State-by-State Redux: VII of X - The Deep South and Southern States Revisited - The Pudding Is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

We continue to examine food below the Mason-Dixon Line with a dessert so important in the South that it pops up in some form in every generically Southern cookbook I have encountered, hands down.  That and on the side of your typical box of Nilla Wafers.

Snacking State-by-State Redux VIII of X: The Deep South and Southern States

What are the Southern States?: always includes the former Confederacy (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia); usually includes Kentucky, and West Virginia; sometimes includes Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Oklahoma and southern Missouri.  The US Census also includes Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in its "South Atlantic" Census region, though these territories are not culturally part of the South.
Important Cities: Alexandria, Annapolis, Asheville, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Charleston (SC), Charleston (WV), Charlotte, Dallas, Dover, Houston, Jackson, Jacksonville, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Norfolk, Orlando, Raleigh, Richmond, San Antonio, Savannah, Tallahassee, Tampa, Tulsa, Washington
Regions and Subregions: Appalachia, Cajun Country, Chesapeake Bay, Deep South, Gulf Coast, Lowcountry, Piedmont
RAFT Nations: bison (central Texas, Oklahoma), chile pepper (western Texas), corn bread & BBQ (northeastern Texas, southeastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, southern Missouri, northern Louisiana / Mississippi / Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, central Georgia & Florida), chestnut (northern Georgia, eastern Tennessee & Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, southern West Virginia, District of Columbia, central Maryland), clambake (Delmarva peninsula), crabcake (Chesapeake coastline of Maryland & Virginia, Atlantic coasts of: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida), maple syrup (northern West Virginia, western Maryland)
Foods the Region is Best Known For: Southern cuisine - typical dishes include: fried chicken, greens, biscuits, corn bread, Brunswick stew, seafood dishes (catfish, crawfish, blue crab and oyster), okra, many kinds of barbecue, pimento cheese, Moon pies, Appalachian foods (stack cake, pickled ramps), sweet tea, juleps; Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper; banana pudding, pecan pie, chess pie, red velvet cake; Cajun cuisine (gumbo, étouffée, jambalaya); Cuban cuisine (Florida), Tex-Mex & Mexican cuisine (Texas & Oklahoma), multicultural cuisines (major cities throughout the South), African-American cuisine (throughout the South)

When the rest of America thinks of Southern cuisine, it typically thinks of either of two things: fried chicken and barbecue (both of which I have explored in various posts before - fried chicken from Maryland and Tennessee, and barbecue from Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and both halves of North Carolina).  But there's a third thing that is so quintessentially Southern that it deserves just as much notice: banana pudding.

Banana pudding is ubiquitous throughout the Southern United States, even in my marginally Southern corner of the country.  Still, I was actually surprised at just how ubiquitous it is.  I flipped through several cookbooks trying to find potential banana pudding recipes.  Every cookbook had at least one recipe for it, and sometimes several.

I grew up eating banana pudding.  My mother, a busy homemaker in the 80's and 90's, did take shortcuts: sliced, slightly ripe bananas and vanilla wafers covered with box vanilla (and occasionally chocolate!) pudding.  It was a favorite dessert while I was growing up.  For this post, I originally thought it would be nice to interpret Mom's recipe.

She told me she got it from the side of the box.

Hmmm...

So off to the box I went.  As I said above, I did also look at various cookbooks, but went with the box anyway.  The recipe I found included something that my mother's banana pudding never included: meringue.  This is not an unusual topping.  In fact, many of the recipes I saw include a meringue topping.  To my surprise, so does the official recipe on the side of the Nilla Wafer box.  This is something my mother apparently missed.  She also missed the recipe for custard from scratch!

But I'll be easy on my mother.  She didn't have the time to make it from scratch or add the meringue.  Heck, it's not like she had to even make it for us at all.

One thing I decided to add to zhuzh this up, since Southerners (and otherners) will go to great lengths to re-interpret their favorite dessert in any way they can: Bourbon.

The Recipe: Bourbon Banana Pudding

To make this banana pudding, with Bourbon, I used the actual recipe on the box (Nabisco, date unknown).

* vanilla wafers (a box costs about $4.50 these days)
* bananas (a bunch ran me about $3)
* sugar (had it)
* salt (same)
* eggs (had them too.  Separate the whites from the yolks)
* flour (had it)
* milk (same)
* salt (had this too)
* vanilla extract (I bought an extra bottle just to be on the safe side.  You can never have too much of this stuff)
* Bourbon (not part of the original recipe; I added about 3 tablespoons to the custard)

Start by putting a layer of vanilla wafers on the bottom of a dessert pan.

