Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
Reading "Rednecks" by Taylor Brown
===
Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green and I'm here with my co host Michael Cunningham and our guest host John David Hurley.
Michael: Hello!
Carrie: So, John David is, filling in for Jacqueline today, and he is a big fan of, well, of history and specifically Appalachian history.
We're glad to have you here with us.
John David: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. I think I was here a couple years ago when you all did Appalachia Reads. So it's great to be back and great to discuss this, forgotten, but slowly coming back part of our history.
Carrie: Yes, and you may see John David at the Customer Service Desk where he's a Customer Access Associate.
So today's episode is going to be a little different [00:01:00] from our usual episodes because instead of, although I think we are going to talk a little bit about other books but instead of each sharing different books, we're going to be discussing Rednecks by Taylor Brown, and this is kind of like a mini book, book club discussion of the book.
So, if you are participating in the Winter- Spring Books and Bites Bingo, and you have read the book, by listening to this podcast or coming to our in person book club discussion, which will be on Tuesday, March 18th, you can choose another free square.
Michael: Ooh, yeah, yeah.
Carrie: And, this is just a little warning, if you haven't read the book yet, you may want to hold off on listening until you have, because we can make no promises about spoilers.
If we really want to get in and discuss the [00:02:00] book, we're, there may be some spoilers. All right, so let's go ahead and get started. And some of these questions that we're going to discuss came from the discussion guide that the publisher put out. We also asked for questions on Facebook, and so we do have one of those to discuss.
But I think one of the first questions was a good question, and that was, how much did you know about the West Virginia Mine Wars or the Battle of Blair Mountain before you read this book?
Michael: I knew a little bit of it and that's only because I didn't know anything until I moved to Kentucky. But I knew, I had some friends that were into history.
I learned some stuff prior to my coming to work here at the library. So I knew a little bit of it. But like, outside of [00:03:00] Kentucky, nothing.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: Nothing.
John David: I'm kind of in the same boat as Michael is, except I've lived in Kentucky my entire life. When I first started working here, Michael was talking to me about the Mine Wars, and I was like, what do you mean by Mine Wars?
And so he recommended me some books and some documentaries. So I've always knew about like certain parts of the war. Like I knew who Sid Hatfield was, I knew about like the, I knew some of the, the key parts of it, but like, I was still kind of pretty oblivious to like the whole thing, so. This is kind of the first time I was able to integrate myself into that history, and the fictional narratives, because this book is historical narrative, is historical fiction, but also has a lot of, like, really good nuggets of history in there about the people who were in the battle.
So yeah, I think I started to learn when I started working here and when Michael started sending me down the, the tunnel of like mine wars and the history of those, here in Kentucky and in West Virginia. So, yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. I mean, similarly, my, as I've mentioned [00:04:00] on the podcast before, my dad and his family are from that area of Southern West Virginia.
My dad was born in McDowell County. And my grandfather worked in coal mines, grew up in a coal camp in McDowell County. And it wasn't until I think I read What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte, that was really the first time that I knew about the Mine Wars. So even having family who was from there, you know, even, even then I didn't really know about it.
John David: It was under the radar, even, even for, cause I'm from Southeastern Kentucky. So I'm from Rockcastle County and you hear these stories from people who were there. You hear these stories from people whose family was there. So it kind of becomes like an oral tradition, but even now, like, I think when.
Like I said, when I started working here and me and Michael started talking about Appalachia because he's from Appalachia also
Michael: very Southern part of it.
John David: Yeah. I was like [00:05:00] Mine Wars, huh? I didn't, I didn't know that those existed. Like, I had heard stories, but at the same time, like, it was hard to click. Like, I, I heard about Bloody Harlan.
