CRACKER COOKIN' Recipes From Florida's Past

In the early days of statehood, Floridians who “lived off the land,” harvesting and eating whatever was available to them, became known as crackers, perhaps from the noise their long whips made when they rounded up their cattle. This plain cookin’ was later recognized as a healthy diet by many nutritionists. CRACKER COOKIN’ is one woman’s recollections of cracker life and Cracker cooking during her early childhood.

"Times were hard in the late 40’s and early 50’s in rural Florida, but as children, we didn’t realize that we were poor. Our daily meals almost always consisted of either dried peas, or dried beans with rice, and corn bread or corn pone (a mixture of cornmeal and flour, cooked on top of the stove in an iron skillet). That was our lunch, which we called dinner.

"Our evening meal, which we called supper, would sometimes consist of white, salt-cured bacon, tomato gravy, or flour gravy (made with bacon drippings), and biscuits.

"This was served along with any leftovers from the midday meal. Breakfast was oatmeal with sugar and milk, or, grits with butter. Any biscuits left over from the night before were toasted in the big iron skillet, or, Mamma made them again from scratch. If times were good, we also had bacon for breakfast.

"But we always had something extra on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Potato salad was always a given, made with potatoes that had been boiled and cubed and then mixed with chopped boiled eggs, onions, pickle relish and gobs of mayonnaise. The other sure thing on each of those holidays was banana pudding."