January 25, 2025, for Buffalo Night at Jenny Wiley State Park, and went inside the Goodwill store there where I came away with three or four interesting used books including a hardback copy of "Ulysses" by James Joyce. But the real treasure of that trip was a little fundraising type cookbook called "Yesterday's Memories Today's Treasures" by the McDowell-Minnie Senior Citizens which had been published in 1998. It is small compared to many of those types of cookbooks but I really like them especially if they are from the Central and Southern Appalachia Region. This one is centered in two old coal camp communities on Left Beaver Creek in Floyd County Kentucky located between Martin and Wheelwright. I grew up across the ridge on Right Beaver Creek in Knott County, and have known these communities ever since I was big enough to remember. I grew up about 3-5 miles away from them as the crow would fly directly over the ridge, but probably 10 or 15 miles if you actually drove a car. But I have to say I don't recognize any of the names of the contributors to this particular cookbook. It is small for such fundraising cookbooks, just over a hundred pages, and several of those pages, perhaps a dozen of those pages are just the typical filler material which the publishing companies always add to such books, things like lists of measurements, weights, temperature guides, and advertising for the company. But this little cookbook is loaded with recipes which are worth remembering and trying. Some of them I had never seen. Some I have cherished since I was a little boy watching my mother cook at home. There are recipes for both Pickled Beans and Pickled Corn which rarely show up in any cookbook. But when I was growing up, many people around that area still made both Pickled Beans and Pickled Corn in five gallon crocks and ate them all winter. This book lists both recipes in the "Appetizers, Relishes, and Pickles" section, but in my childhood both were seen as staples for winter survival and eaten fried just a bit as a regular vegetable. I can't automatically recall another cookbook I know which has those recipes in it. Most people think of making good white milk gravy only with regular or "sweet" milk. This book contains a recipe for "Buttermilk Gaavy" which I don't recall ever seeing my mother make. But we always had "sweet milk" because we always owned a cow. Amazingly for the time about thirty years ago, it has a recipe for what it calls "Frog's Eye Salad" with the possessive spelling instead of the normal singular which I had always known. This salad is a relatively modern addition to foods in that area and I grew familiar with it probably twenty to twenty-five years ago in my extended family. It contains sugar, flour, fruit, and spezzielo pasta. The book could have a misspelling of the name but the pasta in question is small, round, bits of pasta which gave the salad its name "Frog Eye Salad" due to the size being about the same as a frog's eye. When made well, it is a delicious dessert and often seen in the area at family gatherings and church events. There is also a recipe for "Seven Layer Salad" which I have always loved and a former roommate of my Eve Downey used to make it to perfection. There is a recipe for "Fried Dry Land Fish Mushrooms" or morelles. But Dry Land Fish has always been the local colloquial name for morelles in Knott and Floyd counties. There are recipes for Fried Rabbit and Fried Squirrel. I love both squirrel and rabbit but not fried although that has always been the most common way to cook them in the area. I make a joke sometimes that in that area you can mention strawberry pie and somebody will yell out "I like mine fried.". There are recipes for Turnips, Pinto Beans, Cushaw, Squash, Hominy, and a couple for Poke, both boiled and fried in stalk form. All those vegetables are becoming less and less common in most people's everyday cooking. There is also a recipe for "Pinto Bean Pie" which I only recently discovered at Jenny Wiley State Park doing a special event dinner. But it was obviously being made on Left Beaver in thos coal camps at least thirty years ago. The book also contains a great, classic recipe for "Corn Bread" to my great delight, not becasue I don't know how to make it but because most others don't. This recipe contains five ingredients, the correct five: meal, flour, baking soda, buttermilk,and water. And, as it should be, sugar is nowhere to be seen. If you wnat to bake a cake, bake a cake, but don't add sugar to it and try to call it cornbread. This is wonderful treasure of a little Eastern Kentucky cookbook. But the odds that you can ever locate a copy for yourself are mighty slim. It was most likely published thirty years ago in 1998 in an edition of about 500 to 1,000 copies and most of those are probably either treasured in the now deceased contributors extended families or lost forever. I am truly glad I located this one by accident, or intention, simply by walking into a Goodwill Store at the right time. I hope you can find one.
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