Next cut some of your bananas - about half of what you have - on top

Then layer more wafers, then the rest of the sliced bananas, and finally the rest of the wafers.  Use the whole box.  Go on, do it.

Once done, assemble your custard.  In a double boiler (actual or makeshift), mix together the sugar, salt, egg yolks (set aside those egg whites), flour and milk with a whisk over low heat.

Constantly stir for several minutes until it begin to thicken.

Once thickened, whisk in your vanilla and Bourbon.

Mix until blended.

Pour the custard over the banana-wafer mixture and set aside.

Now for those egg whites.  Whip them until form soft peaks.  Yes, I'm using an old, analog egg beater.  Bet you haven't used one of those in a while.

Add sugar and continue to whip until you get stiff peaks instead.

Spread the meringue over the rest of the dessert, sealing the sides to make sure as little of the banana filling peeps out as possible.

Bake in a 350° oven for about 15 to 20 minutes.

It will be nice and browned on the top.

I don't know if my mother has ever had the kind with homemade custard or meringue.  She must have at some point.  Well regardless, she has now, and she liked this.  Full disclosure: I made this on New Year's Eve (yes, I did this two months ago, and typed up this post a few weeks ago from when it posted), and brought it for the family to share while I sat in front of the TV to watch the Twilight Zone marathon and stuff myself with mini-quiches, pigs in a blanket and itty bitty samosas.  And then I got to have delicious, delicious banana pudding.  Mom was supposed to have some surgery on the digestive tract soon after, so this would have been her last meal for about a month.  Then the surgery got postponed, so she got to eat some more.  A lot more.  But we helped her.  A Steel Magnolia can't be expected to eat the whole damn thing, now can she?

- - - - -

We slowly inch towards the Mason-Dixon Line now, as we move out of the South to revisit the food of New England and the Northeast.

Sources:

Nabisco.  "Original NILLA Banana Pudding".  Date unknown.  Copyright 2013 Mondelēz International. All rights reserved.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia and from the Food Timeline State Foods webpage.

State-by-State Redux: VI of X - African-American Cuisine Revisited - From Dr. George Washington Carver's recipe collection to yours

Dr. George Washington Carver is best known to America's schoolchildren as the inventor of scores of peanut products for home and hearth.  That's where most school curricula stop.  It must be known, however, that Carver was a maestro of much more, and was one of America's leading botanists and agriculture scientists of his time.  In her book The African American Heritage Cookbook [1996, 2005], Carolyn Quick Tillery explores many of Carver's historic recipes, generally a reflection of Southern cuisine, and specifically of African-American cuisine

Snacking State-by-State Redux VI of X: African-American Cuisine

What is it? Foods traditionally cooked by African-Americans in the South, often overlapping with the cuisine of the South in general.
Where did it come from? African-American cuisine (also known as "soul food" since the 1960's) is a combination of cooking techniques and ingredients (sorghum, okra, rice) brought from West Africa, plus ingredients from Europe, the Middle East and Native America.  Again, African-American cuisine shares many similarities with Southern cuisine in general.

As pointed out by food author Celia Barbour for O Magazine, African-American cuisine (or "soul food" as it was first called in the 1960's) is traditionally a cuisine of "[e]ating organically, sustainably [sic] and locally" [2010].  A culinary tradition that was grown out of resourcefulness, specifically in the South.  She first had the idea of it being excessively fattening and unhealthy.

Like most culinary traditions, African-American cooking was long a balance of wholesome and unwholesome elements. The good ones kept the bad ones in check, until this equilibrium was upset by the processed and fast food industries. In the past few decades, traditional dishes have been supersized and made with nontraditional ingredients, and meals that were formerly eaten only on special occasions have been marketed as everyday fare. (It was hard to gorge on fried chicken when you had to first catch, slaughter, gut, and pluck the obstinate bird; quite another matter when it came in a bucket for $6.99.) Processed foods also recalibrated taste buds: "normal" came to mean excessive amounts of fat, salt, and sugar. It was a toxic mix. [Barbour 2010]

The truth, as she found out, is somewhat different.

