By Cory L. Higgs
The holidays are a time that families from all walks of life come together to spend precious time with one another and usually share a holiday meal. These meals are more than food on the plate; they are a tradition.
Our first stop on the holiday buffet around Patrick County and surrounding areas is the small community of Vesta, where a legendary yeast roll recipe is being preserved by each generation.
Dillard Frazier is a rough, tough mountain man who runs a construction company, blacksmiths, and bakes yeast rolls. His recipe is one that is legendary in the Belcher/Frazier family.
Frazier’s mother, Louise, worked at Meadows of Dan Elementary School for 33 years; while there, she learned and perfected the yeast roll recipe. The school used the rolls for everything from dinner rolls to hamburger buns, and they never disappointed, Frazier said.
He said the reason this daunting recipe is his favorite – and his family’s tradition – is because of the legacy it holds with his mother. She worked for hours on end, creating the rolls, he said. And, there never were any leftovers. Frazier dipped his hands into roll making one Thanksgiving when his mother was under the weather. Since then, he has been the designated roll maker, carrying on the tradition created by his late-mother.
This is the family’s first holiday season without its matriarch, but her legendary rolls are still there to remind everyone of a time when mom was in the kitchen. Frazier noted that this is an easy recipe, but you could find yourself in trouble if your dough isn’t up to par.
-Louise’s Yeast Rolls-
– Three cups of water (heated to 110 F)
– ½ cup of yeast
– Ten pounds of plain flour
– Two cups of dry powdered milk
– Two cups of sugar
– Two cups of vegetable oil
– 1/8 cup of salt
Mix the yeast into the three cups of water and set on top of the stove to keep warm. Mix dry ingredients together by hand. Add oil and yeast water. Should make a “good sticky dough.” Cover and store somewhere warm for one hour. Roll dough out about a half-inch thick and cut out rolls. Leave out for another hour to rise. Bake at 375 until done, and browning. About a three-hour process. “slather with butter and enjoy,” said Frazier.
Our next stop on the buffet is the outlying community of Laurel Fork, just up the road from Meadows of Dan, where Dale Higgs provides a Christmas dinner recipe from a bygone era.
Higgs grew up in Indian Valley, where his grandmother cooked an ample and straightforward meal for the holidays. Higgs said it wasn’t about the glitz and glam, “it was about surviving the winter.” His grandmother was old fashioned; she had a large grinding stone in the yard to grind her corn by hand and didn’t have running water or power until the 1980s. Higgs’ recipe may be simple, but it conjures up memories of a simpler time when the family gathered around the woodstove in the cold of winter to share a meal.
“I call this the grannie Higgs’ supper. Back in the ’40s and ‘50s, you didn’t just run out to the store for your food,” he said.
Higgs recalls his father driving a food truck down the Indian Valley grass centered dirt roads, bartering for goods. His father traded sugar and coffee for chickens and homegrown produce along the way, some of which made it to the dinner table. His father would made rounds around the area. As one of the few general store proprietors in the region, he delivered his goods and bartered along the way.
Higgs recalled that his holidays were a little on the unusual side. “We had cluck-cluck, not gobble-gobble,” he said, reminiscing about family Christmas dinners of chicken that his father traded for on his delivery route. He said he would give anything for a can of the ‘October beans’ his grandmother used to can and serve on the holidays. His Christmas recipe is simple and flexible. It’s what you’ve got in the pantry and what you can find, with a side of cornbread.
-The Grannie Higgs Supper-
– Your favorite cornbread recipe
– A can of October beans (preferably ones you canned yourself)
– A chopped onion from the root cellar
– A can of tomatoes (preferable some you canned over the summer)
– One chicken (bartered for or purchased at your local supermarket)
– Optional* pickled beets if you have them.
Heat canned goods, prepare cornbread as desired, and roast chicken to temperature, with any herbs you may have saved from the garden. Then enjoy. “A plate for a king,” Higgs said. He recommends adding a healthy amount of butter to the beans before consumption.
We are leaving the mountain tops of the Blue Ridge now, and heading to Claudville, where Sherry Cassady and family dip into their traditional holiday snack. The Cassady gang’s ever-popular sausage dip is something worth its weight in gold, according to Cassady’s son, Martin. The Cassady family and guests often find themselves crowded around the crockpot with a tortilla chip in hand to get a scoop of Sherry’s savory sausage dip. Martin said that without the dip, it doesn’t feel like the holidays. He hopes his mother is prepared for Christmas as he plans to “eat his weight in sausage dip.”
Sherry Cassady said she was turned on to the recipe when her oldest son was in the second grade. She had the dip at a school Christmas party, and loved the way it tasted and how easy it was to make. She said she always tries to make it around the holidays to appease her sons’ hellacious appetite, but she mentioned it’s something she can whip up anytime the family needs some TLC and a snack.
-Sherry’s Savory Sausage Dip-
-Two cans of Rotel Original tomatoes and green chili’s
-Two eight-ounce packages of cream cheese
-One Package of Neese’s Hot Sausage
-One bag of tortilla chips
Cook, crumble and drain the sausage, mix the cream cheese, Rotel tomatoes (with the juice), and cooked sausage together. Heat on low in a crock-pot until heated through and serve with Tostitos scoops.
Across the county in Woolwine is the Blankenship clan, with their Christmas recipe of what they call “corned beef hash.” Susan Blankenship said it’s more like corn beef gravy and is a staple of a traditional Blankenship Christmas breakfast that means “family, comfort, and love” for the whole family.
“When I started my own family, corned beef “hash” became my holiday traditional breakfast staple, along with scrambled eggs and biscuits, for our Christmas morning breakfast,” she said. Susan Blankenship recalled her mother making the dish on holidays and has carried the legacy of the recipe into her home.
“I hope that both my girls, Rachel and Maggie, will pass this recipe down, and will want this to be a special family tradition for their families.” She added that this dish isn’t just for the holidays but for day to day life when the family needs a little pick-me-up.
-Susan’s Corned Beef Hash-
-One can of corn beef
-One small onion chopped
-flour
-milk
-butter
Fill a small pot with about 6 cups of water. Put the onion in the pot and cook onion until tender. Open the can of corn beef and put it in the pot with the onion. You have to break up the corned beef while cooking. Put about 2 tablespoons of margarine or butter in the pot with the corned beef. Now you have to fix the gravy thickening mixture, which is flour and milk mixed together, and then pour into the pot until the corned beef thickens.
“to make the thickening, you use about a cup of milk and about one tablespoon of flour. However, I don’t really measure the milk or the flour. I know that sounds strange, but that was the way that I was taught by my mother,” Blankenship said.
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Is it the food or the tradition that brings these people together? Perhaps it’s a little bit of both. From the detailed to the simple, these recipes from across the region are sure to invoke the holiday spirit in those who attempt to make them, whether passed down through the years or something to bring the family around the table, there is plenty of Christmas and holiday tradition in the hills and valleys of Patrick County. These recipes give food for thought, every recipe has one common ingredient: bringing people together, and that is the most important ingredient in any holiday recipe.
