Redneck Recipe # 12 - "The Digging Saboteur" and Vegetable Bake Recipe
What Marjorie Rawlings Told Way Back in 1942
For those folks who were not around at that time it may seem strange that the military actually patrolled along the beaches of the east, west, and southern coasts of the United States. However the country was actively at war with Germany, Italy, and Japan. 1942 was a year of war just about everywhere.
Ships were being torpedoed right off the coasts, and the beaches were guarded against any enemy incursion.
Some may recall that 8 German spies landed on Long Island, close enough to New York City to be worrisome. They were quickly rounded up, thanks to the beach patrols.
Rawling’s story is about a person in her area of Florida who went out one night to hunt for turtle eggs.
Note: Marjorie Rawlings was the Pulitzer Prize winning author who wrote, among other great books, The Yearling. She donated her Florida property to the state and it is now the "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park."
The Digging Saboteur
In the summertime deep sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs at the foot of sand dunes along the coast. They are quite clever about concealing the exact place where the eggs will be hidden. Even though the turtles make trails in the sand like some sort of miniature bulldozers up to where the eggs will be laid, their nests are complex and hard to find without a lot of digging.
Seems like the turtle egg hunter was hard at work looking for those 150 or so eggs.
Concentrating on his search he did not hear the crunching of sand behind him. A soldier doing duty as a beach guard poked at him with his rifle and asked, "And just who are you, Mister, and just what are you up to?"
The egg hunter replied, "I’m digging for turtle eggs!"
Now, this soldier was really a stranger to beaches, being from the inland part of the U.S. on up north somewhere.
He had no experience at all with turtle eggs, much less with turtle egg hunters coming out at night on some deserted beach to dig for them.
Surely this guy was a saboteur and he was planting explosives on the beach to use later in blowing up a ship or a whole town.
The soldier told the guy, "Mister, it would be best for you if you found some turtle eggs while I watch over you with this fine rifle I have pointed at your back."
Rawlings never did tell us if the turtle eggs were found, but if they were found, the United States saved itself at least one bullet.
Also, if they were found, some of the locals had a fine time eating boiled turtle eggs sprinkled with some salt, pepper, and butter along with some good bread and a glass of ale or whatever they liked.
Well, we won the war, but, as you might guess, that turtle most likely lost its 150 eggs.
Vegetable Bake
Cut up some carrots so that you have 1 well rounded cup of the pieces. Cook them until soft.
Squeeze the cooked carrots through a sieve into a big bowl. Do the same thing for 1 cup of canned or cooked whole kernel corn.
Mix together1 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 cup of honey, 2 cups of whole milk (or you can use thin cream instead) with 3 tablespoons of cornstarch dissolved in it, 4 eggs, and a half stick (4 tablespoons) of melted margarine or butter. Add this to the sieved vegetables.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Pour the vegetable mixture into a buttered baking pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes.
If you want to do so, you can omit either the carrots or the corn and simply double the amount of the one you leave behind. Keep the rest of the ingredients the same.
You can also sprinkle bacon bits on the top of the baking vegetables with about 10 minutes of baking time to go.
This is a fine side dish with ham, pork or chicken. Even people who do not like to eat their vegetables will really enjoy this "Vegetable Bake"
More of Gus’s Redneck Recipes are here on Hubpages, and you can get a free download of one version of his "Redneck Rub(R) Cookbook" at www.sampsonafb.com
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Comments
Good evening, BAGT... When you get as old as I am, it is not so much what you do not know, it is how much you can remember of what you DID know. Growing up during the WW2 years was quite an experience. We had 5 cousins in the Coast Guard then, slinging depth charges at German Subs. Used to watch the huge "flying boats" take off and land in Long Island Sound. Worried some about the Nazi subs out there in the sound, too, for they were really there. One of the things we elementary schoolkids had to have was a rubber donut on a string around our necks... folks even worried that we might have air raids. The rubber donut was to be clenched between the kids' teeth so that they would not bite their tongues off or splinter their teeth. My father was an air raid warden and we had lots of air raid drills. In addition, if there was not a total blackout, there was a continuous "brownout" so that ships would not be silhouetted against a brightened sky at night and thus be more vulnerable to attack by the Nazi subs. Marjorie Rawlings tales truly shake my brain, even to this day.