I heard about Bloody Breathitt. And so, yeah, this was kind of like the first time, along with Elizabeth Catte's books, which is a terrific primer on the history of Appalachia, written from someone who's from the area. This is kind of like the first time that I was able to kind of, like, embed myself into the story, into the narratives.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: So like, I feel like that kind of begs the question, why, why, you know, us, you being from really close to that area and you have family that grew up in that area, why do we not know about this history? Or like, I mean, the Battle of Blair Mountain was huge. Thousands of people took place and died. And the US Army dropped bombs and like, Yeah.
No one knows about it.
John David: Yeah. Yeah. Some of the research. I have a couple books here that I, I love to recommend to people. If you want to know the historical side, first one's called The Devil is Here in These Hills, which is an actual quote in the book, The Road [00:06:00] to Blair Mountain, which is about the preservation of Blair Mountain.
And Matewan before the massacre and scholars talk about this. They're like, this was, this was the first major war since the Civil War. Why do most people not know about it? People who live in the area like, yeah, Don Blankenship and other coal companies try to destroy Blair Mountain, which is still very venerated in the area, and a lot of it has to come down to the fact that, one scholar who wrote The Road to Blair Mountain, who is actually in charge of the Mine Wars Museum there, he's like, we don't have a lot of primary documents that survive that.
We have the weapons, we have the the, the pictures, but we don't have a lot of primary documents. And also, I can't remember which scholar wrote it, but he's, he's like, also, like, if you look at it, the victors always win the narrative. And he's, he's like, he's like, no one really cared about the, the miners opinions or the miners perspective of this.
Here lately, there's been a lot of work done to preserve those narratives, preserve those stories, which is terrific. But it just comes down to the fact that we don't have the primary documents it seems like, but also like, [00:07:00] whoever won the war won the narrative and they have changed the narrative.
They've changed the history and even today in West Virginia there's a lot of debate over like should we even commemorate this? How do we commemorate it? How do we both side like how do we navigate this with feelings on both sides of this war? But yeah, largely a lot of the research I came down to is there's just not a lot of primary documents that survived it. But also a lot of it just comes down to the victors always win the narrative
Carrie: Yeah, I also read, too, that the coal companies controlled the newspapers as well, so, in the area, so.
Michael: Yeah, so that news didn't really get out.
John David: Yeah, it's a lot of it's oral, oral history. A lot of it's passed down. I'm not surprised by that either. I mean, when you're rich, you can.
Carrie: Yeah, I think one of the other questions I liked was, did you have, a favorite character in the book, and if so, who was your favorite?
Or characters. [00:08:00] Michael, what about you?
Michael: I think probably my favorite character in the book has got to be Sid. Sid Hatfield. Mm hmm. This guy just walked around smiling, but he'll he'll kill you. He'll shoot you. Yeah, like, like. I guess my prior knowledge didn't really, was just a basic kind of surface level.
Like I didn't know about Sid till I pretty much read this book. Mm-hmm . I knew Mother Jones was there, was evolved. I didn't know to what extent, so yeah. Mm-hmm . Um, but yeah, I mean I, I, I kinda like Sid and he kind of is like turning point of that novel Yeah.
Carrie: Mm-hmm . And he was such a folk hero.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: For the miners who didn't feel like they had anyone advocating for them, and he was the only person really doing that.
Michael: Oh, and I, one more character, he was very minor, but I would like to have seen more of him, was, Blizzard.
Carrie: Oh, yeah.
Michael: This guy just in his suit and tie, running through the mountains, grabbing a bomb out of the creek.
Carrie: Yeah.
John David: I think for me, it is Sid Hatfield, but [00:09:00] also, there's a doctor in the book who, you really get to see the love of his family, and he's on the side of the coal miners, but he's also concerned about his son, and towards the end, he tells his son to leave and he's like, I think, I think there's a deal made between him and another coal miner that there'd be a signal that his son is safe.
But Sid Hatfield is also awesome. I mean, he's a guy who is a lawman, but also like he is related to the Hatfield family. So like that, that. anger runs through him a little bit. You see his love of the miners. You see his love of community. You also see like a true sense of justice there for him. And, you know, he is the turning point of this and still to this day like in the area like Sid Hatfield is still beloved.
