I'm finally ready to show you how I made my first Apple Stack Cake. More Than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections by Sidney Saylor Farr is one of my favorite Appalachian Cookbooks. I used Ms. Farr's recipe for my Apple Stack Cake, actually according to the cookbook the recipe is h...

Beliefs about Love and Marriage Marry in white, live a happy life. Marry in red, wish yourself dead. Marry in blue, always be true. Marry in green, you'll wish you'd never been seen. Marry in yellow, you'll have a nice looking fellow. Let two girls pull the wishbone and the one that gets the ...

Photo of Alyce and Drew Williams sometime before or after their marriage in 1931. Photo taken in Hancock County, Vardy, Tennessee. Holding Library: King College. Since Thursday is Valentine's Day, many people consider this the week of Love. Here in Appalachia there will be teddy-bears, candy, ...

According to his website: "Guy Clark was born in Monahans, Texas, on November 6, 1941 and grew up in a home where the gift of a pocketknife was a rite of passage and poetry was read aloud." As a songwriter, Clark is famous for songs which offer slices of real life set to music. Over the yea...

I had the best laid plans for yesterday afternoon and today-but waking up yesterday morning with a migraine put all that on the backburner. So instead of cleaning house, doing blind pig things, and working on getting the garden ready for summer I'll be doing things like: cutting a piece of...

It's time for this month's Appalachian Vocabulary Test-take it and see how you do. Call Camp meeting Cap Case knife Catch Call: a duty, reason, or occasion. "Jay Harvey announced his call to preach last Sunday." Camp meeting: annual religious services held outside. "I heard there were...

Once I had the dehydrator loaded with apples I walked out to see what the girls were doing, read my book, or just starred off into space (if you didn't know-staring off into space is medicine for the soul) In between my apple drying cycles-I let all the peelings and cores pile up in a giant ...

The girls and I slipped off to deer camp with The Deer Hunter for a few days last fall-I told you about the rock hunting but I didn't tell you about the apples. A week or so before our trip I came into a hoard of apples. They were given to me by a sweet lady. Things were so busy I didn't get ...

There's no doubt about it-eating food you put up yourself is one of the good things in life. Part of the goodness comes from the nutritional value of the food, the taste, and the satisfaction of self sufficiency. Recently I watched the rain come down in sheets while I ate apples I dried bac...

I asked for snow-and Blind Pig readers sent me 5 inches! I swear when I wrote yesterday's post, whining about my lack of snow, I didn't even know it was supposed to snow. But by mid-day when The Deer Hunter brought the girls home from a school function-the driveway was white and slick-forcing ...

A snowy winter portends a good year for crops. The photo above was taken almost 2 years ago. There's been no snow to photograph this winter. We've had a skiff of snow once or twice but that's it. I love snow so I'm always hoping for a big snow. A week or so ago they were forecasting sno...

Are you a nervous person? Normally I'm not. But sometimes we all encounter things that startle us or make us nervous-such is the way of life. I work with a dear sweet lady who says "Oh my nerves!" when she gets nervous or hears something she can barely believe. Granny was always talking abo...

For many teenage girls in Appalachia, this time of the year is full of Winter Formal-The Valentines Dance-and the grand finale-Prom. All that = sparkly dresses, fancy fingernails with writing on them, way too high high-heels, 3 or 4 giggling screaming girls all crammed into a bathroom, plait...

According to The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English people in my area use the word never in two ways which differ from the traditional use of the word. Examples: 1. Never replaces a past-tense verb referring to a single event. Correct usage: "I didn't see Scott and Seth at the festival." I...

Today's guest post was written by Don Casada. _________________________________ Robert and Elizabeth Beck Collins - Pioneers of the Pioneer Church of the Smokies written by Don Casada. Both Mount Collins and Collins Creek are putatively named for Robert Collins, but I hope I won’t appear at onc...

Every surface and plant surrounding the Blind Pig house was bejeweled with ice yesterday. Although it made for a beautiful landscape-it also made for dangerous travel-by any mode of transportation. Since we were home for the day I did some of the things we talked about yesterday-you know...

During the winter months following Christmas I start thinking about the coming garden: What will I plant? Will I move things around or keep the same set-up I had last summer? What is the exact day I should plant my seedlings? Should we get a load of compost? As you can see most of my activi...

If you guessed yesterday's What Is It? was a foot warmer, a hot water bottle, or a bed warmer you were right! In days gone by the item was commonly called a bed pig and was used to warm beds on cold winter nights. While googling around for information on my newly acquired bed pig I found an ...

The same Blind Pig reader (she's an Angel!!) who gave me the last What Is It? gave me this one too. It's a pottery piece that measures about 10 inches long and about 5 inches high. This is what the end looks like-I believe this is the end the piece would stand on when not in use-so it'd ...

Are you a macaroni and cheese fan? I am. Granny never made it much when I was growing up, but I always looked for it as I walked along the side of a potluck table. After I graduated high school I had 2 friends who basically lived on the boxed variety of macaroni and cheese. It was the first ...

Do you ever slip off? Granny is forever accusing Pap of slipping off down to Paul's or somewhere where she can't find him. Every once in the while The Deer Hunter slips off and I have no idea where he went. Most of the time he either slips off down to Pap's or slips off up in the woods. Me-I d...

Just A Closer Walk With Thee is said to be one of the most popular southern gospel hymns of the 20th century. No one knows who wrote the song-but it's commonly thought to have originated as an African American Spiritual. This site shares this quote about the song: In his book How Sweet Th...