Southern Baking Traditions - Home

INTERVIEWS

Matthew Fuller
Annelle Lindsey
Sandy Pollard
Eula & Alton Stitcher
James & Evelyn Tamplin

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The Center for Public History
Online Baking Exhibit

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*NOTE: A complete set of interviews from the Southern Baking Traditions project is archived in the Southern Foodways Alliance’s oral history collection at the University of Mississippi.

James & Evelyn Tamplin

Ninety-one year old James Tamplin and his wife, Evelyn, vividly recall growing up in the rural South during the Great Depression and the rationing of food and other necessities during World War II. Mr. Tamplin spent his youth in Georgia cities like Cedartown and Rome, while Evelyn remained in Centre, Alabama until she married and began teaching. Mrs. Tamplin began her teaching career in the field of Home Economics, a genre she admits had little demand at the time. Ironically Mrs. Tamplin’s experience in getting her Home Economics degree was the first time she had ever attempted to cook, her mother had always insisted she handle the family meals. Just as her mother was well known around the community for her tea cakes and fried pies years ago, Evelyn Tamplin’s unique recipes have led her to be dubbed the “muffin lady” around Carrollton, and “Betty Crocker” by her friends in Florida. Mrs. Tamplin’s Christmas Lizzies are a popular holiday treat and though convenience and health concerns have led her to use modern pre-packaged goods in some of her recipes, Evelyn fondly recalls the days when farm-fresh ingredients were available.

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Interview of James and Evelyn Tamplin
February 25, 2002
Interviewed by Deirdre Haywood-Rouse
Southern Foodways Oral History Project
Center for Public History
Transcription by Annie Derthick, July 2002
Transcription finished (beginning in the middle of page 20)
by Helen Chambers, October 2002

DHR: Ok. Now the question that we’re getting to, about the food. Describe what types of types of bread were eating in your home. What types of bread?

ET: Well, my, my mother was a good biscuit-maker. So she made biscuits, uh all the time. Uh, she made cornbread and, uh, if we had company, if the preacher was comin’, we bought a loaf of bread, we had loaf-bread [laughing], which we called it.

OK.

And, uh, but, um, anyway, it’s biscuit and, uh, cornbread.

Biscuits and cornbread? What did she t-, did she use to make those? [mumble]

Well now, oh yeah, by then, I mean, we were, we always had a hog every year.

OK.

And so, they had, we had lard, and so she used lard.

And what type of oven did you have?

It was, a-, when I was very small, it was a wood-stove.

OK.

With a warmer. Um, but then of course, when I got, a, I guess, a, I think I must have been, uh, seventh or eighth grade, um, we got an-, a electric stove.

A electric stove.? In seventh or eighth grade?

Yeah, mm-hmm.

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OK. On Sunday morning, my mother would give me a half of a biscuit, and I’d sit on the steps, and shine my shoes with that biscuit.

[Laughing]

[Laughing] before I went to church, and the chickens would come along and eat the crumbs that fell off [laughing] of the steps.

So you—?

[Laughing]

That is interesting. You were recycling before your time.

[Laughing] yeah.

Using the biscuit to shine your shoes, and therefore, the birds received some nourishment also.

Yeah. Chickens.

Chickens.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

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Well, dur-, ah- at Christmas, Mother always made tea-cakes-

Yeah, my mother kept tea-cakes—

Now, what are tea-cakes?

Uh, tea-, uh, it’s a sugar-cookie.

OK.

It’s just a plain cookie, and my mother would make ‘em and put ‘em in a pillowcase, and hang ‘em up to stay fresh in that pillowcase. And she would make dozens and dozens and dozens at one time, all though it was just the three of us.

Did she give ‘em as gifts?

Yeah.

—or did she have a ready supply?

Yeah; she’d, she’d go somewhere and she would take ‘em, if somebody was sick, she’d take tea-cakes.

Was it just one flavor? The sugar cookie kind? Or what?

Well, she, you know, she’d put flavor in different kinds of flavor—

Flavors in—

Vanilla, vanilla, I think, was one of the flavorings she mighta had.

Ok. And what about you, Mr. Tamplin?

Ju-, just vanilla is all I know, and it was always at Christmas time.

At Christmas time.

-‘bout, ‘bout, eight or ten days ‘fore Christmas, she’d have tea-cakes.

OK.

My mother always made fruit cakes at Christmas because, and she, instead of buying a lot of this fruit that goes in it, uh, she would, of, of coo-, she would of canned, um, blackberry b-, uh, jam, and different kinds of jam, uh, apple j-, uh, apples, and different things, and that’s what she would put in her fruitcake.

OK.

It’d be the fruits, all of the fruits, and then she’d just by a few things to go in it.

Hum. That was very economical and very smart.

Mm-hmm.

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Ok. Ok. Now, let’s move to the second set of questions and we’re going to talk a little bit about the baking process and you all have kinda answered some of these but I would appreciate your pat-, patience in repeating some of the information if some of the questions sound a little bit redundant for ya. What time of day do you do your baking?

Uhh, it depends on what I am bakin’. But, I bake uh I bake uh muffins and carry it to everybody. I’m the muffin-lady in town and uh your husband can, knows about that.

And what kind of muffins do you like to bake?

Well, I tell you what. I like to experiment so I buy cranberry uhm muffin mix and instead of putting a cup of water or a cup of milk I but a cup of orange juice and then also I put a half a cup of whole cranberry sauce and instead of makin’ twelve muffins you get, you get eighteen.

Ok. And what kind time of day do you bake those muffins?

Usually late in the afternoon or either early in the mornin’ after I get up and, if I don’t have any.

Do they do better at a certain time of day or just depends on . . . [speaking over one another]

No. No. Anytime. I, I bake, I baked muffins last night at nine o’clock.

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And what type of fat did your mother use Ms. Tamplin for bakin’?

Uh, she used lard uh when I was little but after we could I guess afford or it came on market and was reasonable she always used uhm Crisco.

And where did she get the fat from that she used before she the Crisco?

Uhh these people that came in to help work when my Dad kept, had a uhm killed a hog. They took a washpot and they, they made the lard.

OK.

And mother would give them half the lard for makin’ the lard . . .

OK.

It was made in a washpot.

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Ok. Ms. Tamplin describe the types of sweeteners used for baking bread and when did she use these sweeteners and why?

Sugar. Regular sugar and uh she’d uh you know buy it in the bags but that what’s uh durin’ World War II although there were just three of us, mother did a lot of cooking with swe-, using sweet stuff, ‘Cause you can make pies and make cakes so they did not drink coffee and during the war you would get food stamps, not food stamps but yeah, ra-, I mean it was ration stamps ‘cause you were only allowed a certain number of stamps per month according to the household and uhm mother would swamp her coffee ‘cause we didn’t drink coffee, her coffee for sugar. A neighbor wanted the coffee ‘cause they would be coffee drinkers so they would exchange the stamps and mother would buy her extra sugar so she didn’t, she didn’t have to do without durin’ the war.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.