Heart of Palm
When I was growing up, the heart of palm was a treat at mealtime. It was brought to Mama in a croker sack still sandy from the man who had harvested it in the woods. Florida’s wild woods have provided a pantry for generations living off the land.
Today, we can walk into the store and buy what we need or want. I was surprised to see this can of heart of palm sold in Wisconsin, priced around five dollars a can and considered a specialty food item. It would have been too expensive for turpentiners to pay on their $ 10-a-month.
When I saw this can on the shelf, I thought of Delia, who took some boys into the woods and showed them how to cut the palms and prepare it for a meal for the men to take into Longleaf Forest while they worked the trees. In Song of Jaybird, Delia, was motivated to find food rather than buy it from the commissary, which added to their debt.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 12 from Song of Jaybird
One night at Delia’s table, the men laughed about stories they heard working in the woods together. Delia laughed with them, then said, “Iffen ya’ll got time to be tellin’ lies, den ya’ll best be huntin’ fo’ food. Not gwainter de store fo’ rice and beans when de Good Lawd gives food in de timba! De bossman charges mo’ den ya’ll make!” She explained how she and the other women planned to do most of their “shopping” in the woods and only buy staples from the commissary when necessary. Eva took older children in the woods in spring, digging white tubular roots of the wild radish. Delia, Hattie, and other women picked tender pokeweed leaves for boiled poke salad. Plump blackberries or mulberries are simmered in early summer with wild honey and dumplings. The men hunted wild game, as nature stocked their pantry.
A few days later, Delia took some older boys to chop pointy palmetto fronds from its trunk with machetes. “I’m gwainter show ya’ll how to cut through these threads close to the dirt and cut it loose. Watch out fo’ snakes, don’t need ya’ll gitten bit.” She warned. Bushwhacking through palmettos commenced with loud whacks, grunts, and fronds thrashing. “With dis much noise, don’t need to worry ‘bout bears!” She teased. Gray sand tossed over and made her skin gritty and itchy. After they harvested bulky palmetto stalks, they returned to her shed- kitchen. “Don’cha be runnin’ off! We still got work to do.” The boys shaved strands of reddish-brown fibers, saving them for tinder. Then they cut off a tough outer layer until they reached the soft center. “Dis is what we want…it’s called the heart.” Then she sliced heart of palm into small pieces and tossed them into a big cast iron spider set over wood coals, boiled it with bacon fat and simmered it through the night. She slept with head resting on the plank table, waking several times to keep the fire burning and stirred the pot.