I think people still visit the cemetery. They visit his grave. And I think this image of like this, the smiling sheriff who cared about the coal miners, who cared about his community. I think that still stands the test of time because no one has been able to like, say, well, anything mean about him.
He's still like [00:10:00] this folk hero. Like, I think you can buy bumper stickers of him and you can buy posters of him to hang up. So I think Sid Hatfield is definitely like one of my all time favorite characters.
Carrie: Mm hmm. I think mine, I was most drawn to the women in the novel, Mother Jones and Miss Beulah, and I really didn't know much about Mother Jones before reading this book, and she was fascinating, and, and I also, like, I appreciated that they were also two of the strongest characters in the novel, and they kind of brought, some moral, you know, some of the moral center was in them, and it also really showed that women were sacrificing for the cause to, not just, you know, in, like, their their loved ones were going off and fighting in this war and being in the mines every day, but they were working as, you know, like Miss [00:11:00] Beulah and the other women, they were doing lots of unpaid labor so that their partners could go in and work in the mines.
So it really, I think, showed the sacrifice that they were making as well.
Michael: Yeah, especially in her, you know, Mother Jones's early life in the novel, like what she went through was, how she was able to overcome that and become who she was, you know, tromping through these mountains in the, in the black dress and going toe to toe with these mine operators.
I know. Wow.
John David: Yeah. I think that's been, I think that's also the important thing about this book is that here lately we've been seeing like a refocus on women's stories in Appalachia and how they fit into this. And, you know, as someone who's from the area, I can testify that like, you don't have to be biologically related to a woman, and they can still be your mother or your grandmother.
Like, I went, one of the churches I went into, a lot of our matriarchs of the church we called granny or [00:12:00] grandma. I don't think we ever called any of them mother, but like, you definitely see that kinship, that love of like, you are not biologically my child, but I would fight tooth and nail for you because you are my child.
And so, I think that was like the important part is like, you have these women characters, they're well fleshed out. They, you see them, you see their love, you see their worry. There's several parts in the book where Mother Jones, is not only medically sick, but like, you can also tell that it's taken a mental toll on her.
And she's like, these are my kids. These are my boys. And mama has to go down there and protect them. And so. I think, I don't think I ran into a character who is pro coal miner in this book that wasn't a bad character. I think all of them were very well flushed out and all of them had this sense of community and love and you've definitely felt that from Miss Beulah.
You definitely felt that from Mother Jones. Like, these are our boys. I think they even say that these are our boys. Mm hmm. And so, yeah, the, there is a biography about Mother Jones. I don't think we have it here, but she was definitely one of the most interesting women of that [00:13:00] time period. She's someone who was from Ireland and carried that spark of community.
Michael: All right, so I got one. So how do you feel about the actions of Big Frank and other miners, as the story went on, and do you think the miners' uprising and March were justified?
John David: Yeah, I think that's a very fair question. I think for people who aren't familiar with the region's history or what was going on there, I think some people could say, well, that seems like an overreaction.
Why would you go out and, you know, kill people, try to blow up a bridge? But if you look at that that the history of the region, if you look at, you know, one of the books I read here, The Road to Matewan, talks about the political corruption, the innate violence that was already built into the system.
And one author said, it was a powder keg waiting to happen. People were already angry. People were already killing each other over politics. And in many ways, the miners' march was about the question of human dignity and about the question of like, you want us to go in and do this? We want to do it right, and we want to be [00:14:00] treated with dignity.
We're tired of being kicked out of our houses. We're tired of losing our livelihoods. Because all we want to be is treated with some sense of compassion, some sense of dignity. And so, I think in a lot of ways the march was justified. I don't want to justify violence because that's not who I am. But like, I can understand the need to go out and march.
I can understand that pent up aggression that you have. We've been ignored too long and we want to do something about it. So I think in a lot of ways, like if you have to look at the history, you have to look at the context of it and you have to figure out, like, in the long run, why, why did this happen and was there a way to prevent this?
