Our mailing lists have been unusually quite of late, and it isn't even dog days yet! So I will throw out a little tidbit for you to use as fodder to exercise your memories of how it was "back then." How many of you helped make hominy? Sour kraut? Pickle beans? Other old time staples? STAN Making Hominy When Ira Cook, Jr. and I were discussing my notes for my new book,"Matheny and Me," the subject of making hominy came up. I remembered that my mother and granny made hominy several times, but I could not remember the details. For that reason, I chose to ignore the subject in my book and hope that no one would notice. Now Ira is no ordinary reviewer, but I finally concluded that there might be others who are just as picky and would feel that hominy should get equal coverage with some of the other staple foods we made ourselves, which most folks now pick from a grocery store shelf and could not care less how they are made. I think I know the hominy preparation steps my granny May and mother followed pretty well, but it's the relative measurements of ingredients that evade me. I know that a unique and necessary ingredient was lye.[1] They used lye water to make hominy that was just like they used to make homemade soap. They soaked dried shelled “field corn” for two or three days in the lye water until the grains swelled and the skin came off. The mixture was stirred occasionally throughout the soaking period. The corn was then washed repeatedly to remove all the lye. The last step was simply to cook the corn until it was tender. Our friends further south than West Virginia use cracked corn, thus they get hominy grits. What happens beyond this point in the process is left to the imagination of the cook. Most people just heat the hominy, add butter and salt and eat it that way. Some make paddies and fry them. I don't know how my wife, Connie, prepares that sissy- made store-bought hominy she buys, but it turns out just as good as the real stuff and it is a lot less trouble. [1] One of my friends says that a couple of boxes of soda dissolved in enough water to cover a gallon and a half of beans works just as well as lye. I think I like that idea better.

hi stan..... my name is deborah cook stringer. i think i am related to ira cook jr. maybe? i was born in pineville hospital in 1953. my grandparents were Jode & Lula Mae Cook from rockview. there are several of my family members still there. i live in tampa, fl. now. debbie ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stanley Browning" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 6:21 PM Subject: [WVWYOMIN] Growin' Up in Appalachia Our mailing lists have been unusually quite of late, and it isn't even dog days yet! So I will throw out a little tidbit for you to use as fodder to exercise your memories of how it was "back then." How many of you helped make hominy? Sour kraut? Pickle beans? Other old time staples? STAN Making Hominy When Ira Cook, Jr. and I were discussing my notes for my new book,"Matheny and Me," the subject of making hominy came up. I remembered that my mother and granny made hominy several times, but I could not remember the details. For that reason, I chose to ignore the subject in my book and hope that no one would notice. Now Ira is no ordinary reviewer, but I finally concluded that there might be others who are just as picky and would feel that hominy should get equal coverage with some of the other staple foods we made ourselves, which most folks now pick from a grocery store shelf and could not care less how they are made. I think I know the hominy preparation steps my granny May and mother followed pretty well, but it's the relative measurements of ingredients that evade me. I know that a unique and necessary ingredient was lye.[1] They used lye water to make hominy that was just like they used to make homemade soap. They soaked dried shelled “field corn” for two or three days in the lye water until the grains swelled and the skin came off. The mixture was stirred occasionally throughout the soaking period. The corn was then washed repeatedly to remove all the lye. The last step was simply to cook the corn until it was tender. Our friends further south than West Virginia use cracked corn, thus they get hominy grits. What happens beyond this point in the process is left to the imagination of the cook. Most people just heat the hominy, add butter and salt and eat it that way. Some make paddies and fry them. I don't know how my wife, Connie, prepares that sissy- made store-bought hominy she buys, but it turns out just as good as the real stuff and it is a lot less trouble. [1] One of my friends says that a couple of boxes of soda dissolved in enough water to cover a gallon and a half of beans works just as well as lye. I think I like that idea better. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message