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2 tablespoons (¼ stick) butter

Place turnips, cloves, and salt in a heavy saucepan. Cover with water. Boil until turnips are tender, about 20 to 30 minutes. Remove from stove, drain, and discard cloves. Add sugar, and stir until sugar dissolves. Add butter, and stir to melt. Serve at once.

Mustard and Turníp Greens

wíth Smoked Turkey Wíngs

SERVES 6

2 smoked turkey wings

3 pounds mustard greens

1 pound young, tender turnip greens

½ teaspoon sugar

Salt, to taste

Place turkey wings in large pot, and cover with water. Boil until nearly tender, about 45 minutes to an hour.

Wash and drain greens. Put in pot with cooked meat. Add sugar and season with salt. Add enough water to cover, and simmer until tender.

Drain and reserve liquid, which is called pot liquor and will be very good the next day with corn bread. Remove meat from bones, chop, and add to greens. Serve at once.

Píckled Peaches

SERVES 6

6 medium nearly ripe peaches, peeled and pitted

¾ cup sugar

⅛ teaspoon salt

½ cup cider vinegar

1 cup orange juice

1 tablespoon whole cloves

2 cinnamon sticks

Put peaches in large pot, add sugar, salt, vinegar, juice, cloves, and cinnamon sticks, and cover with water. Boil for 30 minutes. Take off stove, and let cool. Put in refrigerator in its own liquid. Discard cinnamon and cloves. Serve cold.

Buttermílk Biscuíts

MAKES 2 DOZEN BISCUITS

4 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

6 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup lard

2 cups buttermilk

All-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Sift flour with salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Cut in lard until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Add buttermilk, and stir until dough leaves side of bowl.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board, and knead until smooth. Roll out to ½ inch thickness, and cut into 2-inch rounds. If there is no biscuit cutter at hand, use a water glass. (Turn glass upside down, dust rim in flour, and cut biscuits.)

Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 20 to 25 minutes, or until biscuits are golden brown.

IN STAMPS, WOMEN PRESERVED everything that would submit to the process. After the first frost, when men killed the hogs and cows selected for slaughter, Momma, with the aid of the missionary ladies of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, would prepare the meat for sausage. I enjoyed watching them. They would grind the raw pork, then squeeze their arms elbow deep in the ground meat, mixing it with gray nose-opening sage, pepper and salt, and red pepper. They often fried tasty little samples for all obedient children who brought wood for the slick black stove. The men chopped off the larger pieces of pork and laid them in the smokehouse to begin the curing process. They opened the knuckle of the hams with their deadly-looking knives, took out a certain round, harmless-looking bone (“It could make the meat too bad”), and rubbed coarse brown salt that looked like fine gravel into the flesh, and watched as the blood popped to the surface.

Throughout the year, until the next frost, we took our meals from the smokehouse, the chicken coop, the shelves of canned goods, and the little garden that lay cousin-close to the store. There were choices on the shelves that could set a hungry child’s mouth to watering. Green beans, snapped always the right length; collards; cabbage; juicy, sweet red tomato preserves that came into their own on steaming buttered biscuits; and sausage, beets, berries, and every fruit grown in Arkansas.

But at least twice yearly Momma would feel that her grandbabies needed fresh meat in their diets. We were then given money—pennies, nickels, and dimes entrusted to Bailey—and sent to the butcher to buy liver. The butcher shop was in the white part of town.

Crossing our area of Stamps, which in childhood’s narrow measure seemed a whole world, obliged us by custom to stop and speak to every black person we met. Bailey also felt constrained to spend a few minutes playing with each friend. There I felt a special joy in going through