46 | November/December 2017
Wilbert and Mary Lou Faircloth
Turkey and the fixings are the usual
tasty fare at holiday meals at Wilbert
and Mary Lou Faircloth's house in
Clinton.
Most guests are extremely partial to
Mary Lou's rum cake, the traditional
holiday dessert at the Faircloth home.
But the couple's daughters always
clamored for something else – a layered
salad.
It always tickled Mary Lou, that
her children craved something with
vegetables, not sugar.
e salad – layers of lettuce, spinach,
green peas, cheese, bacon bits, a mix
of sour cream and ranch dressing,
with red onions, black olives and
diced tomatoes occasionally added
in – remains popular with the couple's
grandchildren.
"It's nice," Mary Lou said, "because
you can make it ahead of time."
Trevor and Dalia Swaby
Trevor and Dalia Swaby of
Fayetteville always incorporate dishes
from their native land of Jamaica into
their holiday meals.
ey might serve a whole fried red
snapper complete with eyeballs, jerk
chicken, oxtails, curry and rice with
pigeon peas. Dalia said pigeon peas
are like black-eyed peas but smaller.
She cooks the peas, then adds coconut
milk, scallions and thyme. She then
adds steamed white rice until the liquid
is absorbed.
Drinks include "sorrel," a spicy,
fruity mixture made with dried
hibiscus, known in Jamaica as sorrel.
And then there's the piece de
resistance – black cake.
A traditional holiday dish
throughout the English-speaking
Caribbean, black cakes contain
rum-soaked fruit, brown sugar and a
bittersweet caramel called browning.
Layered salad
Jerk chicken
