Pepper Hash, Oyster Stew and SOS

Pepper Hash - Joyce DeHart-Gibson
Chop cabbage and green pepper and add equal parts of vinegar, sugar and water.  Store in the fridge in a glass container for a long time. I  also put celery seed in mine but you don't have to.

Oyster Stew - Margaret Konschak

1 pint oysters, shucked, with juice
1 quart milk or 1 quart half-and-half
1/4 cup butter
salt and black pepper
Old Bay (optional)

Cook oysters in their juice until edges just begin to curl.
Add milk, butter, salt and pepper.
Heat slowly, being careful to NOT boil.

Blind Stew - Carol L. Garrison
Same as Oyster Stew but leave out the oysters!

Dried Beef Gravy (SOS) - Anyone Who Ever Lived In Millville
                                                      1/4 lb dried beef
                                                      2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour
3 cups milk Melt butter in skillet.

Tear the dried beef into small pieces & stir into the butter.  Brown meat lightly.  Stir in flour.  When flour is dissolved into butter, add milk, stirring constantly.  Salt and pepper to taste, but remember dried beef is salty.  Cook over low heat until the mixture thickens. Serve on toast, waffles, biscuits or almost anything.



Variations of SOS:
Robert Bruce Land - Graveyard Gravy:  Remove the meats and serve over either toast or biscuits. 

Butch Beebe - Red Eye Gravy:  My Grandmom and Mom would use bologna, hamburger or ham slice and make gravy.  Fry the ham slice and get some of its flavoring in the pan, add some butter and flour and then milk and a little coffee.  Back in the day, grandmoms and moms alike could stretch a dollar from here to Vineland and back when it came to cooking.  They had to.  And whatever they made tasted good and kept us alive.  Thank God for moms and grandmoms!!

Judi Grau Shute - Graveyard Stew:  Salted, buttered toast soaked in warm milk.  It was what we ate when we were very sick and could keep nothing else down.  Ready for the grave I guess is where it got its name.  My grandmom had 15 children and she always had family and friends in to eat.  She would make 6 pies at once.  Everything homemade.  This was before blenders and microwaves and anything convenient.  She used a wood stove with round grates on it with this special handle to remove them.  No one went hungry.