Because there might have been a way to prevent it, you know,
Michael: I mean, if you look at the conditions , you know, they said throughout the book they wanted a fair shake.
John David: Yeah, yeah.
Michael: They wanted to be able to live and not die in these mines. There was no safety precautions. Yeah. I mean, children working in these mines and getting, getting killed.
[00:15:00] Yeah. There was no consideration for.
John David: Yeah,
Michael: you know, you know their livelihood their safety their welfare. They're living in company towns owned by the mine So like they had no recourse.
John David: Yeah,
Michael: and it kind of brought to mind this Martin Luther King jr.
John David: Yeah,
Michael: quote that said, what was it? It was like a, "A riot is the language of the unheard."
And I think they were largely unheard. I mean, everything they said fell on deaf ears. And, you know, like you said, it was a powder keg. And then, you know, when Sid Hatfield got killed, their folk hero got killed, that was it.
John David: Yeah, that was game over.
Carrie: And there were also, they were in a violent situation, like violence was being committed against them every day.
And they were beat, you know, there's that section of the book where Frank is beaten to a pulp, and that was evidently from a real incident. So, yeah, [00:16:00] I mean, if you treat people inhumanely that is the result. It's interesting that that quote is from Martin Luther King Jr. because he, of course, was such an espouser of civil disobedience and nonviolent action.
But that wasn't really in any, wasn't really part of U. S. culture at the time for really any group.
John David: Yeah. I think the reason why a lot of people, when you read this book and you kind of like, well was it really needed is because we, we, we do want things to end peacefully. We don't, we don't really like violence.
But when you look at the conditions, as Michael was saying, you live in a company town, you're disrespected all the time. You have private detectives coming in and kicking you out of your house, kicking you out of your churches, you know. Whole nine yards, like. And already you have the conditions of like political corruption, violence.
Like there [00:17:00] is a part of the history of Appalachia in the older days where, you know, there were fractions and sometimes one fraction would get mad at the other one, show up at their doorstep and be like, here's a gun. I'm going to use it. So like when you already live in those conditions. violence is already there.
And all they wanted was a fair shake. That was all that the miners wanted. And like, you know, I know people from Eastern Kentucky who used to mine, you know, even Sturgill Simpson and Tyler Childress have talked about like how like there's dignity and hard work, but there's also dignity in being a person and you cannot cannot do one without the other.
Michael: And I feel like they, they did everything they could, you know, they appealed to the governor, to the United States government, but with all that coal money, Yeah. Every, you know.
John David: All they got was bombs. Yeah. Yeah. I hate to say it, but that is all that they got after appealing, and like, even the governor didn't want to do it, the governor wanted the military to end it, and the president wanted to, the president I [00:18:00] thought, I think, saw it as a trouble, that problem that had to be quickly fixed, so.
Michael: You know, I wanted to go back to touch on a scene in the book with Big Frank, spoiler alert. There is a, there's a scene at the end where the troops, the U. S. troops are coming into Matewan to Blair Mountain and Frank and a group are going to blow up the bridge, right? And they get everything strapped on there and ready to go.
And, but then they see this, one of the vigilance community, which is like a town. Yeah. One of the town folk. Yeah. Who's been,
John David: like neighborhood watch.
Michael: Yeah. But a little more violent.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah. I mean, they were vigilantes, really.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: They called it a vigilance committee.
Yeah.
But, yeah.
Yeah.
Michael: And they see him snoozing under the tree. They could possibly, you know, put out the fuse or the fire that they had going. So the bridge wouldn't blow. And then all of a sudden, Big Frank, while they're watching, [00:19:00] has this, overcome this sense of morality. This guy who, who was pretty much beaten to death and no problems taking out the Baldwin Felts agents.
John David: Yeah.
