They didn’t have vitamin enriched flavored waters or creamy mocha lattes. So what did the old timers drink?
Pot Likker – The liquid left behind from boiling collard greens and other fresh garden greens such as turnip and mustard. Seasoned with salt and pepper and fortified with bacon fat or salt pork, the juice serves as a medicinal spring tonic. It’s chock full of healthy vitamins. Pot likker is delicious served over a piping hot wedge of homemade cornbread. During funeral feasts and family reunion preparations, I remember my mother and her sisters discussing who would get the first taste of pot likker.
Buttermilk – A cultured, fermented drink made when milk clabbers, curdles, or sours. Today it’s more commonly used in buttermilk pancakes, spoonbread, and old fashioned cakes. Store bought buttermilk is a sorry replica of the rich tart drink our grandparents and their forebears knew. You can make your own buttermilk by adding whole milk to clabber. Food Renegade posted a great tutorial.
Sassafras Tea – Old timers enjoyed keeping sassafras tea on hand as a spring tonic and blood purifier. The tea was concocted from the root of the sassafras tree, a native North American plant. The root contained licorice flavored safrole oil. In 1960 the USDA outlawed the commercial use of safrole oil as a food additive due to its dangerous qualities. This killed off the popularity of sassafras tea, as well as traditional root beer made from authentic sassafras root. Today’s root beer contains natural extracts with the safrole oil eliminated, sweeteners, and / or artificial flavors.
Prairie Oyster – I remember seeing an old codger of the town where we lived make one of these and down it in a single gulp. At the time I thought, “Yuck, how horrible.” That’s still my reaction, but because of the vivid memory I have of the drink, I wanted to share it with you. Start with a glass. Add a raw egg, and be careful not to break the yolk. Add several dashes of Worcestershire sauce, quite a few dashes of hot sauce, a dash of vinegar, some salt and black pepper. Drink it down in one swallow. Supposedly your hangover will quickly evaporate.
Watermelon Wine – As kids we spent many frolicking hours dodging watermelon seeds spit at us by our old granddaddy, as he lounged on an overturned orange crate. In these pre paint ball and laser ball tournaments, he had as much fun as the kids did. The main trick to making good watermelon wine is to start with a rich, ripe, succulent melon.
I hope you’ve enjoyed a glance back at some of the drinks familiar to the old timers. Have you ever tried any of these?
Cheers & Happy Reading!
Flossie Benton Rogers, Conjuring the Magic with Paranormal Fantasy Romance
Interesting info. It’s something absolutely unknown to me. The only thing on the list is watermelon. I love them during hot summer days. A slice of cold watermelon is doing wonders. However never heard of wine made of it.
Around here people use grapes for wine and plums for a strong drink –tzuica–( a kind of strong brandy). Anyway, pot likker sounds full of vitamins indeed. But do people still make it?
Carmen, people don’t cook collards and other fresh garden greens as much as they used to, but they do sometimes and the greens sure are good. The pot likker is the seasoned liquid from the greens. People used to ladle it in a cup and drink it. We tend to imbibe it along with our bowl of greens today, rather than drinking it in a separate cup. Do you have fresh garden greens over there that you cook?
Absolutely: spinach, cabbage, lettuce, green beans,green peppers that we use to stuff with minced meat, cauliflower. We don’t have collards. I gogled it and the leaves look familiar but I’m not sure.
Spinach was my husband’s favorite. I like it better raw in a smoothie. I know from your comments and descriptions of food that you have some good recipes.
Great post! I have heard of a few of these ( yuck on the prairie oyster!) I still like a good cold glass of buttermilk. mom use to crumble leftover cornbread in hers.
Crumbling leftover cornbread in buttermilk sounds familiar. I’ve probably seen my mom or grama do that too. Thanks for stopping by, Cathy.
I haven’t had any of these, but I wouldn’t mind trying the watermelon wine or the pot likker. I love collard greens but they don’t show up too much in my area.
Recently we visited a nearby winery where the wine was made from blueberries. It gave me a great setting for a book! You know how that goes. Everywhere becomes a setting lol. Yep, pot likker really is tasty.
I grew up eating “Kush.’ I don’t know why my grandmother called it by that name. It’s crumbled cornbread in a glass of cold buttermilk. Prairie Oysters is something I’ve tried only it wouldn’t stay down.I’ve never had watermelon wine, but it sure sounds refreshing.
I wish we knew why she called it kush, sounds like the reason would be interesting. I vaguely remember someone back a ways crumbling their cornbread in buttermilk. COLD buttermilk seemed to be key to the deliciousness. Tasty lunch.
Fun post! I’ve never heard of pot likker. Maybe because my mom hated greens & she passed that down to me lol
Now the sassafras tea!! YUM! That’s why I go see my dad once a year, so he can dig me up a good fat sassafras root (FDA be damned lol Four or five cups a year, compared to the hundreds of cups that my ancestors drank is nothing)
Loved the post!
Oh Trisha, good for you. I wish I knew someone who made it. I’d sure like to try it. I read about the trials, and they sound so extreme. No human could ever ingest as much as they put in those lab rats.