I leafed through a book called Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, by Frederick Douglass Opie, a professor of history at Marist College. I learned that for thousands of years, the traditional West African diet was predominantly vegetarian, centered on things like millet, rice, field peas, okra, hot peppers, and yams. Meat was used sparingly, as a seasoning. [Barbour 2010]

That includes, specifically, the many vegetables, nuts and fruits that African-Americans and others throughout the South grew wherever they could find room to grow it.  As for George Washington Carver, professor at Tuskegee Institute, he was an authority in growing these many varied crops: okra, snap peas, black-eyed peas, corn, collard greens and mustard greens, garlic, onions, etc., etc.

Carolyn Quick Tillery [1996, 2005] collects many of Carver's recipes for the modern chef and historian.  For more historical context, as she notes, so many African-American sharecroppers were forced to grow cotton and not food on the land outside their homes, being forced to buy whatever food they needed from the plantation's commissary at sky-high prices, keeping them poor and dependent upon them.

Upon his arrival [at Tuskegee], Washington observed that the common diet of sharecroppers was fat pork, corn bread, and, on occasion, molasses.  When they were without fat pork, sometimes their only food was the corn bread, served with black-eyed peas, cooked in plain water... Washington urged [the sharecroppers] to ask for a small plot of land on which to grow food and raise chickens.  [He] showed them how to maximize production of the plots or to live off "nature's bounty" where no plot could be obtained...  In addition to showing subsistence farmers methods of increasing their yield, Carver, an accomplished cook, shared recipes and preservation methods with their wives, and as a result, the women began to participate as well. [Tillery 1996, 2005: x-xi]

As Tillery found out while researching her book, she found that "the first Tuskegee students grew their own vegetables" [Tillery 1996, 2005: 124].  George Washington Carver himself noted in his Up With Slavery his relationship to agriculture:

When I can leave my office in time so that I can spend thirty or forty minutes in spading the ground, in planting seeds, in digging about the plants, I feel that I am coming into contact with something that is giving me strength for the many duties and hard places that await me out in the big world.  I pity the man or woman who has never learned to enjoy nature and get strength and inspiration out of it. [Washington Carver, quoted in Tillery 1996, 2005: 125]

I've tried to fancy up most of these last ten recipes in this State-by-State series, but this time I'm keeping leaving it un-zhuzh'd, so to speak, and doing Carver's recipe straight up.  You can find the following recipe for collards and cornmeal dumplings (with exact measurements) on page 127 of Tillery's African-American Heritage Cookbook.

The Recipe: Dr. Carver's Collard Greens with Cornmeal Dumplings

* collard greens (Duh.  I was in Whole Foods when I bought these.  Since George Washington Carver's foods would have been, by default, "organic" by modern standards, I went ahead and bought as much, $3 per bunch for two bunches.  Had I bothered to go to the farmers' market first, I would have found the same ones for about $2 a bundle.  Wah waah.)
* ham hock (the recipe says you can also use a turkey wing.  One package was about $6 at Giant)
* onion (just one, about half a dollar)
* dried chile pepper flakes (had one laying around)
* jalapeño (a few cents for just one)
* garlic powder (had garlic salt, which meant I didn't need to use actual salt.  But I did use...)
* seasoned salt (or in this case, Old Bay.  I rarely miss an opportunity to use this for something)
* sugar (had it)
* pepper (same)
* bacon (had that too)

Start by sautéing your bacon in a heavy bottomed pot or Dutch oven.

Meanwhile, wash your collard greens and chop up.  I took my kitchen shears and minced them up in their bowl.

After chopping your onion and chile, sauté them with your bacon.

Then throw in a ham hock and fill the pot with water until the ham hock is about covered.

Bring the water to a boil...

...covering it with the lid for half an hour.

Then add your collard greens and any other ingredients.

Continue to cook them for at least an hour.

Dr. Carver also added cornmeal dumplings to his collard greens.  To do this, gather the following (I actually had all of these laying around, except for the milk, about $1.30):

* corn meal
* eggs
* milk
* bacon grease
* flour
* baking powder

Mix the dry ingredients together...

And add the eggs and milk.

Stir until lumpy.

When the collard greens are almost done, drop by large spoonfuls into the boiling collard green liquid, and cover for five minutes...

...like so.

Already nice and dumpling-y.

I don't eat collard greens often.  This is a recipe I should be making more of.  The collard greens burst with so many different flavors, from the greens themselves to the bacon and ham hocks.  This with the delicate, salty dumplings make this a meal in and of itself.  You don't need anything else with this.  It is its own meal.