Michael: They're killing folks up in, on Blair Mountain. He was there when they took out a sheriff and deputies, but all of a sudden this guy, they decided. I can't kill this guy. But that almost cost him his life, his friend's life, and cost him, you know,
Carrie: winning
Michael: a victory. So I felt like that was kind of out of place in the book, almost a little bit.
You know, almost had this little Hallmark moment to it. I just wanted to see what your thoughts, because it was kind of, I don't know, irritating or aggravating this.
John David: Yeah, I think that's fair. I think when you spend a big chunk of, you know, Big Frank, you know, he gets basically I think it's safe to say tortured, you know he gets beaten into a pulp [00:20:00] and there's that rage there like they beat me to a pulp. We got we got to get revenge on these guys and then you kind of decided last minute like Maybe not so it does kind of feel like a Hallmark moment or kind of like a Disney moment where it's like we can unite and we can forget about all the troubles in the land.
So yeah, that's, that was probably a look that did feel a little bit out of place there for a book about like people being violent. And then here's, here's this wonderful Hallmark Disney moment of,
Michael: I mean, I, I kind of see what he was trying to do there, you know, that trying to humanize them, Hey, you know, we're all just.
Carrie: Yeah,
Michael: people
Carrie: and perhaps, I mean, historically, I guess the bridge didn't blow up, you know, I don't know if there was an effort to blow up the bridge or not, I don't know if you have, since you've read more about it, maybe you know more about that, but so he may have been, you know, having to work with [00:21:00] some facts there, but yeah, it felt a little out of place to me as well.
John David: I can, I didn't get too far into my research with grad school and everything, but I can quickly look up to see if the bridge did get blown up, but in all the books that I have read, I did not see anything about a bridge getting blown up.
Carrie: So, someone on Facebook submitted a question for us, and she says, I have a question about Taylor Brown's historic research of miners unions, fight for their rights in West Virginia, and why it took almost 12 years for them to be able to unionize.
What are the impediments they had to overcome against the U. S. government and mining corporations to become a union force in 1933. Yeah, so these events were happening in 1920-1921, so it was over ten years before they, the union really came back in West Virginia.
Michael: Money.
John David: [00:22:00] Yeah, and if you look at the history, Matewan before the massacre, the author, he asked the question very pointedly.
You know, the 1920s was seen as, the progressive era of America. Everything was changing. Everything was evolving in the name of progress. And the author very pointedly says, is that really the case in West Virginia? Like if you look at it, like nothing was really changing for the better.
You got coal miners on strike going to war. You got bombs flying out of the air on American citizens. So if you look at the question, this is a very good question, and the answer really comes down to the fact that it did not happen until FDR and Frances Perkins, who was the first female labor secretary, came into power, and they were very sympathetic to workers rights and worker conditions, and that was really at the time where, like, they were like, We believe these people have the right to unionize they have the right to this kind of power in this type of condition So it really wasn't until the 30s, but Michael's right It's about money and power and it's about who has it and [00:23:00] they didn't have it.
But other people did
Michael: And like, yeah, he mentioned that in the afterward, like it kind of kind of broke down, but I would say this fight continues to this very day. I mean, miners have been striking. I know in like in Alabama and West Virginia, but I know me and, John David have read a book, probably a couple years ago called Blood Runs Coal.
John David: Yeah.
Michael: So, John l, was it John L. Lewis?
John David: John
L. Lewis, yeah.
Michael: Becomes the president of the UMWA. But then. Money.
John David: Yeah. Corruption. Murder.
Michael: Yeah. They start
getting cozying to the mine operators. Again, a lot of stuff kind of there's, bombing, terroristic, threats.
John David: Murder.
Michael: Murder.
John David: You name it. The whole nine yards is all over that book.
Michael: Yeah, and this, this eventually culminates once John L. Lewis retires culminates in a, a mass murder of entire family of the UMWA [00:24:00] that the president put out. And I mean the history is just wild that like from, you know, you go back all the way back to the Paintlick Creek mine strike to, you know, this happened in the 60s.
I want to say late 60s.
