Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
Speaker 1: by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
Speaker 1: the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
Speaker 1: stories to share, spam onions, grits and butter. I find
Speaker 1: it very gratifying to see folks make it at home
Speaker 1: what they used to buy at the store. I've always
Speaker 1: said that life is cyclical, and eventually we go back
Speaker 1: to where we started. Radio was first, then movies, TV,
Speaker 1: and now podcasts are like video all over again. Watching
Speaker 1: a podcast is like when radio turned into television. But
Speaker 1: media isn't our focus today. It's homemade groceries, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite subjects.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Tell you all about some things my brother Tim does.
Speaker 1: But first I'm going to tell you a story. This
Speaker 1: story comes from our friend Avery Settler Check, an aspiring
Speaker 1: actor living in New York City. Avery is a native
Speaker 1: of Jacksonville, Florida, and was blessed with a grandfather to
Speaker 1: make some fond memories with this story. Speaks of food,
Speaker 1: and food is kind of our theme today, sowing Avery's
Speaker 1: words and my voice.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: As a young boy, I spent much of my time
Speaker 1: with my papa. My mom, a recent widow, nurse and
Speaker 1: mother of three, could certainly used the help, and her
Speaker 1: dad was one of the many people to answer that call.
Speaker 1: He was an iron worker, a barber, a gospel singer,
Speaker 1: a TV cameraman, and even an aerial photographer. He had
Speaker 1: more jobs than a job fair and was retired by
Speaker 1: the time I popped up, so he had plenty of
Speaker 1: time and stories to share with me. Papa taught me
Speaker 1: all of the cool things in life, like flea markets
Speaker 1: and action movies and painting your own initials on all
Speaker 1: you tools. Well of all the things he and I
Speaker 1: did together, hunting was by far my favor. Each fall,
Speaker 1: we'd pack up his camper, haul it up to the
Speaker 1: club and set up shop. Then throughout the season he
Speaker 1: would pick me up on Friday and take me to
Speaker 1: the club where we would run dogs on Saturday before
Speaker 1: I tailored it back for church on Sunday morning. I
Speaker 1: loved every second of it. Riding on the toolbox, talking
Speaker 1: on the c B, and holding my four ten in
Speaker 1: anticipation of that big buck I just knew was coming
Speaker 1: my way. But most of all, I love spending time
Speaker 1: with him in the woods. However much I loved everything
Speaker 1: else about these trips. Our crowd jewel was always food,
Speaker 1: specifically our snacks while we.
Speaker 2: Were out in the woods.
Speaker 1: Papa loved food, especially anything fried and salted, and as
Speaker 1: a growing boy, so did I. We would stop at
Speaker 1: the only gas station for miles, and while we filled
Speaker 1: up on ice for the weekend, we'd get an order
Speaker 1: of three potato wedges. Now we only got three because
Speaker 1: he swore they'd swell up in your stomach. I still
Speaker 1: wonder if that's true. When we were hunting, though, we
Speaker 1: were just about always eating, And I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: that's the way the other guys did it, but that's
Speaker 1: how we did. Before the dogs were even barking, we'd
Speaker 1: break into the viany sausages and peanut butter and crackers
Speaker 1: and free doos, not to mention the coveted you Hoo
Speaker 1: cans that would be faulted with a bologna sandwich for
Speaker 1: lunch and a cookout for dinner, and that's how it
Speaker 1: went for us. As much as we loved hunting and
Speaker 1: took it seriously, the opportunity to eat a snack and
Speaker 1: talk was the main event. One day, Papa and I
Speaker 1: had the rare occurrence of hunting and a stand together
Speaker 1: running dogs was the perfect high energy version of hunting
Speaker 1: I needed as a kid, lots of commotion and movement,
Speaker 1: no major need for being total quiet. Hunting up in
Speaker 1: a stand meant that I, as a hyperactive eight year old,
Speaker 1: had to be completely still and quiet for multiple hours.
Speaker 1: It's this exact reason that on this day my grandfather
Speaker 1: and I sat in what we called the condo stand.
Speaker 1: The condo stand was a completely boxed instructure, high off
Speaker 1: the ground with the drawstringed wooden flat windows and bolted
Speaker 1: and swivel chairs, perfect for a kid and this disabled grandfather.
Speaker 1: As always, Papa brought a knapsack of snacks and with
Speaker 1: the first hour or so we tried to be good,
Speaker 1: but the wind was whipping and we were cold and bored.
Speaker 1: To better enjoy the moment, my Papa declared chow time.
