Lindsey Nair

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In the coming weeks, many of our dining room tables will groan under the weight of feasts created to celebrate the blessings of our lives.

Our bellies will be full at Thanksgiving and our stockings will be full at Christmas.

But Elaine Davis, who grew up in Lee County in the 1960s and '70s, remembers a different kind of holiday, when her parents would buy each of their 16 children an apple and an orange for Christmas, then split up a big stick of peppermint among them all.

And the kids were delighted.

When the oranges had been eaten, the peels were saved and dried, then beaten into a powder used to bake a cake.

"Oh, that smell of orange cake baking, I can never forget!" Davis said.

I read that story in a new cookbook, "Grazing Along the Crooked Road," written by Virginians Betty Skeens and Libby Bondurant, who traveled Southwest Virginia's Heritage Music Trail and absorbed a year's worth of music, stories and recipes.

The book, an unassuming, self-published, 424-page hardback with black-and-white photos and a few typos here and there, came out only about two months ago.

It is one of the most fascinating and culturally relevant books I've read in a very long time. The best part: It contains a few recipes that probably existed only in the memories of mountain folks for generations -- until now.

They include dishes such as fried molasses, dandelion salad, vinegar butter, stack cakes and gritted corn.

"I think what they have tapped into is a group of recipes and food traditions that are mountain South only," said Melissa Hall, spokeswoman for the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi.

"You find these recipes that you would swear are from, really, another time," Hall added. "And I think most people kind of assume another place."

Skeens, 61, of Henry County, and Bondurant, 55, of Franklin County, have been friends for at least 25 years. They go to church together, and before she retired, Skeens did Bondurant's hair.

It was Skeens who came up with the idea of collecting recipes along the Crooked Road, a tourism trail that winds through 10 counties in far Southwest Virginia, highlighting the rich history of bluegrass, old-time and traditional country music.

Skeens figured that music and stories and food are all woven tightly into the tapestry of those communities. So she and her friend set out to do research the old-fashioned way: by striking up conversations with folks they met along the way and charming them with their sweet natures and genuine interest.

In some cases, that meant holding a story-gathering session at the local library or museum; in others it meant plopping down in a chair on someone's front porch to chat away the last few hours of summer sunlight.

The latter happened at the home of Flo Wolfe, granddaughter of Carter family music legend A.P. Carter, who talked to Skeens and Bondurant about suckering tobacco and plucking chickens, then gave them her recipe for cabbage au gratin.

The authors also got recipes and stories from talented musicians such as Jerry Hensley of Scott County, who played with Johnny Cash and the Statler Brothers.

"We just got the warmest response from most anybody," Bondurant said. "Nobody was really ugly to us or anything. ... I was very humbled by the whole experience, and have been since the book came out."

Patience probably was key. Rather than taking recipes and moving on to the next person, Skeens and Bondurant listened until the old family stories came out; the ones about burying apples in winter, wearing dresses from feed sacks, living in mining camps, drying green beans on a string and, of course, picking up that instrument for the first time.

The story of the old-fashioned molasses stack cake was one of my favorites. Gayle Stanley of Clintwood told Skeens and Bondurant that when "mountain couples" got married, everyone brought a layer of molasses stack cake slathered with applesauce and added their layer to the stack.

"The couple's popularity was measured by how high their wedding cake was," Stanley said.

Hall, with the Southern Foodways Alliance, was delighted by that story, too. She hails from Kentucky and remembers her grandmother making molasses cake, but she had never heard the wedding tale. Hall said a group from the alliance is planning a field trip to the Crooked Road next summer.

Before we even got off the phone, she had Googled "Grazing Along the Crooked Road" and bought a copy online.

"I think they are just an amazing study in deprivation food," she said of molasses cakes, "because stack cake layers are incredibly thin, I would say pancake thin.

"It makes sense that that's a tradition, and also for weddings ... it's people figuring out not only how to make due with what they had, but also to create a really gracious table; a gracious plenty out of very little."

If you're interested in buying "Grazing Along the Crooked Road," go online at crookedroadcookbook.com.