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Posted by Michelle C. on October 12, 2009, 7:17 pm
Sunny,
Thanks so much for sharing your childhood memories AND the memory of
when you became the CHOSEN ONE for the recipes. :-) Families can be
quirky, can't they?
I've never eaten chow-chow, but you've got my curiosity stoked.
Enjoy your bounty. It sounds lovely.
Best regards,
Michelle in Nevada (who was ecstatic this yeat that her she finally got
a tomato crop to survive in the desert)
Sunny wrote:
show/hide quoted text
> We had a freeze warning two nights ago and then last night was the
> real deal. Only the asters are still in bloom. When we saw how cold it
> was going to be we headed out and pulled everything off the tomato
> bushes. The tomatoes were prolific t his year. We brought in tons of
> ripe tomatoes and triple tons of green tomatoes.
>
> The ripe and almost ripe went to friends and into refrigerators and
> some went for salsa. I made BLTs and all sorts of goodies. Then I
> started chopping green tomatoes. In the past two days I've made and
> canned 24 pints of green tomato chow chow. I grew up in Texas and this
> was how we ate pinto beans -- poured over a bit of cornbread and
> dressed with chow chow. When I was a kid I could tell which of my
> relatives had made the chow chow on my plate just by tasting. Aunt Edd
> made hers hot and not so sweet. Aunt Doot chopped the heck out of her
> vegetables and made the chow chow hot -- she hid tiny screaming hot
> peppers (whole) in with the other veggies -- and incredibly sweet.
> Granny's chow chow was chopped big and tasted mild and just sweet.
> Perfection. The chow chow recipe was from Dad's family, guarded like
> the crown jewels. My mom never got the recipe, and neither could I.
>
> Then the year my first son was born DH and I picked him up and flew to
> Texas for the family reunion. He was 6 months old and still nursing
> and everybody was charmed by him. My Granny was 100 years old, my Aunt
> Edd was well into her 70s. My cousin and I (she had a baby too, and
> while I nursed my son she bottled her daughter and we talked for the
> first time in years) talked about how we had been turned down when
> asking for the chow chow recipe. Well, as the day was ending and we
> were packing to leave for the airport, my aunt took me aside and
> handed me a stack of recipe cards. She said something dear and
> wonderful about me being a woman now (I was 30 years old) and how all
> the aunts approved that I was breastfeeding. I got all the "family"
> recipes that day. And I found out later that my cousin didn't. I sent
> them to her. Our generation maybe sees things a bit different.
>
> So this year, I grew my own tomatoes for chow chow, fist time in 15
> years I've made it. Tomorrow I'm going to put a pot of beans on to
> cook with ham hock. When they're nicely tender, I'm going to make
> buttermilk cornbread and then I'm going to feast. Life is good.
>
> Sunny
> tired enough to drop but happy
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> Gen
>> Oh, what a wonderful post!
> .
>> My SO became the beneficiary of his family's recipes. His family hails
>> from North Dakota, so the recipes are a lot like what you hear Garrison
>> Keillor talk about on Prairie Home Companion -- caramel rolls, hamburger
>> hot dish, potato salad, keechli, other stuff in German that I can't
>> remember :-)
>