Speaker 1: On this day, I, ever, his provisions were running a
Speaker 1: little low and from the bag he procured a sleeve
Speaker 1: of saltine crackers, a can of spam, an onion, and
Speaker 1: a bottle of hot sauce. Now I had never had spam.
Speaker 1: I was a fan of veiny sausages, and I looked
Speaker 1: at him with a look that said.
Speaker 2: Papa, what is this about?
Speaker 1: He looked back at me, equally dumbfounded with the options
Speaker 1: we had, and shrugged his shoulders with a mischievous wealth,
Speaker 1: we might as well and smile with a fancy flourish.
Speaker 1: He opened that can of spam and began to prepare
Speaker 1: our olders with his pocket knife. He peeled back the
Speaker 1: onion and began cutting small pieces to lay on what he'd.
Speaker 2: Created before us.
Speaker 1: He topped that cracker off with spam, onion, and tabasco,
Speaker 1: and with a slightly worried look he had to be
Speaker 1: wanting to try. He got one and we toasted the
Speaker 1: two together and then set them down the hatch. Then
Speaker 1: the strangest thing happened, to our surprise and delight, it
Speaker 1: was good. It was like a Michelin star restaurant in
Speaker 1: our very own hunting stand. We started laughing out loud together,
Speaker 1: not caring a liqu about the hunt, and eventually ate
Speaker 1: the whole can of spam.
Speaker 2: One cracker at a time.
Speaker 1: We laughed the whole way home, and for weeks laughed
Speaker 1: recounting that story to others. Over the years, we laughed
Speaker 1: about that day, saying, man, we must have been starving
Speaker 1: or something. As I grew up, Papa's health got worse,
Speaker 1: and although we still spend lots of time together, we
Speaker 1: weren't able to hunt anymore. Now I'm an adult, living
Speaker 1: worlds away in New York City, pursuing my dreams, and
Speaker 1: I think back on those days. Often I were spent
Speaker 1: with my grandfather in the woods, eating food, swapping stories,
Speaker 1: and sometimes hunting a deer. There, my grandfather taught me
Speaker 1: about life. I asked him things I was too afraid
Speaker 1: to ask my mom, and I learned how a man
Speaker 1: should view the world. But most importantly, I had someone
Speaker 1: to listen to me, someone who told me he was
Speaker 1: proud of me and let me know how much he
Speaker 1: enjoyed spending time with me and how much he loved me.
Speaker 1: My grandfather has to mention now, and it can be
Speaker 1: difficult to have conversations because he will always ask me
Speaker 1: things like where do you live? Repeatedly? But one thing
Speaker 1: he always remembers with ease is our hunting trips. If
Speaker 1: I bring up the spam to him, a big smile
Speaker 1: lights across his face and he says, boy.
Speaker 2: We sure were hungryuldn't we?
Speaker 1: And according to Avery Settler check of New York City,
Speaker 1: that's just how that happened.
Speaker 2: Avery.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you sending in that story. I liked it
Speaker 1: from the first time I read it, and I've been
Speaker 1: saving it for just the right time. That's a story
Speaker 1: that fills my heart thinking about y'all filling your bellies
Speaker 1: with a spam and onion cracker. Thanks buddy. We were
Speaker 1: having breakfast at Joe's Diner and sheared in Arkansas, just
Speaker 1: me and my brother Tim. It's a spot that's about
Speaker 1: halfway between where each of us live and the spot
Speaker 1: closest to that point where a man can get a
Speaker 1: platter of eggs, sausage, biscuits, gravy, and a bowl of
Speaker 1: grits that'll fill your crawl well enough so that your
Speaker 1: next meal will be called supper. The waitress calls us honey,
Speaker 1: laughs at our dumb jokes, and keeps the coffee smoking
Speaker 1: hot while we entertain ourselves with whatever the meeting has
Speaker 1: been called for normally just an excuse to share a
Speaker 1: mail together and laugh. We were having an in depth
Speaker 1: discussion on timeless topics that are important to us and
Speaker 1: should be important to everyone that cares about the quality
Speaker 1: of their lives and the pursuit of happiness in America,
Speaker 1: and that topic was grits. Historians agree that folks have
Speaker 1: been grinding corn as long as eighty seven hundred years
Speaker 1: before the reason we have Christmas. The evidence comes from
Speaker 1: Central America and Native American tribes in the southeastern portion
Speaker 1: of this nation that were grinding corn down to a
Speaker 1: coarse powder that we now call cornmeal. Contrary to the
Speaker 1: beliefs of a few folks from New Jersey who were
Speaker 1: blatantly lied to by an Arkansas duck guide over thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, there's no such thing as grit fields or
Speaker 1: grit bushes.
