Lumbee Family Continues Food Preservation Tradition

we call our corner today before two days before and have it in the cooler and it is a tradition and sometimes you can't do it without having a group together or you don't want to do it without having some family members around or some extended family I got my husband's sister and brought them well two of the brothers in fact there were four of them here helping and if they need something done like this we'll go help them so it's a helping each other and if we had to have gathered it this morning we would have been in the field and poured it into baskets and brought it here to the shelter and oh we then would start cooking it getting the I shook off and the silks and making sure the ends were cut real good and clean and we put it in all the buckets of a tubs of water cold water to keep it so that the insects won't get into it and as soon as we got maybe all a half bushel cleaned we put it in the hot water which would already be pediatr well pretty well calls it blanching it it's already done but it's just done to put in freezer some people puts it and that without blinking but we pray the world blanch all hours and that would take maybe 20 to 25 30 minutes to complete that process and after we removed it from the hot water we will put it in a tub of cold water and we continue to transfer it three times in cold war to get it cold enough to cut off the cob and by that time it's cold enough to handle it and to cut it off the cob without any problem of you know holding it in our hands and then making sure it would be prepared cold enough to uh put new your bad bags for freeze it before I got married of my mother this one so all something that I was used to doing all and so we're still do a 50 years 50 60 years really above it when I moves up here it wasn't any different we didn't go to the grocery store and buy corn we with the field and gathered corn and put it in all freezer bags and into the freezer 90 field corn is uh gonna get harder quicker it's a yellow corn it's young it's all yellow and just wheat corn was too sweet corn it's white but they're going to bring it now where's your land white mix like the pictures and creams you got white and yellow in the same color same call it's a harder corner it don't get it says a big recurrent but it's a little more of course when you're eating didn't you sweet corn I can cook the top off slid it a couple of times then dumped the whole piece into a pot and let it go to cooking slowly and after it's completely thought up its seasoned it's a little bit of make grease and if it's not thinking of put a little bit of cornstarch anytime Oh liquefy later and bit like I said seasoning pepper the salt and eliminate grease and it tastes just like it was I don't feel it's it's good oh and I did it because I want to make sure that I don't tell maybe you it's a fresh corn which I've got some old corn in the freezer already from last year and so I think the purpose of date that is to make sure I use two old corn before I start on my fresh corn and I stake it in this manner because it tends to I would be removed from the freezer easily this is for my daughter she wanted some on the in the court bag because she has a six to six members in her family and I think she may have by 15 16 quarts um for this year in the wintertime especially I make Oh soup every other week and if I'm expecting family I'll put two bags of that corn in the apart and cook it by itself but just soup and soup and then cooking corn and peas and butter beans those two things and sometimes I'll have them okra to put on my pot of beans but with my core and it's just soup and some days we'll just cook corn by itself and biscuits no meat or nothing just those two things if it's like within 30 minutes I can have that those two things done we did 70 bags are all together of quarts and pints of corn 70 bags in all well there'll be four families eaten out of those of course we have a little bit left from last year but seven and we'll eat that all pretty much all of it this year Oh with everyone sometimes like I said my soul my dog to dog versa and our family here so that's four so we make use of everything to sit there it's hard work but um sometimes you know you have to do the hard work in order to have something for the winter before I got married to mr. Clark over here my love oh oh we claimed the corn and then cooked it and cut it off the cob and cooked it up cut it off the cob raw nut and then she brought it in the house and cooked it in a big pan and we would put it in the refrigerator and coonley to sometime in the afternoon around eight or eight hours after it had completely cooled down we bagged it and put it in the freezer that is the difference important we did then and what and of those name yeah before we got anything to call sweet corn we're getting our field corn that we grew up with hogs and everything else not illegal that's what we got off what we call sweet moon they cook it blanch it just like do everything else but they have to put sugar in it when they got ready to eat it and sweeten it down so they did but they take it and put it in jars and put it in the wash pot and boil it to the till it all seals and that seal was on that jar they noticed eagle would it pops his seal then they take it out then we switched over from that and went to a pressure cooker that's what we're new didn't think about the cooling it all off and all that other stuff you know 25 minutes it's easier now than it was years ago it's a easier you've got on tables that you didn't have years ago in chairs you've got all these the bulk the burner over here that you can use a bigger pants I mean and all the family will be willing to come in here for and years ago it was just individual families doing their own work and but now and then we've got to like those grandchildren who that you saw here earlier they I called them after all I didn't told them that I was going to be oh you know someone coming over the hill and they canceled their jobs got off work in order to just come over and help them be here with us

Channel: Lumbee Tribe

Views: 4,536

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: zwlWqzDyUTw

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020