An old Irish dish to Appalachian tastes: Kalecannon with smoked ham

[theHandpuppet]

4. Sheep aren't a common livestock animal in our region

Appalachia, being heavily wooded, isn't prime sheep country. Neither is it prime beef country, as both cattle and sheep need large grazing areas. The primary source of meat in Appalachia became hogs, an animal that can be quite at home in the wooded hills as they are both excellent foragers and have a much more varied diet than grazing animals. Of course, many families kept a milk cow.

These days you can pick up any kind of meat you want at the store but my grandparents and even my parents ate a more traditional diet of pork and chicken. We rarely had beef and I'd never had a steak until I went to college. I still haven't developed a taste for beef. My mother, who grew up desperately poor, rarely ate meat at all because it just wasn't something she was accustomed to in her diet.

So some foods transferred quite nicely into the Appalachian diet and others didn't, for various reasons. I think the diet is much more varied in the southern Appalachians where growing seasons are longer and there are more of the influences of southern cooking.