Santa Cruz Sentinel

Santa Cruz Style

Subscribe

Aunt Lillian Darden believed beauty came from the garden.

The gorgeous, dark-haired woman used cucumber slices to refine her pores and pressed white potatoes under her eyes to relieve dark circles.

The daughter of a former slave and one of 13 children, she even made her own face cream, which left her skin as luscious as whipped chocolate until the day she died.

She’s not a character you’d expect to find in a cookbook. But Aunt Lillian is just one of a score of family members whose stories and recipes for everything from strawberry wine to sausage biscuits to face cream are included in the book "Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine."

Part cookbook, part biography, the book was written by New York sisters Norma Jean and Carole Darden, who were set off on their quest by an offhand remark at a party.

"You must have a lot of old-time recipes," a stranger remarked and tcts of a way of living and celebrating that was slowly disappearing.

So they set off to collect stories and recipes from their family members, who had been scattered over the South and Midwest.

Advertisement

The book is a fascinating look at a family whose pictures show a proud and handsome group — from Papa Darden, a fair-minded, hardworking man who fathered 13 children, to his wife Dianah Darden, whose tempestuous personality was changed in a single religious experience, to Aunt Maude who knew George Washington Carver.

The stories of this strong, and sometimes eccentric, family are fascinating and an inspiration for anyone who has ever thought about collecting their own family recipes and history before they are wiped out by e-mail and cell phones.

The recipes in this book are mostly down-home: Carole’s Deviled Eggs, Bud’s Sunday Roast Chicken and Mom Sampson’s Spoonbread.

Some of them will never see the light of a Santa Cruz kitchen — like Roast Opossum with Yams or Fricasseed Squirrel. But many bring back tasty childhood memories, even if you weren’t raised in the South.

And who can resist attempting a batch of strawberry wine — or for that matter, Aunt Lil’s face cream, especially after you look at the picture of Aunt Lil.

Here’s a recipe for Apple Brown Betty that’ll make your mouth water just from reading it.

APPLE BROWN BETTY

2 cups fresh whole-wheat bread crumbs

¼ cup melted butter

½ cup sugar

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Juice and grated rind of ½ lemon

5-6 tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced

½ cup orange juice

Heavy or light cream

Preheat oven to 350. With a fork lightly toss bread crumbs with melted butter. Combine sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice and rind to form a paste. Line the bottom of a buttered casserole dish with approximately one-third of the bread- crumb mixture. Spread half the apples over the crumbs, then half the paste over the apples. Repeat this process with crumbs as the final layer. Pour orange juice evenly over the apple mixture. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 15 minutes, or until apples are very tender. Serve hot or cold with shipped or plain cream.

Contact Peggy Townsend at ptownsend@santacruzsentinel.com.

Subscribe