This is my recipe for peanut brittle from the depression era. Made from peanuts and syrup or sugar. Parch the peanuts, then shell them. Measure your syrup or sugar. Cook until it turns to a syrup (thick bubbling). Then butter your pan or platter. Pour your bubbling thick syrup into your buttered pan or platter. Let it stand until cool. Then cut into squares.
We would select a number two or three wash pot. We would put two gallons of corn and an eight pound bucket of ashes into the wash pot. The ashes were made by burning oak limbs around the pot. Then we poured in enough water to cover the corn. We then built a fire around the pot and cooked the corn until it was tender. Then dipped out of the pot, washed well until free of ashes. Now it was ready to be carried to the kitchens to be served.
Willie Mae Faulkner
Shreveport, Louisiana
Back in 1955 a call went out from the editors of the then Capper’s Weekly asking for readers to send in articles on true pioneers. Hundreds of letters came pouring in from early settlers and their children, many now in their 80s and 90s, and from grandchildren of settlers, all with tales to tell. So many articles were received that a decision was made to create a book, and in 1956, the first My Folks title – My Folks Came in a Covered Wagon – hit the shelves. Nine other books have since been published in the My Folks series, all filled to the brim with true tales from Capper’s readers, and we are proud to make those stories available to our growing online community.