- - - - -

Dr. Carver's collards are part and parcel a quintessential example of both African American cuisine and Southern cuisine.  Again the two are intertwined.  And next week we examine the South some more with another dish that I grew up eating, done up a way that I never ate it.

Sources:

Barbour, Celia.  "The Origin of Soul Food". O Magazine, July 2010.  All rights reserved.

Tillery, Carolyn Quick.  The African-American Heritage Cookbook: Traditional Recipes and Fond Remembrances From Alabama's Renowned Tuskegee Institute.  Citadel Press: New York, 1996.  First paperback edition 2005.

Some information also obtained from the George Washington Carver Wikipedia page and from the Food Timeline State Foods webpage.

Snacking State-by-State: West Virginia I - How to pickle ramps when there are no ramps to pickle? (Or, "Pickled Garlic and Onions")

I'm the first to admit that I know blesséd little about the food of West Virginia.  This heartily Appalachian state does have some specific foods that you find all over Appalachia, and a few unique ones.  Some seem to fit both categories.  Take ramps, for example.  While you find them all over the eastern United States and Canada, West Virginia seems to have embraced them to the point that when you think of food in the Mountain State, you have to think of ramps.

Official Name: State of West Virginia
State Nickname: The Mountain State
Admission to the US: June 20, 1863 (#35)
Capital: Charleston (largest)
Other Important Cities: Huntington (2nd largest), Parkersburg (3rd largest), Morgantown (4th largest), Wheeling (5th largest)
Region: Appalachia, South, Northeast, Midwest; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Chestnut; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Pennsylvania (northeast), Maryland (east), Virginia (southeast), Kentucky (southwest), Ohio (northwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: black bear (animal, though these are generally no longer eaten); brook trout (fish), Golden Delicious apple (fruit), honeybee (insect, for the honey) sugar maple (tree, for the sap), timber rattlesnake (reptile, though again, not really eaten)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: typical foods of Appalachia; apple butter; pepperoni rolls; pickled ramps; spoon bread

Ramps are in the onion family, a type of wild onion that grows in the spring.  Traditionally a part of spring recipes of the Upper South and of Québec, so Wikipedia notes, it is also known as wild leek or wild garlic.  Visually, I might describe it as the drag queen of wild onions: all green onion-like at the bottom with a dazzling green flare of garlicky leaves.  And West Virginia simply loves its ramps.  Sticking with the drag analogy for a bit, you find ramp festivals all over the state in the springtime, with ramp aficionados shantaying through a veritable party circuit of ramp kiki after ramp kiki. (Okay I promised myself I would never, ever use the word "kiki" in a sentence - pace, Scissor Sisters).

But as noted before, this wild onion, sadly, sashays away after spring.  Since I'm doing this post deep into the fall, obviously I'm not going to be finding any ramps for the next several months.

So this is a post about pickled onions and garlic instead.

Specifically, pickled onions I bought at the Waverly Farmers' Market, grown in the summer, picked in the fall and fresh waiting for me to immerse in a vinegar-sugar-salt solution.

There are lots of recipes for pickled ramps on the internet, for which I merely swapped out the long out-of-season ramps for the onions.  For good measure, I threw in some garlic, to help make the onions more garlicky, and to have some pickled garlic on hand to boot.  The recipe I used in the end: this recipe by J. Kenji López-Alt [2011] from the Serious Eats website.  I had to swap out red wine vinegar and white vinegar for the white wine vinegar, which I didn't bother to check that I had (I just assumed - remember what happens when you assume things).

The Recipe: Pickled Ramps, er, Onions and Garlic

For these pickled ramps-style pickled onions and garlic, gather the following:

* ramps - or since I didn't have access to ramps at this time of year, green onions (really any onion with small bulbs and green shoots still attached, but cleaned and trimmed; bought at the farmers' market for about $2.  I also added about four cloves of garlic, hopefully to make up for the lack of garlickiness from the lack of ramps)
* white wine vinegar (or since I did not have this, I combined white vinegar and red wine vinegar)
* sugar (had it)
* salt (I used pickling salt that I bought for those pickles from that Kansas post)
* red chile pepper flakes (from a dried chile I had)
* allspice berries (had this)
* bay leaves (had these too)
* whole mustard seeds (either yellow or black will do - had these too)

You should also have some clean jars to stuff them into.

First, clean and trim the onions.

