ASMA KHALID, HOST:
Sometimes, the best gifts are the ones you already have and rediscover later on. Recently, the Kitchen Sisters - producers Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva - stumbled across an interview they recorded more than 40 years ago. It's a conversation with Edna Lewis, an author, chef and pioneer of Southern cooking. She died in 2006. Lewis wrote about growing up in Freetown, Virginia, a small farming community of formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Here she is in 1983, remembering Christmas traditions in Freetown.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED BYLINE, BYLINE: Edna, can you tell me about Freetown? Tell me about where you grew up.
EDNA LEWIS: They call it Freetown because the settlers were freed slaves and had just sort of coined the phrase of being a place of free people. The name town is somewhat misleading because it wasn't a town. It was a small community of about a dozen families, not related but very closely associated with each other. My grandfather was one of the three first people that settled there in the 1860s. And they all settled sort of in a circle. My grandfather's house was in the center.
They participated together in producing their crops and raising their children and their pigs. It was like one big family. And I'm sure in some instances they looked better than some big families, more harmonious because they had a great discipline. I always felt loved and unafraid because everybody was your parent and everybody loved you. And it was just an experience that one couldn't forget.
UNIDENTIFIED BYLINE: What about Christmastime?
LEWIS: It was just the most exciting time to prepare for because of the cooking and the smells in the kitchen, and then the final Christmas Eve.
UNIDENTIFIED BYLINE: What was the dinner that night?
LEWIS: Oh, definitely oysters. That was maybe oyster stew or fried oysters. Cider or the grown-ups had wine. You were really saving your taste for Christmas Day. Early in the morning, before daylight, about 5 o'clock, the deep winter would be dark. Fireworks were set off. Things called sparkles, and the children could hold them. But the big Roman candles made a big noise - were done by the grown-ups. My father would set off the big ones. Wouldn't be Christmas without sparkles and the candles. On the last 15 or 20 minutes, you woke up the whole neighborhood.
Couldn't wait to rush to get our stocking. We only saw oranges Christmas Eve. They would be in the bottom of each stocking. And hanging by the fireplace, the heat would bring out the fragrance of the oil in the orange, and that would be the first thing we would smell coming down the stairs. It gave such an aroma and excitement. Christmas, everything would be brought out, and the sideboard would be loaded. All the food you'd been preparing all summer into the fall.
This would be Christmas dinner - roast chicken with dressing, whipped white potatoes, baked rabbits, steamed wild watercress - the watercress grew wild along the lowlands and along the stream - lima beans and cream, spiced Seckel pears, sweet cucumber pickle, grape jelly, biscuits, hot mince pie, persimmon pudding with clear sauce, fruit cake, coconut layered cake, caramel fudge, chocolate fudge, vanity (ph) cream - all these were homemade - popcorn, bowl of oranges, raisin clusters, Brazil nuts, almonds, blackberry wine and coffee.
You spend just intense time working on something that is eaten and gone. But I think some foods linger, which, although they're eaten and gone, I don't think it's lost. I think if it's good, it'll be remembered.
KHALID: That was chef and author Edna Lewis recorded in 1983 by producers Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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