John David: If you look at the history of that, like the reason why that family was killed is because they were reformers who wanted to return the union to the workers.
Michael: Exactly.
John David: And right after that, we actually have the documentary up here at the library and I do recommend it.
It's called Harlan County, USA which looks at an immediate strike that happened during the middle of all of that.
Michael: Really? Okay.
John David: And it is, it is wonderfully directed from the perspective of the coal miners. And I will warn you, there is some violence in there. You do see a coal miner get shot and you do see the funeral of the coal miner.
We do have that here at work. I recommend that because that was in the 1960s and 1970s. If you, think in 2016 or 2020, there was a couple of coal miners here in Kentucky that went on strike because they weren't getting paid and the coal company was taking all the [00:25:00] coal out and they're like, we mined that.
Can we get our money? And like, everybody was like watching it like, presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle were sending money and pizza to the coal miners, which was. Virtually unheard of at that time like no other candidates had done that in forever. So like it's still it still happens today.
Like the history is still there. Yeah,
Carrie: And you mentioning John L Lewis. I was looking at PBS has a documentary about the Mine Wars from the American Experience and they had a timeline about the activity and in 1924, John L. Lewis, who was the national leadership of the UMWA at the time, forced Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney to resign, and they were the ones who had been instrumental in getting the UMWA started in southern West Virginia.
So that I think probably had a [00:26:00] big role, yeah, and there were some legal impediments as well, according to the PBS site. It wasn't until 1932 that President Hoover signed the Norris LaGuardia Act into law, and that, that outlawed what they called yellow dog contracts, where workers had to sign a contract saying they wouldn't join a union before
they were signed on to be employed. So, there were, there were a lot of things going on that, that were impediments to, to getting the union going.
John David: Yeah, I didn't know about that law until now. So, thank you, Carrie, for that timeline. And I think we have that PBS documentary here at work. I know we used to.
Carrie: Yeah, we do. I just saw it yesterday, or I would have, I would have watched it. It was, it was checked out. So,
Michael: that's good. It's good.
Carrie: I think other people are watching too.
John David: For all [00:27:00] those who see me at the library, one of my tasks is creating, helping create displays. So there will be a Appalachian display coming to kind of celebrate Rednecks, but also our Appalachian authors.
And you might see some of these books and some of these documentaries on that display for you to take home and read. And we hope you, we hope that you do. We, we love, we love it when our patrons, get interested in the things that were engaging them about.
Carrie: Okay, so we did still want to recommend some pairings to go with this book.
So I will go ahead and start. I read Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks, and that's by former Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson. So she comes from a black Appalachian family who farmed in Casey County, Kentucky for generations, and this book would have been [00:28:00] perfect for the read a cookbook prompt that we did a while back.
I know a lot of people were kind of grumbling about that one, but, but this was the perfect option for that because, it's full of essays about the food traditions of her family, and she also really brings her ancestors to life. Even back to an ancestor she calls Grandma Aggy, who was enslaved, and so she imagines these stories about them.
And one of the things that I appreciated about the recipes in the book, because we have talked about Victuals by Ronni Lundy before, and there's not a lot in that book that, even though I enjoy reading it and, and enjoy the, looking at the recipes, there's not a lot in there that I can eat. And she kind of updates the recipes, some of them to make them what would traditionally be a meat based recipe, make it [00:29:00] vegetarian.
And so, one of those recipes, I tried two recipes out of this book. One was Garlicky White Soup Beans. So, she replaces, you know, traditionally it's like a pinto bean soup. She replaces it with white beans because it cooks faster. And then uses liquid smoke for the pork. And, yeah, so it was really good.
Like, still had that smoky taste, even though it didn't have any meat in it. Also, lots of garlic. It called for five garlic cloves, and garlic powder, so it was like, I did cut down the garlic just a little bit when I made it, cause that seemed like a lot of garlic. And then, I also adapted Her Indian Creek Skillet Cornbread recipe, it did have dairy, which I can't eat, but I swapped a mix of plant based [00:30:00] yogurt and oat milk.
