One story of a Chef, living off the land

I call it my old youth. When I tell these stories to people who have grown up in the city or more suburban areas they always say that these are the stories that their grandmothers use to tell them. That it doesn't seem like the youth of someone who is in her 30's, but where I grew up, time runs a little slower and people move a little differently than the way they do in Dallas. The only things to rush to are church and school.

Hunting and gathering for me as a child seemed natural. I had no concept that every child in the world was not doing the same and even though all of my friends and their families may not do it the same as my family, they certainly understood it and had their own family traditions of living better off the land around them.

Living in Florida, even as rural as where I grew up, you are only ever two hours away from a coastline. We went deep sea fishing, snorkeling for scallops in Steinhatchee, flounder in Suwanee and redfish in Horseshoe . The sight of sting rays and hammer heads flipping around in the bottom of my dad's boat is still a fresh memory. Fried squares of shark tail, snapping turtle and stingray were my chicken nuggets. I don't think I even ate at a fast food place or had even seen one until my cousin had a birthday party at Burger King in the next County over. Paper crowns and everything.

Gathering sassafras with my grandmother for gumbo seasoning, marking the Florida Bays in blossom in the summer so that we could find them all year round, squirrel hunting, digging for fresh water mussels; all of this seemed natural.

Once when visiting my friend at her family's deer camp (hunting camp ) we were riding in the back of an old pick-up truck when her father suddenly slammed on the brakes. He grabbed a shovel and an axe out of the truck bed and marched about twenty yards into the woods. He started to cut down what looked to me like an overgrown Palmetto bush and dug up the root. He said "this is good eatin" as he threw it in the back with us.
Later I watched carefully as he cleaned the layers and chopped them up with bacon and onion and boiled it. He called it swamp cabbage and so my love was born for hearts of palm.

That same family introduced many wonderful foods to me over the years including blue crab fingers and homemade wine. They grew the best cantaloupe I've ever tasted and showed me how to harvest and spin honey. After 30 some odd years the oldest daughter and I are still the best of friends and we enjoy many culinary traditions each time we are together. It is how we celebrate, how we mourn and how we mark the passage of the years. Our traditions allow food to transport us to memories long forgotten, until by some magic, a whiff of the once familiar can take us back in time.

Chef

P.S. The above image is the Telford Hotel in White Springs Florida, my hometown.