BERRIES: HOMEGROWN AND FROM NATURE
Along with fruit, berries have enjoyed great appeal with the folks of Appalachia. For starters, they had a profusion of wild berries—strawberries, raspberries, dewberries, blackberries, elderberries, huckleberries, blueberries, and others–available for the picking. All it took was gumption and a bucket. The former was in plentiful supply in a society where a staunch work ethic was almost a religion while an old lard tin or a homemade birch bark receptacle served quite nicely as a container. Some folks included tame berry patches as an adjunct to gardens as well, although this was not particularly common with the exception of strawberries and to a somewhat lesser degree, blueberries and raspberries. Today that has changed dramatically, and home gardeners often raise a variety of berries, with thornless blackberries joining blueberries as being particularly popular. In yesteryear, gathering and canning berries was widely practiced and they contributed variety to diet when eaten fresh, prepared as a side dish, or used in desserts.
BLUEBERRY SALAD
2 cups blueberries
1 (six-ounce) package black cherry gelatin
1 cup water
1 (8½ –ounce) can crushed pineapple, undrained
1 small carton whipped cream
1 (3-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
½ cup finely chopped pecans
Place one cup of berries in a saucepan, cover with water and simmer until berries are tender. Drain and reserve the juice. Add enough water to the blueberry juice to make 2 cups. Heat juice to boiling and add gelatin; stir until gelatin is dissolved. Add 1 cup cold water, pineapple, cooked blueberries, and a cup of uncooked blueberries. Pour into a 9- x 13-inch dish and refrigerate until firm.
Beat softened cream cheese, add nuts and fold in whipped topping. Mix well. Spread over congealed salad and chill for at least 2 hours before serving.
JC
—Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food written by Jim Casada and Tipper Pressley
Most of our blueberry bushes have done well this year in spite of the very dry summer we’ve had. We’ve been enjoying them straight out of hand as well as in recipes. I love to go stand by a bush and just eat 🙂
When I was a girl salads like the one above were all the rage in my area of Appalachia—especially at potlucks and church gatherings. I rarely see them today.
You can find mine and Jim’s cookbook here.
Last night’s video: Putting Up the Corn We Grew, Rocks in Appalachia, & Tipper’s Confused about the Seasons.
Tipper
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Have Yall ever heard of eating the berries from the American Beautyberry bushes? I never heard of it. Growing up I had seen a lot of them but it was just recently I had ever heard that some folks ate them.
The blueberry salad sounds delicious! May have to give it a try!
I’ve never had blueberry salad, but it sure seems as if it would be wonderful. Blueberries grow wild everywhere in Michigan and are important sustenance for people, bears, deer, birds, and insects, to most living critters who have to get through six and sometimes seven months of winter. Like deer and fish, blueberries are attributed to the survival of many generations of people and animals.
When I get some extra time I sure am going to make that salad. I have your cookbook but I guess I missed looking at that one:) I watched your video on the corn last night actually on the big television and your corn looked wonderful and what a delicious meal they are going to provide this winter. Just grab one bag from the freezer. Yum, Yum!!
This morning I wanted to go back and look at the Pressley Girls Video on Paul’s arrowhead collection. Paul’s collection was large and his labeling where he found the majority of them was really smart. I especially like his talking about the places he hunted in and just knowing that someone over a hundred or more years ago worked a piece of rock into a arrowhead to provide food or protection and your holding it in your hand. Awesome! Thanks Paul!
My Mother’s Mother always told her children that she would follow behind her Papa when he was plowing with a mule down by the river and she was constantly finding arrowheads. She loved to find them. My Great-Grandfather’s farm land was in Nixon, TN., I think south of Savannah, TN., and ran right down to the Tennessee River. My Mother said when she was a little girl and her parents would take the children back to see their Grandparents, they would drive to Shiloh (now called Pittsburgh Landing) and catch the ferry which would go straight across to their Grandparents land. When I was married and had my children we went with my Mother and stood at Pittsburgh Landing where Mother pointed to where they got on the old ferry and where it landed them on the other side. I could just envision my Grandmother as a young kid following behind her Papa as he plowed and finding her treasured arrowheads. I did know that there had been discovered evidence of an ancient village of native American Indians up from Shiloh. Loving history as I do and reading more about that site, I’m sure a lot of those arrowheads my Grandmother found could have come from that village.