Speaker 2: If that reference is to.
Speaker 1: O'bsecure for you slipped back to episode one seventy three
Speaker 1: of This Country Life entitled Grits, Rhinos, Monkeys and Ducks.
Speaker 2: That shit is clear, that right up.
Speaker 1: But grits have been a staple in our diets forever.
Speaker 1: I don't remember a time when they weren't available at
Speaker 1: home or just about every place. We just worthy of
Speaker 1: sitting down to have a meal that served breakfast. The
Speaker 1: waitress brought out our food a company by two bowls
Speaker 1: of grits that were still bubbling hot from the stove,
Speaker 1: and we looked at one another and Simon tanously said,
Speaker 1: they'll thick it up in a minute.
Speaker 2: To eat their own.
Speaker 1: But it's customary and our family to eat grits with
Speaker 1: a fork and running grits they just won't fill the bill.
Speaker 1: So while we waited on the grits to thicken, we
Speaker 1: dove into our breakfast. In our conversation, I need to
Speaker 1: bring you some of the grits I've been making. Hold
Speaker 1: on there, Timmy, you've been making your own grits. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: butter too. And for the next hour we talked about
Speaker 1: all this stuff he was doing at home that was
Speaker 1: better than going to the store. And it opened up
Speaker 1: a whole new list of questions I had for how
Speaker 1: he was doing it now obviously to everyone now, even
Speaker 1: the duck hunters. New Jersey grits are made from ground corn,
Speaker 1: but not just any corn. There are six major types
Speaker 1: of corn grown in the US. Dent corn is primarily
Speaker 1: used for livestock, feed, fuel, and corn starch. Podcorn is
Speaker 1: a wild variety and the corn that modern day corn
Speaker 1: was derived from. Sweet corn is what we mostly eat
Speaker 1: when it's prepared on the cob, and flour corn for
Speaker 1: making corn flour, pop corns for popping, and flint corn,
Speaker 1: which is what works best for making grits, homney, and
Speaker 1: corn meal. But before the corn police issue warrant from
Speaker 1: my wrist, what I just stated is that the exact
Speaker 1: law of the land, there are just the major types
Speaker 1: of corn, and there are varieties within those types that
Speaker 1: cross over for each type of use. Tim's favorite corn
Speaker 1: to us to make his corn meal and grits is
Speaker 1: a variety called butcher red, which is a dent corn
Speaker 1: that has a beautiful, deep red color. Some even refer
Speaker 1: to it as bloody butcher red, regardless of what you
Speaker 1: call it. He showed me a picture after picture of
Speaker 1: the process he uses and the gristville.
Speaker 2: He does it with.
Speaker 1: It's an electric stone grinder he bought off the anterwebs,
Speaker 1: and when he first told me he bought it online,
Speaker 1: I thought that kind of took some of the nostalgia
Speaker 1: out of it. But I quickly realized that the Google
Speaker 1: search of today is no different really than posting up
Speaker 1: in the country store and asking the propriety for something
Speaker 1: they didn't have, but they could order it for you.
Speaker 1: Tim's raising his own corn too, from seed to cob.
Speaker 1: It keeps him busy, and what could be more rewarding
Speaker 1: than growing your own corn bread? I dare say nothing,
Speaker 1: but as good as those grits were that had finally
Speaker 1: cooled to the point of a few degrees south of
Speaker 1: molten lava, Tim said, the grits he made it home
Speaker 1: were ten times better, and it turns out they're better
Speaker 1: for you. Consuming fresh stone ground corn in any form
Speaker 1: preserves the vitamins and minerals and the nutrients that are
Speaker 1: lost over time to degradation. Here's the process that Tim
Speaker 1: uses now. Once he picks the corn, he drives it
Speaker 1: out for about a month. There are several ways to
Speaker 1: do that, from just hanging the corn in the shuck
Speaker 1: out in the sun, to removing the shucks and drying
Speaker 1: the cobs in a controlled environment, which is what he does.
Speaker 1: He said he can keep the bugs out of it
Speaker 1: and allow for proper drying without the chance of it
Speaker 1: getting mulled. By using his designated corn drying room. Corn
Speaker 1: drying room. You built a corn drying room, now, dummy,
Speaker 1: I keep it in the guests bedroom with the ceiling
Speaker 1: fans set on Hurricane I put all the cobs in
Speaker 1: the laundry basket and stir them around every few days
Speaker 1: so I know that they're all getting there.
Speaker 2: Ah okay, I got you.