That's what I usually do in cornbread. And I, she recommended putting some sliced onions in the bottom of the skillet. And I used my when I make cornbread I use my granddaddy's iron skillet and so it got the onions all caramelized at the bottom. It was so good, like, and she is firmly as I am in the no sugar in my cornbread camp, but it still gave it just a like touch of sweetness, you know, from the onion.
Very good. I highly recommend. It was perfect, like it was a cold, one of those cold nights we've been having. So it was just the perfect thing to enjoy on a cold night.
Michael: Sounds like my father in law would love that meal.
Carrie: You really can't go wrong with soup beans and cornbread.
John David: It sounds like, it sounds like a hug.
Like a nice little [00:31:00] hug.
Carrie: Exactly. Yeah. All right, well, since I mentioned Victuals, Michael, you want to
Michael: Surprise, surprise! I did a recipe for Victuals again. So this is actually a West Virginia staple, pepperoni rolls. And I'm going to quote a little passage from it. "The Italian immigrants who came to work in the north and central West Virginia coalfields often carried a stick of pepperoni in a slab of fresh bread.
And that gave rise to one of the region's most beloved foods, the pepperoni roll." And this is, it takes some time, I guess, to do this. It calls for dry yeast, water, sorghum syrup, flour, salt, oil, cooking spray, or cooking oil. And also, you get two pounds of deli pepperoni and, four tablespoons of butter.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: I mean, that sounds delicious. I, I really want to travel to West Virginia at some point and try one.
John David: The last time I went to West Virginia, I can't believe I left without not trying a pepperoni roll. So I have to go [00:32:00] back to West Virginia now and, and try one. The way I consider it a real trip.
Michael: There's a couple places I can't recall, but there's like a couple, like, you know, places to get those at. Kind of like Philly Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia.
John David: Yeah, you want to go to the right, right place.
Michael: Yeah, yeah.
John David: You don't want to go to some, like, knockoff, like, You want to go to like a real place. Yeah. Like the real, the real heaven for it.
So I decided to not do Victuals. I decided to go with a Appalachian cookbook that I've never heard about. And that I would love to turn people on to Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food: Recipes and Stories from Mountain Kitchens, by Jim Casada and Tipper Pressley. So I'm going to recommend, first of all, I have a sweet tooth.
So if I was coming home from a long day at work and I wanted something to sweeten my tooth, I would want a Butterscotch Pie, which is an Appalachian delicacy and requires a lot of sugar, all purpose flour, cornstarch, cornstarch and milk and vanilla. [00:33:00] It just sounds like heaven to me. Sounds like sounds like something that I would love.
And then the other one I want to throw out because I've never heard of this one either. This is a drink. It also comes from the same cookbook. And I didn't mark it, so if you hear any pages, that's just me trying to get there. But it's called, Maypop Tea, and it is, maypops grow wild throughout the Appalachian Mountains.
They are sometimes called wild apricots or passion fruits. And, apparently you can make tea with it. And it sounds very sweet, so to make it, you scoop out the pulp from the ripe fruit. Cook in water for five minutes, strain, and enjoy. Sugar may be added to increase the sweetness of the drink. So, I just wanted to go with, recipes I've never heard about.
And those were my two recipes and one of these days I need to sit down and make them because I did not make them before this, but I want to now.
Carrie: Yeah, well, hopefully you'll be inspired.
John David: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, we got quite the, uh, whole, like, what, three course [00:34:00] meal going on.
Carrie: We did, yeah. We got, like, an appetizer and, and beverage and dessert and a main.
Michael: Main course.
John David: Look at that, look at that.
Carrie: And we didn't even plan it.
Michael: No.
Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. To learn more about Books and Bites Bingo, visit us at jesspublib. org/books-bites. Our theme music is The Breakers from the album In Close Quarters with the Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website adoorforadesk.com.