Can you use another berry or fruit instead of blueberries? This sounds delicious but I do not like blueberries. Thanks for the recipe. Sherry Thacker
Sherry-I’m sure other fruit would be great too 🙂
That blueberry salad sounds delicious! I will definitely try it. It would be nice to grow your own blueberries.
sounds like something my momma used to make when we were kids. yummy.
Don’t forget dewberries, sarvis berries and mulberries. Some of my fond memories are of wild food gathering with Mom, my aunt and my Grandma. Grandma in particular had an annual round she made because she was always noticing where wild edibles occurred and just waiting for time to go get them. It helped that she lived about a mile from national forest and didn’t need permission. One of those ridges was named Huckleberry Ridge. My brother and myself lived with her for two years while Dad worked in the foundry in Covington, Ky. He knew living in the city was like jail to us.
My mom made this salad every Thanksgiving. She’s gone now but we still make it because someone always requests that we have it.
Anything blueberry is good. As Mama used to say “I could eat a bate of that ” lol ! She fixed something similar.
when I was a kid in addition to my chores of cooking, cleaning house, doing laundry (with a wringer washer and hanging clothes on the clothes line-for nine people) and ironing, in the summer months was added picking wild blackberries and sand plums….my recreation was fishing which supplied meat for the freezer…for a couple hours every afternoon once dinner dishes were done I would go picking–one day blackberries next day plums alternating allowing more fruit to ripen….I never hear you speak of plums so was curious if where you live there are no wild plums. Also, wondering if you have sassafras trees and if so do you use the root to make tea to drink in the spring for the health benefits it gives–the Cherokee is one tribe I know that would use sassafras routinely in their spring diet. I remember when my dad would be cutting trees down if he cut a sassafras tree he would save the shavings to bring home for my mom to make tea with—he never brought the root just the chainsaw shavings. The recipe sounds good–I am thankful to have your cookbook.
Gaylia-love those memories! There are wild plums in parts of Appalachia, but not right here were I live. I’ve had sassafras tea but never made it myself.
Oh that blueberry salad sounds delicious. I enjoy these jello salads with fruits and or berries. You’re right, you don’t see them as often anymore. They need to make a comeback.
It’s difficult to find flavorful blueberries here in the South. I think the heat does them in. Up North, where it’s cooler, they are much tastier. I look for the first strawberries from Florida. They are my favorite and red throughout. Not oversized. It’s a short season, but they taste what a strawberry should taste like. When I see blueberries from New Jersey or Michigan, I grab them, too. Sadly, many blueberries are picked early and sit in temperature controlled buildings until ready to be shipped out. By then, they are soft and flavorless. Organics usually have the best taste, but one pays dearly for them. I’ve yet to have a fantastic blueberry from South America where most come from in the winter. In the mountains you are lucky to have cooler temps that berries appreciate. Lots of good peaches this year, that’s for sure. Now I am waiting for mountain apples to appear. I plan to can many for this winter the way you did yours on YT.
I will try this recipe! We make something similar every Thanksgiving. Only we swap the blueberries for a can of cranberry sauce (I like chunky), the cherry jello for lemon jello and the extra liquid and water for ginger ale or 7 Up. Now I’ve got a summer version. Thanks!
I don’t eat pineapple. I just don’t! If something else can be substituted I might give this recipe a try.
1. Is black cherry gelatin hard to find? My wife used to make something that required a gelatin flavor that was unfamiliar to me and that might have been it. Having worked at a food distributor for thirty seven years one would think I should know them all. Whatever the flavor the stores I visited either didn’t have black cherry or had it well hidden.
2. What size is a small carton of whipped cream? Is that whipping cream? That comes in several different sizes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen whipped cream in a carton. They have it in an aerosol can. I do have Dream Whip which comes in more than one size. It is a superfine powder when you open the packet. I use it when I make a blueberry yum yum. Is that it, would that work? I still wouldn’t know how much though.
