Plain Southern Eating from the Reminiscences of A. L. Tommie Bass, Herbalist
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1988.
First Edition. Hardcover.
Tommie Bass's wry stories, recollections, and classic southern recipes - among the 33 recipes included here are recipes for sawmill gravy, pumpkin butter, cornsilk tea, cornbread, pancakes, relish and pickles, sweet potatoes, vinegar pie, and squirrel or rabbit. The Bass household bill of fare in the southern Appalachians in the first half of the 20th century held no beaten biscuits or syllabub. "We ate cornbread three times a day." Supper was often warmed-over dinner or simply cornbread and buttermilk. Bass tells how his mother made vinegar, how to keep molasses from being bitter, how to make a "pretty little skillet of cornbread." More than reflections on food and its preparation, this book is a seasoned blend of the community life of another day, popular beliefs and superstitions, and practical advice on health matters, including his famous recipe for "Bass Quick Rub" salve. He recounts planting by the signs, foraging with his mother for shepherd’s purse and highland cress, tracking bees to the hive, fishing in the Coosa River, and sitting up until midnight to "get one of them hot rolls with butter!"
Item #901157ISBN: 0822308282
5-3/4 x 8-3/4", yellow cloth, grey endpapers, 117pp, glossary and notes, biblio., index, illustrated with photographs.
Very light foxing to edges of text block, faint bubbling to cloth where it hasn't fully adhered to boards, near fine in lightly rubbed dust wrapper with creasing to corners of front flap, in protective mylar.
Price: $50.00