Author: Darden, Norma Jean and Carole
Title: Spoonbread And Strawberry Wine : Recipes And Reminiscences Of A Family
Publisher: Anchor Press/Doubleday
Place: Garden City
Date: 1978
Edition: 2nd ptg
ISBN: 0385124686
Pages: 304
Binding: Hardback
Condition: very good dj
Illustrator: Doug Jamieson
Photographs: historic family b&w
Book Id: MAIN001309I
Details: Introduction, indices
About the book: Norma Jean and Carole Darden researched and recorded their rich family lore for seven years. They visited relatives in Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia, collect­ing traditional recipes, rare photo­graphs, family health and beauty secrets, and recollections of special family celebrations and rituals.
Beginning with their grandfather, Charles Henry Darden, who was born a slave and settled at sixteen with his wife in Wilson, North Carolina (hav­ing thirteen children, one of whom is the father of Norma Jean and Carole), they describe in vivid detail his adven­tures and misadventures-- including Papa Darden’s wine-making secrets for the strawberry wine he sold for five cents a glass in his general store.
Other featured members of their family are Aunt Lil of Petersburg, Virginia, an octogenarian who couldn’t remem­ber cooking recipes but remembered her beauty cream “recipes,” and their ninety-four-year-old Aunt Maude in Opelika, Alabama, who reminisced about George Washington Carver’s favorite peanut butter ice cream.
There are herbal cures, natural beauty tips, photographs, and memor­ies, but the central focus is on food simply because dining and celebrating events in a family style are today as they have been always, an important element of the black family tradition.
About the authors: Norma Jean and Carole Darden are both graduates of Sarah Lawrence College. Today, Norma Jean owns Spoonbread Catering as well as two New York restaurants, Miss Maude's and Miss Mamie's Spoonbread Too. Carol is a real estate agent and mother. Both authors live in New York City.
Try: Apple Brown Betty, Mattie's Green Sting Beans, Mattie's Christmas Eggnog, Ginger Beer, Aunt Norma's Banana Fruit Punch, Artelia's Plain Biscuits, Mom Sampson's Spoonbread, Cranberry Nut Tea Bread, Mom Sampson's Spoonbread, Cousin Josie's Baba au Rhum, Old Fashioned Honey Spongecake, Caramel Kisses, Aunt Marjorie Palmer's Every-Kind-of-Cookie Dough, Painted Christmas Cookies and Coating, Lemon Nourishing Cream, Waltin'e Ambrosia, Pecan Tartlets with Cream Cheese Pastry, Carole's Deviled Eggs, Sauteed Shad Roe, Edna Neal's Pan-Fried Blowfish, Rum Raisin, Scuppernog Jelly, Rose Petal Jelly, Mattie's Baked Macaroni and Cheese, Liver with Creamed Gravy, Bud's Sunday Roast Chicken, Mamie Jean's Chicken Fricasse, Pigs' Ears and Lentil Stew, Waltine's Barbecued Ham, Old Southern Wet Hash, Roast Opossum with Yams, Brunch at Aunt Lizzie's, Peach Gingerbread Upside-Down Cake, Watermelon Rind Pickles, Triple-Decker Butterscotch Pie, Very Best Pumpkin Pie Ever, Cherry Orange and Peach Preserves, Fig Preserves, North Carolina Grated Sweet Potato Pudding, Aunt Alice's Health Salad, Marcus Garvey Bean Salad and Dressing, Peanut Oil and Lime Juice Dressing, Heavenly Hash Sweet Potatoes, Magnificent Stuffed Eggplant, Okra Succotash, Vegetable-Bone Marrow Soup, Yellow Squash and Onions, Blackberry Wine, Dandelion Wine, Plum Lightning Wine, etc.