Blackberry Summer

It's been a banner year for blackberries. When we bought the house during the winter of 2009 I was excited to see lots of wild canes growing on our property, all along the driveway and around the edge of the woods. However, we went to Las Vegas in July 2010 and when we got home I was disappointed by the quality and quantity of berries on the canes. There had been a hot dry spell while we were gone and most of the berries were either hard and sour or dried up to mummification.

Not so this year.



The berries have been abundant to say the least. Not all of them are very sweet and some of them are seedier than others, but they're wild plants that we don't maintain other than hacking them back when they threaten to block the driveway. I'm glad to get whatever fruit they offer me. Based on the number of thorns that have pierced my skin while picking berries, clearly all the plants want in return is a blood sacrifice from me.



But I'm not going to complain about a few thorns. Not when I've been able to pick a few handfuls like this from my car window while driving down the driveway. That sounds like the ultimate in pick-your-own, but my friend Kathy simply drives her golf cart into her blackberry patch and picks them that way. Now that's the way to do it.

We also have wineberries that have done well this summer, too.



I think the little nipples left when the fruits are picked look funny.



Ally likes the wineberries best. She prefers to hold the bowl while standing in the grass while I pick them for her in the middle of the patch. (I suppose having someone pick the berries for you is even better than getting to drive a golf cart into the patch.) Ally will help me pick blackberries from the driveway and she might eat a few of them, but mostly she'll put them in the bowl. The wineberries are sweeter, so she eats most of the ones I give her. However, she'll even leave some of the wineberries in the bowl if she knows I'm going to make a dessert with them. I don't know where Ally gets this self restraint as I would have gleefully eaten the whole bowl by myself at her age if my mother wasn't looking.

Last week we picked blackberries and wineberries for a birthday cake for my paternal grandmother, who turned 90 last Sunday. My parents came in on Friday and helped pick, too.





I made my favorite yellow cake recipe and added two heaping cups of blackberries to the batter. When it came out of the oven I spread melted blackberry jelly over the top, then frosted it with caramel icing when it cooled. When I make it again (and oh yes, this will be made many, many times as long as there are blackberries in the freezer), I'll skip the jelly and just use the icing. The jelly make the icing slide off and it's really just gilding the lily.

I should have taken a picture of the cake but you'll just have to take my word that it's good. Really good. And it's even better after a day in the fridge. At least try this yellow cake and that caramel icing even if you don't have any blackberries. I make the icing with buttermilk so it has more of a praline flavor. (FYI, I don't care for the chocolate frosting included with the yellow cake recipe and I haven't made the spice cake with the caramel icing recipe. No need to when you can have this yellow cake and that caramel icing together.)

So instead of a picture of a cake, I leave you with a picture of four generations of Dellingers together. My grandmother did like the cake, but not so much as the idea that her son, grand daughter, and great grand daughter all picked the berries together just for her cake.

Beloved

I have known this quilt my entire life.

My great-grandmother Granny Riddle made this quilt before I was born. She was an expert quilter and sewed made many, many quilts by hand during her life time. We have several of Granny Riddle's quilts, but this is the one I think of when I think of her and her quilts.

I have slept under this quilt and napped on top of this quilt. It was the quilt we reached for when we needed comforting while sick, it was the one to wrap up in on a cold winter's night, and who knows how many books have been read under this quilt?



I don't know the name of this 8-pointed star pattern, but no doubt Granny Riddle did. I suspect that some of the fabric came from remnants of clothes but I'll never know who once wore them. Was that my great-grandfather's shirt? Did my grandmother once wear a dress made of out of that fabric?

The colors of the quilt are still quite pretty, but the cotton fabric is faded and begun to fray and tear. I would consider repairing the binding but the yellow sashing is damaged, too. After 40+ years of hard wear, this quilt has reached the end of its lifespan. I'm sad to see it succumb to old age, but Granny Riddle made all her quilts to be used and I'm sure she expected it to reach this state in time.



Of course I wouldn't dream of throwing it away. It's still much too pretty for that and sections of it are still in great shape. I may cut off the damaged binding and outer sashing and then make a new binding for it as a throw or toddler quilt. I could fashion a table topper or wall hanging out of it. Pillows. Christmas ornaments. Pincushions. Upholster a padded bench.



Really, there are a lot of pretty things you can make from an old, beloved quilt. I'm not the expert quilter Granny Riddle was, but with a little effort and some love I think my daughter may be looking at part of this quilt when she's forty and wonder who wore the clothes that her great-great-grandmother used to make this quilt.

