Quote:
Originally Posted by KyBunnies
For me when I see or hear 'greens' I think of Poke or wild poke since it is not something you can buy in a grocery store. Another 4-5 weeks and you will be able to go pick poke greens. Then you take the skin from the true country ham cooked at Christmas and put it in the greens and cook them all day. Serve with a side of cracklin cornbread. Or at least that is how I was taught to do it  |
ummm UMMM!
I'm sure that poke/wild poke is the same thing as is commonly called "poke salat" in the deeper South.
Use of it comes from the times of widespread poverty in the South. When people didn't have any greens from the garden and couldn't afford to buy them at the store, they would do as you said and go out and pick them--in the woods or edge of the woods, I think (I don't think that they grow well or at all in fields where there is a great amount of sunshine).
There's a song about it, "Poke Salat Annie." I think that several different people sang it; anyway Elvis Presley's rendition is the one that at least I remember best. Elvis, at least, would tell people before he sang the song that it is not "polk salad," but is "poke salat." Nevertheless, it seems like those who put the name of the song on the albums and elsewhere would invariably put it down wrong--"polk salad."
BTW--at least one of my grandmothers considered it a delicacy. That's what seems to have often happened with some Southern foods--food that started out as the poor man's fare gradually, after there was more prosperity and it wasn't necessary to eat these things for survival, became Southern delicacies. The grandmother that considered it a delicacy would prepare it when she wanted a treat, along with pork brains. I'll have the poke salat, but I'll pass on the pork brains, please. ha.