Speaker 1: Now, after about four weeks of pamper in the guest's bedroom,
Speaker 1: he'll take the corn that's sufficiently dried and run it
Speaker 1: through a corn sheller. Now his is an old, antiquated
Speaker 1: handpired apparatus that he has mounted on a wooden box
Speaker 1: to catch the colonels once the sheller removed it. It's
Speaker 1: pretty sporty to watch for anyone that's ever wondered how
Speaker 1: that process works, and you can see it demonstrated about
Speaker 1: a million times on the University of YouTube just by
Speaker 1: searching it up. The cob is fed down through the
Speaker 1: top and a gear that was exposed teeth knocks the
Speaker 1: kernels off and fall into the bottom of the box,
Speaker 1: while the cob is eventually turned and run out the
Speaker 1: back to fall on the outside. Mister Lester E. Denison,
Speaker 1: the Connecticut got the first patent on a corn sheller
Speaker 1: in August of eighteen thirty nine. The one Tim has
Speaker 1: is a David Bradley brand. It's made out of cast
Speaker 1: iron and was manufactured from around nineteen hundred to nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine. Series and Roebuck bought the company in nineteen
Speaker 1: ten and eventually started churning out garden tractors instead of
Speaker 1: corn shellers. You can find them on the internet, yard
Speaker 1: cells and flea markets in perfect working order. Should you
Speaker 1: decide to grow, dry and grind your own corn, now,
Speaker 1: if garden is your limiting factor, you can buy corn
Speaker 1: that's ready to grind that someone else has already drived
Speaker 1: and removed from the cob by the sack full. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're wondering what the yield is, Tim said that
Speaker 1: he averaged about four cobs to the pound of shelled corn.
Speaker 1: His gristmeal is electric and has two options for making
Speaker 1: the cornmeal. The wheels that grind the corn are called burrs,
Speaker 1: and he has stone burrs and steel birds. Stone birds
Speaker 1: are said to be slower because they aren't uniformly smooth
Speaker 1: like poly steel is, and most commercially ground corn is
Speaker 1: done with steel birds because it's faster, more efficient, and
Speaker 1: can produce a finer grind. Traditionally, stone ground corn retains
Speaker 1: the nutrients of flavor, and the steel burs may literally
Speaker 1: squeeze it plumb out of it. And after adjusting the
Speaker 1: space between the birds and multiple trips between them, Tim
Speaker 1: finally got his setting that he prefers. But the ground
Speaker 1: corn is still not one hundred percent uniform, and what
Speaker 1: he did next was pretty cool. Took an old tea
Speaker 1: strainer and poured the ground corn in it and shook
Speaker 1: it back and forth, sifting the smaller grind into another
Speaker 1: container while keeping the larger ones in the strainer. The
Speaker 1: small ones he uses for his corn meal and the
Speaker 1: larger one he uses for grits. Tim said that when
Speaker 1: he makes corn bread from that corn meal and takes
Speaker 1: it out of the oven, it has a blue or
Speaker 1: a purplish tint. I looked that up when I got home.
Speaker 1: It's not that I don't trust my brother, It's just that,
Speaker 1: like President Reagan said, good policy to have is to
Speaker 1: trust but verify. It turns out he wasn't kidding. Turning
Speaker 1: purpleness from the presidence of what's called anthos, which changed
Speaker 1: color with heat. Now what's an antho cyan? And I'm
Speaker 1: glad you asked. It's just the pigment that causes colors
Speaker 1: to be colors, and in this case it's what makes
Speaker 1: butcher red corn. Red grits are just bowled corn until
Speaker 1: you add salt, black, pepper, and butter. I could do
Speaker 1: without pepper if I had to, I wouldn't like it,
Speaker 1: and the more peppers are better for me. But the
Speaker 1: other two, man, they are mandatory. Not letting Tim's comment
Speaker 1: of my making my own butter, slip asked him what
Speaker 1: critter he was milking to churn since he didn't have
Speaker 1: a cow. He ignored that question and showed me a picture.
Speaker 1: It was a nineteen fifties Jim Dandy electric churn that
Speaker 1: he bought at an online auction. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'd ever seen one. I've seen regular churns, and I
Speaker 1: even participated in the churning with my maternal great grandmother,
Speaker 1: Lizzie Watanita Beard Play, so we called Mama Player. She
Speaker 1: was born in eighteen ninety three and might have stretched
Speaker 1: to five feet tall, but it would have been a
Speaker 1: pretty good stretch to get her there. I can remember
Speaker 1: thinking I was grown standing beside her, and she died
Speaker 1: when I was seven. She never broke one hundred pounds
Speaker 1: her whole life. I don't remember her ever wearing anything
Speaker 1: except cotton dresses and apron and those little faded blue
Speaker 1: cats shoes, unless, of course, it was Sunday and it
Speaker 1: was a fancier dress and leather shoes.