Papaw-I’m sure you could substitute something for the pineapple 🙂 And another flavor of jello would work too-like just cherry. A small carton of whipping cream is 16 ounces and then you would need to whip it before making the recipe. We should have been more clear on that in the book 🙂
Papaw- whipped cream is Cool Whip in the freezer section. Small tub is 8oz. Also if you have a Food City or Kroger grocery store, they have a good selection of jello!
Tipper, hope it was ok to butt in!
Thanks for butting in!! You are welcome anytime. I wish more people would butt in. We used to have some very interesting conversations here on Tippers blog.
I knew about Cool Whip. I thought the recipe was from Jim’s mamma or grandmamma from back before Cool Whip was even a thing. I don’t eat Cool Whip. It’s made in a factory not a field. It has lots of things in it I can’t pronounce. I hesitate to eat anything I can’t pronounce.
I sat a container of Cool Whip out on the counter and just left it. It sat there several days. It shrank a little but it didn’t spoil so apparently bacteria wouldn’t eat it. I sat it outside for several days but the bugs and bees weren’t interested either.
I think most grocery stores carry black cherry jello, although I have only ever found the Jello brand of it.
My grapes and blackberries did very well this year too! The salad sounds scrumptious and easy to prepare so thank you for the recipe share! I remember as a kid mommy sending us girls to pick blackberries for a cobbler. What I wouldn’t give to have her hand me a bucket, say get berries, and make a cobbler! I’d give about anything to hold her precious hands, hear her sweet voice, smell her and gaze into her beautiful brown eyes just one more time!!! I surely didn’t miss the water til the well went dry!!!! Looking at a deer momma this morning with her two precious babies made me realize mommas love their babies a whole lot!!! Mommas are blessings indeed!!!
I like blueberries and tried to make us a pie last week, I don’t remember eating a blueberry salad. I am thinking about Tipper’s mention of church gatherings. I remember when I was a child of our church gatherings when all the food brought would be homemade. Our old country church had a large picnic shed with two long rows of a continuous picnic table and benches. The food would be placed on about half of one row and the people would sit and eat at the other row. One of my fondest memories is of two galvanized #2 round wash tubs being at the end of the food table with a big block of ice bought at the local ice house in them. All of the tea brought by the individuals would be poured together in one tub and true lemonade made from lemons and not Country Time powder would be in the other one. Now we have a modern church with a social hall and a lot of the food brought to the gatherings now is chicken bought from a chicken restaurant or grocery store deli, store bought tea sitting around in plastic gallon jugs and many of the cakes and pies bought at grocery store bakery and much of the food warmed up out of a can or frozen. In the days of the picnic shed, I remember our beloved Preacher John drinking his tea out of a quart mason jar. I often pass by this old picnic shed and think of the good days and times of the past fellowshipping with the old Saints of God. Now the roof of the shed is falling in but the two rows of tables are still there along with the large swing set made by hand from galvanized water pipe. How me and other kids kept from getting hurt on the swing set will always be a mystery to me, we were always trying to swing higher than the one beside of us.
When I was a kid, we always picked wild berries. We would go down the railroad tracks where there were wild strawberries. They were so tiny you had to pick a lot, but mama would always make strawberry shortcake. She would freeze some for use in homemade ice cream or cakes for during the winter. We had elderberry bushes growing out back of our house and mama would make the best elderberry jelly. We would go on a drive out some old back roads to get to blackberry bushes and the whole family would pick them. My mama would make juice for jelly and my favorite-blackberry cobblers. Those were the days.
Looks and sounds delicious! I’ll have to give it a whirl!
Thanks Tipper!
Ed
We loved our blueberries this year. They were huge and we had more than ever before. I even tried your blueberry pie. It tasted great, but just really juicy while still warm. It congealed better once it was refrigerated, but it paired nicely with some vanilla ice cream.
We even attempted corn this year because of ya’ll. We are going to pick a few ears for dinner today or supper.