Pork Cake

Several days ago I was rummaging around in my freezer when I found a chunk of pork cake. It was wrapped up in aluminum foil and plastic wrap and labeled "Christmas 2007." Sometimes when we have a surplus of Christmas goodies in the house, I freeze some of it to eat later on in the new year. Obviously this particular chunk of cake had been in the freezer for several years. I'm surprised I didn't notice it when we moved everything into the new house in January. Then again, maybe I did and forgot about it thanks to my current malady of "Mom brain."

That night I unwrapped the cake and cut off a slice. It tasted fresh and good even though it was 2.5 years old.

By now some of you are undoubtedly scratching your head and wondering what the heck pork cake could possibly be. For my family, pork cake is *the* Christmas cake we eat every year. It's a dark, dense cake with a fine texture and a crunchy crust, studded with walnuts and raisins, and flavored with wine or what have you. The cake has always reminded me something of a pound cake crossed with a white fruit cake. It's sweet but not too sweet, and goes well with a glass of milk or a cup of coffee. We often have it with fruit salad made from fresh apples, grapes, oranges, canned pineapple, and sometimes flaked sweetened coconut.

My paternal grandmother has made these cakes as long as I can remember, maybe as long as my dad can remember. It's an old recipe, one that actually includes pork fatback but no dairy or eggs. Food historians may be reminded of recipes from the war years, when butter was in short supply, or even during the Depression when you made do with whatever odd ingredients you might have on hand and didn't have to buy. However, I suspect this recipe is much older than that, stretching way back into the Appalachian past, from maybe the 1700's or even older.

While a dessert made from pork fatback may sound terribly odd these days, pork cake is clearly related to recipes for the mincemeat pies of early England in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. I imagine that my American ancestors made pork cake to take advantage of the abundance of pork fat available in the fall after the hogs were slaughtered. I'm sure just black walnuts would have been used as they were free in the woods for the price of collecting and cracking open. Molasses may have been used instead of brown sugar. Apple cider, apple jack, or maybe even moonshine flavored with fruit may have been used to moisten and flavor the cake while it was stored. (My grandmother herself uses Ripple wine.) This cake is a good keeper and would easily be good at Christmas even though it had been baked a month or so earlier.

Clearly this recipe is not meant for those following kosher, halal, or similar dietary rules. And I was surprised to learn via Google that Wallis Warfield, who became the Duchess of Windsor, was apparently a fan of pork cake, with a recipe variation found here. The reviewer of the Duchess's recipe reported that she could taste a pronounced pork flavor in each bite, but that's never been an issue with my grandmother's cakes.

So here is my grandmother's recipe for pork cake in all of its quirky glory. I should tell you that 1) Granny never uses a printed recipe as she cooks from her memory, and 2) I haven't used this recipe myself. I should also add that I don't think Granny makes her cakes with the fatback that has been salted. I don't think I'd try substituting lard for the fatback as lard melts much more easily and doesn't have the same texture as the fatback.

Pork Cake (makes two cakes)

8 cups flour

1 TBS cinnamon

1 TBS nutmeg

1 TBS baking soda

1 pound pork fatback, ground fine

1 pint perked, strong coffee

4 cups brown sugar

1 pound raisins

1 pound chopped English walnuts

1 cup chopped black walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift flour, spices, and baking soda together and set aside. Combine ground fatback, hot coffee, and brown sugar. Gradually add flour mixture to fatback mixture and mix well. Batter will be thick. Mix in raisins and nuts until well incorporated into the batter. Spoon batter into two greased tube pans. Bake for about two hours or until toothpick comes clean.

Let cakes cool in pans. Soak a handful of cotton balls or a wad of cotton gauze with wine, apple cider, apple jack, or what have you and place in the center of the cakes. Wrap each cake well in aluminum foil. Place cakes in a plastic five gallon bucket along with several fresh apples. The apples will help keep the cakes moist. Cover the bucket with a lid and store out of direct heat and light. Allow the cakes to mellow over a month or so before serving.

At some point my grandmother will no longer make pork cakes and I'll pick up the tradition to continue it. I know when the time comes I'll be tempted to reduce the amount of fatback used, maybe substitute dried cherries for the raisins, or use apple jack to flavor the cake. But for now, I'll let Granny make her cakes as long as she's able, and I'll enjoy the flavor that comes from a long family tradition.