1860s Period Foods - Including Good Down Home Eatin'

[Jim Page]

The mentions of berry picking reminded me of my granny's grape arbors on the family farm. She had two types of grapes: one long row each of Concords and Muscadines, and the vines are still producing there today.

I can't remember about the Concords, but I recall that we'd only eat the insides of the Muscadines and not the skins. There was a trick to biting the ouside of the large grape and squirting the insides into your mouth.

Granny also had a couple of Bartlett pear trees that we'd swipe fruit from; she preferred that we leave them alone so she could "put up" the fruit in Mason or Bell jars with sweet syrup.

Two trees that had "fruit" still grow in the back yard of our farm in North Florida, and some of you may be familiar with them. The Chinaberry trees have a fruit that humans can't eat, but birds go crazy over them, and sometimes act drunk after eating the berries.

The other trees are Catawbas, which have an inedible fruit (I guess!) that looks like long snap-bean pods.

--Jim