Gardening Alabama Style to Fend off the Recession

baked mac and cheese with spinach, recipe below

A handful of southerners went through the Depression without the need for government relief. One was civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy, who recalled his childhood as the son of an independent black farmer in Marengo County, Alabama, about ninety miles southwest of Montgomery. At this time of the year as a child he and his family would be busy in the family subsistence garden planting “corn, beets, tomatoes, black-eyed peas, beans, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, okra, collard greens, turnips, mustard greens,” and the family orchard “peaches, plums, pears, figs, and apples.” Consequently, Ralph Abernathy recalls, “Everything I learned about the Great Depression was from a college textbook.” Now where you live you may not have the luxury of a garden that big, but you can create a scaled down version that provide your family with fresh in season produce in a couple of weeks. Here in the Hudson Valley fresh spinach is in season. Let me suggest a baked mac and cheese with spinach recipe I came across. Here the link: http://healthy-cook-recipes.blogspot.com/2009/05/cheesy-baked-macaroni-spinach.html