Stuff the onions into your jars.

It doesn't have to be pretty.

Next, boil your vinegar...

...with your sugar, salt, chile flakes, allspice berries, mustard seeds and bay leaves.

Whisk and boil until the sugar and salt have dissolved into the vinegar.

Pour the solution into each jar, immersing the onions.  A canning funnel helps here.

Refrigerate for a few weeks.

These are nicely pungent onions that don't lose their crunch, and garlic that is still very sharp.  I'm already looking forward to spring, when I can get my hands on some actual ramps.  Now, sashay away.

Sources:

Corbin, JoAnn. "Pepperoni Rolls".  Date unknown.  In Bob Heffner, "Pepperoni Roll and Pepperoni Bread Recipes".  The Pepperoni Roll Homepage, 2002, 2011.


Heffner, Bob.  "What is a Pepperoni Roll?".  The Pepperoni Roll Homepage, 2002, 2011.

Heffner, Bob.  "The History of the Pepperoni Roll".  The Pepperoni Roll Homepage, 2002, 2011.

López-Alt, J. Kenji.  "Pickled Ramps."  Serious Eats, 2011.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "West Virginia" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "West Virginia".

Snacking State-by-State: Virginia IV - Stop being squirrelly! (No, seriously. Stop it.)

Ah, Brunswick stew.  So many states vie over it, each saying "We made it first!" We hear this from Tennessee, North Carolina and of course from Virginia (not so much Kentucky, though their burgoo is somewhat similar).  But what constitutes a Brunswick stew?  Some ingredients that you can easily find, though most of us don't know how to actually hunt them.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Virginia
State Nickname: The Old Dominion State
Admission to the US: June 25, 1788 (#10)
Capital: Richmond (4th largest)
Other Important Cities: Virginia Beach (largest), Norfolk (2nd largest), Chesapeake (3rd largest); Newport News (5th largest), Hampton (6th largest), Alexandria (7th largest)
Region: South, Upper South, Mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Chestnut, Crab Cake
Bordered by: West Virginia (northwest), Maryland, District of Columbia and the Potomac River (northeast), Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean (east), North Carolina (south), Tennessee (southwest), Kentucky (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: brook trout (fresh water fish), milk (beverage), Eastern oyster (shell), striped bass (salt water fish)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: ham (especially Smithfield); peanuts; Chesapeake Bay cuisine to the north and east of the state, specifically crabs (fried, steamed, boiled, deviled, Norfolk and she-crab soup) and oysters; typical Southern foods to the south and west of the state (including ham biscuits, beaten biscuits, etc); diverse multicultural foods in Northern Virginia (notably South & Southeast Asian, West African, Ethiopian and Central American); Brunswick stew

Brunswick stew has a long history in the Upper South.  Of course, Brunswick County, Virginia, is one of the places that says they had it first.  I have no horse in this race, though Virginia is closer, so I guess they're as close to the home team as possible.  So the origins of Brunswick stew, in Brunswick County at least, dates back before the Civil War.

It all started back in 1828 on the banks of the Nottoway River during a hunting party. Dr. Creed Haskins, a member of the House of Delegates from 1839 through 1841, took a group of his friends on a hunting expedition. While they were on the hunt, camp cook Jimmy Matthews stirred together the first impromptu mixture that has become known as Brunswick Stew. The original thick soup was made from squirrels, onions, and stale bread. 

When the hunters returned, there was reluctance to try the new mixture. However, the reluctance turned to demands for second and third helpings of the warm, thick stew. [Brunswick Stewmaster's Association, date unknown]

When we think of Brunswick stew, we usually think of those squirrels. In fact, one message board commenter "Elmer Fudd" at the Field & Stream website, who offers his own recipe, swears that,

In my opinion an authentic Brunswick Stew must include three things: Squirrel, lima beans, and okra. Yet if you go online, you will find plenty of recipes that do not include *any* of these items. ["Elmer Fudd" 2009].

He suspects those recipes are from New York (As Elmer suggests, "This incredible development is what happens when we let Yankees dicker with things that should be left to Southerners").  And yet, while it is ridiculously easy to find the last two ingredients - there isn't exactly a shortage of lima beans or okra - finding squirrel isn't such an easy task, especially flying squirrels who are apparently the most authentic type of squirrel to use (this from Tim Carman [2009] at the Washington City Paper).  Yes, I am speaking as a non-hunter: I don't know how to hunt, I don't have the time to hunt, and all of my in-laws who do hunt have moved out of state.  This is also the reason why I haven't had venison in a few years.  So short of sneaking up on a few squirrels and bonking them on the head with a brick, I had to think of alternative meats out of necessity.   