Speaker 2: But she had a porcelain.
Speaker 1: Stone ware churn that set on the back porch. The
Speaker 1: handle and dasher was worn thinner around the middle by
Speaker 1: the countless trips up and down, by years and years
Speaker 1: of churning. It was an arduous process, the one that
Speaker 1: was both necessary and part of farm life. By the
Speaker 1: time I hit the ground in nineteen sixty six, my
Speaker 1: mama player had an electric churn, but she kept the
Speaker 1: old one around and let me take a turn at it.
Speaker 2: When I was just a pup.
Speaker 1: We would feed the chickens from the feed. She towed
Speaker 1: it in her apron, holding the bottom edge up to
Speaker 1: the form of pocket.
Speaker 2: Then we gathered eggs and headed back to the house.
Speaker 1: She'd already milked the cow by the time I made mustard,
Speaker 1: and it had been set long enough for the cream
Speaker 1: to rise to the top. That's where that sin comes from,
Speaker 1: if you didn't already know. The cream is then skimmed
Speaker 1: off the top and poured in a churn, and then
Speaker 1: a dash or handle is brought up and down into
Speaker 1: that cream, agitating the cream until a portion of it
Speaker 1: solidifies and turns into butter. And the liquid that's left, well,
Speaker 1: that's butter milk. I catch a lot of greef from
Speaker 1: my Yankee friends at me Eater when I referred the
Speaker 1: whole milk as sweet milk. But if you've ever tasted buttermilk,
Speaker 1: you'll know where that comes from. I didn't make it up.
Speaker 1: It's a label for whole milk that I've heard all
Speaker 1: my life. My daddy hated it, but he would buttermilk
Speaker 1: right out of the ice box.
Speaker 2: Pretty sure.
Speaker 1: I told you all about that in episode one twenty
Speaker 1: nine Hauling. Hey, it's a good one you should listen
Speaker 1: to if you haven't. But I've seen him come in
Speaker 1: from the barn that we just filled with square bells
Speaker 1: and the blistering heat and chug buttermilk straight from the
Speaker 1: jug while I was gulping water from the kitchen sink
Speaker 1: as fast as it would run out of the spigot.
Speaker 1: Look it gives me the ev GeV is just thinking
Speaker 1: about it. But if you didn't know how all of
Speaker 1: that went down and where buttermilk and butter comes from,
Speaker 1: consider yourself educated. Tim said he wasn't using the churn
Speaker 1: he was using a big upright kitchen aid mixer. But
Speaker 1: he's also minus of cow, so he buys whole heavy
Speaker 1: whipping cream from the store raw if he can find it.
Speaker 1: Starting out with two cups of cream, and you'll wind
Speaker 1: up with about three sticks of butter and a cup
Speaker 1: of fresh buttermilk. The process is fairly simple by letting
Speaker 1: the large wists do all the churning for you, allowing
Speaker 1: you to concentrate on other things. But don't stray too far.
Speaker 1: You can literally have all that done in less time
Speaker 1: than it took.
Speaker 2: Me to tell you about it.
Speaker 1: I watched the lady on YouTube knock it out in
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes. Just search for making homemade butter and
Speaker 1: you'll get all kinds of recipes and instructional videos. Now,
Speaker 1: to me, the neat thing about making your own grits
Speaker 1: and making your own butter isn't limited to just the
Speaker 1: production of healthier foods and the satisfaction of providing something
Speaker 1: better for your family. It's the education that I got
Speaker 1: from doing just a minimal amount of research into something
Speaker 1: that's now obscure, that was once commonplace in almost every home.
Speaker 1: These things are simple, but they're important to pass on
Speaker 1: to the folks who are going to be picking out
Speaker 1: our nursing homes one day. Now you add a child
Speaker 1: or a grandchild into the mix when you're doing these projects,
Speaker 1: and who knows, y'all just might find your own spam
Speaker 1: and onion salmon. As always, thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: us here on the Beggars Channel, and I have an
Speaker 1: update about this country life merchandise from our gal on
Speaker 1: the Prowl Reeve Hansen. Folks, we're not months away. As
Speaker 1: I reported in Era last week. We're supposed to have
Speaker 1: the first ones this very month. I'll be sure and
Speaker 1: keep you posting and who to blame if it don't happen.
Speaker 1: But until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off.
Speaker 1: Y'all be careful