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GRANDMOTHER CARLISLE

My Grandparents on my Mom’s side lived in rural Western Pennsylvania. And when I say rural, I mean rural. Their nearest neighbor was about 3 miles away down a dirt road. They did not have electricity, telephone service, indoor plumbing or a central heating and cooling system. They had a coal burning stove. They used kerosene lamps for light. They had an old oven which used propane.

I spent a lot of time there in the summers with my sisters and cousins. We had a great time and never really missed television or minded no indoor plumbing. We had a fun just entertaining each other. Grandfather would play the banjo or guitar and sing in the evenings, and listen to KDKA radio on a transistor radio. I have fond memories of those times even today fifty years later.

My Grandmother cooked some real family feasts on that old stove. I have fond memories of this even now. I have three distinctive memories that make my mouth water even today. One is of my Grandmother’s blackberry cobbler. In those days, you made your own crusts and it was generally made with lard or Crisco. Grandmother preferred Crisco.

We would go out in the mornings with our Grandfather into the woods and briars and pick blackberries. They grew wild all over the place. We would go out with our buckets and would fill them, and ourselves, with these blackberries. When we got back to the house, we knew what to expect. Grandma would take those berries and create some of the most wonderful blackberry cobblers you could imagine. My mouth still waters just thinking about them. My Grandparents didn’t have refrigeration and kept things cold with an ice chest. They would go into town, not a small feat, and get ice for the chest. When Grandma was baking blackberry cobbler, we would go into town and pick up some ice cream to put on the cobblers. There was nothing better than warm blackberry cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream.

  

The other two things my Grandmother would make, that I just loved, were bread and fried chicken. My Grandmother was always baking bread. Big loaves of white bread. The aroma was to die for. My Father loved the bread, especially the heal. He would eat it with butter or my Grandmother’s preserves. I to this day can’t pass a bakery where bread is being baked, without thinking back to Grandma.

Our family reunion on my Mother’s side occurred annually. It would alternate every year between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Much of the family had relocated to Northeaster Ohio. There was enough family in Ohio that it only made sense to alternate the location. Anyway, I digress. I bring this up because Grandma would always make fried chicken for the reunion. I always looked forward to the reunion because the food was top notch. My Mom’s family was all very good cooks. Whether it was the fried chicken, meat loaf, potato salad, etc., it was a food lovers dream come true.

I’m sure many of my Grandmother’s recipes were handed down to her by her Mother. Unfortunately we will never know. She never wrote anything down. In fact, many great family recipes were never written down. No one ever thought to write them down. I wish now I could have. As we age and hopefully grow wiser, we look back on opportunities that were missed and wish we could have a do over. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. I don’t expect future generations to be any wiser than we were. That is why it is important for us to make a record of these things now for future generations. They may not realize it immediately, but someday they will look back and thank us for doing this.   

The point of this is the stories themselves. These are stories that my children do not know and likely would not understand. These are valued memories that ought to be saved for future generations. It is the stories, and many of them revolve around family recipes and traditions that need to be saved.

As mentioned above, often the recipes of our ancestors, until recently, weren’t written down. They were saved in the minds of our ancestors and passed by word of mouth. As modern life, fast food, and other more urban and suburban activities of life increased, the interest in learning those recipes diminished. Hence, many of the old recipes have become lost forever. On the positive side though, after the turn of the 20^th century, cookbooks became more popular, magazines of the time started carrying recipes, and more Americans were literate and some recipes were written down. Still, many were not and were lost to time. 

  

My Grandmother Carlisle’s blackberry cobbler is an example of a great recipe that was not passed on to my Mother and never written down. There are numerous cobbler recipes and by just Googling “Blackberry Cobbler” recipe you can pull up thousands. Many may be just as good as my Grandmother’s, but they weren’t hers. Below is what I believe is a recipe for Blackberry Cobbler that is very close to what my Grandmother made. Just bear in mind, without a written recipe, these quantities are only estimates and not exact measurements.

Grandma Carlisle’s Blackberry Cobbler

6 Cups Fresh Blackberries (Could never have to many blackberries especially since they grew all around her)

2¼ Cup of Flour

½ Cup of Sugar

1 Cup of Crisco

¼ Tsp Salt

1 Tablespoon Baking Powder

4 Tablespoons Butter

¼ Cup of Water

Preheat the oven to 350. As I mentioned above, my Grandparents had a stove/oven that operated on propane so it was possible to control the temperature of the oven to some degree.

Mix the berries and sugar together in a bowl until berries are coated. Place in a cast iron skillet coated with a little of the Crisco and dot the mixture with the 2 tablespoons of butter. Set aside for now and allow to sit.

In a mixing bowl add the flour, baking powder, salt, water, remaining butter and Crisco. Mix together until fully blended. The mixture will be somewhat stiff and dry. If to dry, add additional water. Once the crust mixture is blended, dot the top of the berries mixture with the crust mixture. It should look something like a cobblestone road, hence its name.

Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes until the top is a golden brown. The top should be golden brown but not dry.

Additional information: The above is the best I can do in trying to remember the recipe. I know some recipes call for an egg and milk to be added to the crust mixture as a final step. My grandparents raised chickens and had fresh eggs and also had a dairy cow which provided fresh milk. Grandma certainly could have added this last step or even mixed milk and egg into the recipe initially when mixing the crust. I just don’t remember that. Either way, this is a very good and tasty recipe and is a reasonable facsimile of what my Grandmother would have made.  

Among some of the documents of my Grandparents was a recipe hand written by my Grandfather. I don’t remember him ever cooking so I assume he wrote it down for some other reason. It is a recipe for applesauce cake. I don’t recall ever having it but here it is. My Grandfather Carlisle had excellent handwriting, a tradition not passed on to me. I hope you enjoy the recipe.