The recipe I chose would almost make Elmer's blood curdle, I fear: no squirrel (sadly - you can't even find it on the internet for sale!), and no okra.  But at least it has lima beans in it.  And once more, I went back to John Shields' Chesapeake Bay Cooking for his expert advice.  Shields does urge the home cook to use squirrel instead of chicken, the go-to replacement these days.  Or you could get adventurous and use muskrat instead [Shields 1998].  But he does give you quantities for both squirrel and chicken, should you go the latter route.  His Brunswick stew, presumably from Virginia's Lower Eastern Shore, is on page 168 of Chesapeake Bay Cooking.  I halved this recipe.

The Recipe: Brunswick Stew

For this Brunswick stew assemble the following, if you can't find squirrel that is:

* chicken (in lieu of squirrel; I bought it at Wegman's for about $3 per lb)

* onion (did not cost a lot)

* potato (same)

* bacon grease (or in this case, chicken schmaltz, which I had in the fridge)

* butter (had it)

* flour (same)

* lima beans (a bag of dried lima beans for about $1.50)

* chicken broth (a quart for about $2.  I used the entire thing)

* thyme (had it)

* bay leaf (same)

* corn (a can for about 70¢ at Wegman's)

* salt and pepper (had these of course)

I forgot to add to the photo one more important ingredient: tomatoes, which is an important part of many Brunswick stew recipes.  I added two, chopped.

* First, dredge you chicken pieces, with the skin on.

Melt your butter and schmaltz in a cast iron skillet.  I used my 12" skillet.

Brown your chicken pieces in the fat...

...a few minutes on either side.

Add the chicken broth and simmer for several minutes...

...covered.

Next add your vegetables...

...your lima beans,

...your herbs...

...and your tomatoes.

Simmer for a total of an hour and a half, from start to finish.

While this does not look like many of the Brunswick stews that I have seen (most of those look more like the burgoo I made for Kentucky), this is still a hearty stew that will fill you up.  I didn't have okra or squirrel, true.  Yes, I would have liked to try it with some squirrel meat.  But I couldn't get my hands on any, alright?  Seriously, man!

- - - - -

From the home of George Washington to the state that bears his name, we head from the Southeast to the Northwest, trading blue crabs for Dungeness ones and apples for, er, apples.  It's time to see what the Evergreen State has to offer as we explore the foods of Washington.

- - - - -

Sources:

Anderson's Neck Oyster Company.  "History".  Copyright 2012, Anderson's Neck Oyster Company.  All rights reserved.

Brunswick Stewmaster's Association.  "Brunswick Stew History".  Copyright 2010, Brunswick Stewmaster's Association.  All rights reserved.

Carman, Tim.  "The Real Reason Why Squirrel Meat Isn’t Used in Brunswick Stew Anymore".  Young & Hungry column, Washington City Paper, posted May. 6, 2009.

Cowen, Tyler.  Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide.  Copyright 2012, All rights reserved.

Chadwell, Treva.  "Virginia Ham Biscuits".  Provided for the Cooking Channel.  Copyright 2012, Cooking Channel LLC.  All rights reserved.

"Elmer Fudd" (user), "Elmer Fudd's Brunswick Stew".  Posted September 26, 2009.  Copyright 2009 Field & Stream.  All rights reserved.

Good Earth Peanut Company.  "All About Peanuts".  Date unknown.

Graham, Paul, N.G. Marriott and R.F. Kelly.  "Dry Curing Virginia-Style Ham".  Written for the Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension, 2011.

Peanut Shop of Williamsburg.  "Thai Cucumber Salad".  Copyright 2010, The Peanut Shop of Williamsburg.  All rights reserved.

Randolph, Mary.  The Virginia Housewife: Or Methodical Cook: A Facsimile of an Authentic Early American Cookbook.  1824.  Republication of the edition by E.H. Butler & Co., Philadelphia, 1860.  Introduction by Janice Bluestein Longone, Moneola, NY: Dover, 1993.

Shields, John. Chesapeake Bay Cooking. Broadway Books: New York, NY, 1998

Virginia Tourism Corporation. "Home page".  Copyright 2012, Virginia Tourism Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Virginia" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Virginia".