Behave on Monday, and have a fun day while doing so.
What a great way to share a recipe. New stories for those of us who were not around for WW2. I loved this one!
Good job, and congratulations on your HubNugget Wannabe nominations. Good luck getting enough votes to get you in the top 5. I think you do a great job here with these.
Howdy Dutchess...Well now - I suppose that there are some things I like a whole lot. Two are: good stories and good country cooking. Along the way I got the notion that maybe they both fit together reasonably well. Now, as to "Hubnuggest Wannabe nominations," I have to tell you that I do not know anything at all about those, whatever they are. I could understand being put onto an assasination list, but for that I'd prefer to be at the bottom of the pile. ;-)
Well nice recipe Red. Never liked turtle eggs much, just the turtle please.
Howdy Ralwus... Yes, that is a fine recipe. Easy to do and tastes fine. As to turtle eggs vs. turtle per se, I can go with that thought. Turtle soup is very good if it is made correctly. The best of that we ever had was in New Orleans some time back. By the way, your's is a nifty nickname. Also, it goes with the photo very coherently. ;-)
Great hub - love the way you put it all together! Congrats on your nomination!
Hi RedElf... Good of you to have enjoyed your visit to that Hub. I'll tell you a little secret - had the Hub been a stinker, Marjorie Rawlings would like to have crawled out of the grave to haunt me. She was what you might call a "writer's writer" - Pulitzer prize and all of that. The turtle egg part of the tale was new to me, so I had to look it up, but the rest of it was basically about things we experienced back in the WW2 days. By the way, did I read that you produced the artwork for your kitty icon? Seems to me that I came across that a while back.
Hi Gus, wow so much to learn during the WW2. Thanks for sharing. It was a fun read. Vegetable bake sounds yummy! :)
Congratulations for being a Hubnuggets Wannabe! Yaaaay! To vote click here: http://hubpages.com/_hubnuggets10/hub/Signs-That-Y Keep those stories and recipes coming! :)
Gus, Great concept combining a great story and recipe. The WWII tales you’ve told in this comment thread, are there more of them in hubs? I was stationed in Germany 1994-1997 and lived near Belgium. I was able to go to the Battle of the Bulge Museum many times. I have lots of favorite WWII movies. Congrats on your HubNuggets nomination.
Howdy ripplemaker and rmcrayne - WW2 days actually began prior to US's involvement. I strongly remember the Nazi's and Soviet's invasions of Poland in 1939, the "Lend-Lease" program, and the Nazi propaganda flights of those big Zepellins. In fact, I remember seeing the Hindenburg in flight when my father lifted me up high atop his office building to see it better. We kids used to recite a little ditty that went something like this: "Hitler got Hungary, went after Turkey, slipped on Greece... and so on. Unlike in more recent struggles, everyone, young and old, rich or poor, was actively engaged in our cause back then. Rmcrayne, you mention being stationed in Germany from 1994 to 1997. I was assigned there in 1957-1959. Even that long after WW2 was done with, there was plenty of damage still to be seen. Climbing up those 487 spiralling stairsteps to the top of the Cologne Cathedral, you could look out through the still shattered walls and see the city below. It may not be nice to say this, but we really knew how to fight a war back then. Gus
By the time I saw Cologne, everything was restored. There is a cathedral tower in Berlin that was left in ruins. They light it at night. Definitely makes dramatic pictures. Your memories of the Zepellins must be somewhat eerie. Yes a lot was going on before US official involvement. Herman Wouk's Winds of War ends with the bombing of Pearl Harbor/beginning of US involvement. That's about 1000 pages of history and events. FDR lived with a lot of frustration.
Hi rmcrayne - Yes, you are correct in that there was much going on prior to the U.S. entry into WW-2. Our country was actively at war long prior to any declaration of war. Many of us, particularly us kids, did not realize that, but we do now. However, back then, folks really knew how to process a war. Sadly, that does not obtain any longer. Gus
bayareagreatthing 2 years ago
Wow- I never knew that! What a great hub and another tasty lookin recipe!