Copper Pennies [Marinated Carrots]
Mom and Dad’s author photo for 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South, taken in our backyard.
Me and my sister in the backyard in the wild & woolly 70s. (The structure behind us is the same, trellised one in the photo above. Some things improved with time!)
It’s been a week of reflection and, with that, I’m going to give you a throwback recipe for the least healthy carrot dish in town! It sounds disgusting but, trust me, it’s good. My Grandma Reed, whose favorite saying was “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” would often have an old yogurt or sour cream container with “Copper Pennies” Sharpied on the lid, just full of these sweet & sour gems.
When I was growing up Mom would make these carrots and I would gobble them up after a long day of playing. Being 1970s kids, we were pretty free-range. We rode bikes all over the UNC campus and spent a ton of time outside. Mom’s parents gave us a kit for a log cabin playhouse. I don’t remember building it, I’m sure Mom and Dad would because they probably did the heavy lifting, but I do remember all of the lovely details Mom put into it. We had cute little furniture, Mom sewed curtains for the windows, and she planted snapdragons just outside the door. I’ll always remember the snapdragons because they were such an unnecessary, but lovely, touch. Mom taught me how to “snap” them.
We would hang out in the cabin, drinking Tang or chocolate milk out of these large pewter Deerfield Academy mugs that Dad had. Sometimes we would look at the bra section in the Sears catalog because it felt a little risqué. We were always trying to start a club, but none ever took. One morning, we came out to find a window and several pieces of furniture damaged and chopped up. It was a mystery! Come to find out, a neighbor boy had done it. He thought that my friend and I had laughed at him (to be fair, we may have), so he snuck out of his house with a saw one night and took vengeance on the cabin. I’m not sure how we figured this all out, but his mom made him buy us a UNC bean bag chair with his paper route money and all was supposed to be forgiven.
Also in the yard, we had a totally hillbilly sandbox and seesaw. Mom and Dad made them. The sandbox was OK (it was a triangle shape formed by large logs filled with sand) until the neighborhood cats started using it as a bathroom. The seesaw was crazy, now that I think of it. We got a huge slice of log from someone and balanced a plank of wood on it. Voila! A Seesaw! I’m not sure if that wood was secured in any way or if we just relied on gravity (again, it was the 70s), but we spent a lot of time on it. At one point, my sister and I decided we were going to challenge the Guinness Book of World Records Seesaw record. We strapped foam rubber to each side of the plank of wood so that we could be comfortable seesawing while we slept. A lot of strategy went into this idea! We made some sort of speech to officially start, climbed on and…. made it an hour.
Despite being in downtown Chapel Hill, our yard was huge. I mentioned in an earlier post that Mom did wonders with gardening. She had a native wildflower garden, a raspberry patch, and, at times, a vegetable garden. We built a “screen house” in the very back of the yard. This was basically a rectangle with screen on all sides, a slanted roof, and a wooden slatted floor. I remember hanging out in there with Dad’s grad students, not understanding the conversation but pretending to. Once, someone in the neighborhood got a new refrigerator and gave us the box. My sister and I tried camping in it in the backyard but got spooked when someone mentioned “snakes”.
I made some questionable decisions in this yard. One time, I got permission from Mom to paint something “Carolina Blue”. It was perhaps a small table or something easy to paint. She agreed and left me to go teach piano. When she came back to check on me, I had painted the table AND the pear tree blue. I don’t remember being scolded, I think Mom just shook her head. Another time, I decided it would look really great to have a circular flower bed in the middle of our grassy area. In my head, I could just see a formal English garden with, perhaps, a fountain. I floated this idea by Mom and she said it was too much work. Not to be deterred, I snuck out with a trowel and some seeds and planted flowers in a circular pattern. I was going to show them! I waited and waited (note: I did not water and water) and nothing happened. Silver lining? There was nothing to get in trouble for.
As time went on, the house and yard got nicer. Mom and Dad built a wonderful screened porch with a dining area and sofa. We spent a lot of time out there. With the weather warming up, this is perfect porch and retro carrot recipe weather! Go make some Copper Pennies!
Mom enjoying a drink on the porch.
COPPER PENNIES [MARINATED CARROTS]
Makes 8 cups
boiling water
2 lbs. carrots
1 large onion
1 can (10 ¾ oz.) condensed tomato soup
¾ c. vinegar
½ c. vegetable oil
1 large green pepper
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. Worcestershire
1 tsp. prepared mustard
salt and pepper to taste
Peel and slice carrots ¼” thick. Place in saucepan. Add boiling water to cover. Cook 15 min., or until crisp-tender. Drain and cool.
Slice onion. Separate into rings. Seed green pepper and cut into strips. Combine carrots, onion, pepper in large bowl.
In saucepan combine sugar, soup, vinegar, oil, Worcestershire, mustard. Heat to boiling, stirring until sugar dissolves. Pour over vegs. immediately.
Refrigerate for 24 hours. Serve cold or room temperature.
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