Fermented cabbage
by Elijah Gaddis When we put out the call for NCFood posts on fermentation, we had no idea we’d get two so close together! But fermentation, the ages-old method of preserving foods, is a hot topic. Yes, it tastes great, but it also deconstructs the confines of the growing season. Thanks to both Elijah Gaddis […]
My First Rooster Kill
by Ronda Birtha I’m going to guess that for many people reading this post, killing a rooster is not a big deal. So I’m just going to ask all of you to whom this is old hat … please indulge this city girl. I’ve known Bill and Janet Silver from Murphy, NC for about 9 […]
Priddy’s General Store
by Malinda Dunlap Fillingim Sometimes a girl just wants a simple sandwich with nothing fancy on it, just bites of goodness. That’s what I wanted one summer day after hiking at Hanging Rock. My old legs were telling me to rest and my stomach was telling me to eat. I listened to both and headed […]
Pepper Preservation: Two Experiments
by Laura Fieselman Tomorrow is the new moon, and for those who plant by tradition the Farmers’ Almanac indicates it’s time to set out the very first plants of the season (which would be peas). But this year it seems like the frosts just keep on coming and coming and coming … we’re sharing a […]
Downtown Bakery, Murphy, NC
by Ronda L. Birtha When Margie Freel Carpenter said that she is the kind of person who looks for a bakery as she travels about, I knew exactly what she meant and why she meant it. A good hometown bakery is to a neighborhood what your favorite room is to your home: the place where […]
A Pot of Hospitality
by Malinda Dunlap Fillingim A big pot of pinto beans lived at Mama Dunlap’s Stokes County home. Her cast iron frying pan held golden cracklin’ corn bread she made each morning before the sun woke up. When her oven got hot enough to melt the unmeasured lard, she put the cornbread batter in, telling me to […]
Simmering Stew Brings a Community Together
by Ray Linville The center of small town is not always a town hall, courthouse, or church. Sometimes it’s a pot of bubbling stew as it is each fall in Mount Gilead, a community of slightly more than 1,000 residents in Montgomery County. Although the community is small, just about everyone knows about the Brunswick […]
How a Slice of Pie Became a History Lesson
by Joy Salyers Last week I was sitting at the high counter in my mother’s Hillsborough kitchen with her and her best friend of more than three decades, who was down for a visit. We had in front of us plates of pumpkin pie that my mother had made. I guess some folks just eat […]
Sweet Potatoes: Providing Fresh Food for the Needy
by Ray Linville Please contact the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina directly f you are needing food: 919-875-0707 North Carolina produces about half of all the sweet potatoes grown in the United States, and it has consistently ranked as the top producing state for more than 30 years. More than half of […]
Christmas Cookies at Nana’s
by Laura Fieselman This is a ritual of the finest sort. It begins with dutiful contemplation and moves slowly through a prescribed set of dance moves. It requires specific equipment and traditional music. It crescendos with a pile of dishes in the sink and closes with the same narration each year. This is Christmas cookies […]
Lumbee Fish Market: As Fresh as Being on the Coast
by Ray Linville Drive to the beach along U.S. Highway 74 and tune in a local radio station. If you do, you might hear an ad for Lumbee Fish Market in Pembroke that is so intriguing that you want to visit. It’s a market with fish that you might not expect in a location about […]
The ultimate melting pot: Ethiopian Thanksgivikah
by Alison Aucoin As I made my shopping list for our Thanksgiving dinner, NPR inundated me with side dish suggestions for the hybrid holiday, Thanksgivikah. And just to keep the momentum of cultural stereotypes going, they added the traditional Jewish guilt: Thanksgiving won’t happen during Hannukah again for 80,000 years. Gah, 80,000 years is a […]
Coke Is It: A Love Story
by Sarah Bryan It’s a moment that a lot of Southerners have had: when folks from somewhere else single out a characteristic of our speech or behavior that is evidently outlandish to the rest of the world, but that, until that moment, we hadn’t realized was at all weird. “You carried your grandmother to the […]
Time for Persimmon Pudding
by Ray Linville Cool temperatures mean fall fruits and vegetables. When the summer temperatures drop, one tree becomes more noticeable as its round fruit ripens and takes on an orange-brown hue. Is it time to pick persimmons and make pudding? Many of us remember days from childhood when we asked if the persimmons could be […]
A Konichiwa Thanksgiving at Grandma’s House
by Marc Wyatt This Thanksgiving we invited our new international friends from UNC Wilmington to join us in Hillsborough as we gathered for the Traditional Family Meal at Kim’s mom’s house. Home from field service abroad, it promised to be a special time for us as our college-aged children, Rebecca (senior Meredith College) and Jon […]
For The Love of Cream Corn
by Ronda Birtha For people who love corn, that love is almost a religious experience. From as far back as I can remember, I have loved corn in almost all its incarnations: on the cob, off the cob, in chowder, in breads, and popped on the stove, and even occasionally in the microwave. But there […]
Apple Stack Cake
by Frances Dowell I recently finished writing a novel set in the fictional mountain town of Stone Gap, North Carolina. In one chapter, twelve-year-old Arie Mae Sparks is invited to a picnic by her so-called betters, and her mother insists she bring an apple stack cake as an offering. Arie Mae is torn. On the […]
What’s for Lunch?
by Laura Fieselman Trowels and leather work-gloves litter the scene. A few folks wearing overalls tack lathing to the exterior walls, their confident stances and the nail guns that hang from their belts proclaiming that they have done this a time or two. I help another group shove clumps of piedmont clay through a square […]
Food, Service, and Prices from Yesterday at the Chicken Coop
by Ray Linville A few places serving food in our state are caught in a time warp and remain unchanged since the days that they opened. Price’s Chicken Coop, established in 1962, in the South End of Charlotte is definitely one. Seeing the name of Chicken Coop, you know exactly what to order. The classic […]
North Carolina Blueberries
by Deborah Miller I didn’t actually GO blueberry picking with Joy Salyers and Elijah Gaddis, but I heard all about it and got to enjoy the bounty. Heck, I don’t even know where they went. But that Monday, I came into work to find a large container on my desk filled almost to overflowing. So […]
Boiled Peanuts, A Southern Tradition
by Elena Rosemond-Hoerr The dog days of summer, as the hot and humid late summer days are often called, inspire in me a deep seated desire to swampify myself. For as long as I can remember my family migrated to the coastal town of Morehead City in the late summer to camp out in the […]
New Farmers in North Carolina: Karen Refugees
by Ray Linville More than 14,000 refugees have been resettled in North Carolina in the past decade, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. As these refugee communities grow, they are beginning to transform food traditions of our state and expand the agricultural offerings at farmers’ markets and farm-to-home deliveries provided through community-supported agriculture. […]
A Honey of a Diner
By Deborah Miller I hadn’t been to Honey’s in years until last week when I heard that they were on the verge of closing. Now I feel kinda bad about that, especially considering the childhood history I had with the 24-hour diner. Not to mention those middle of the night breakfasts when I was in […]
“Farm to Fork”ing it Every Tuesday at Blue Mountain Grill & Coffee
by Ronda Birtha When I Google “Farm to Fork” I get “About 13,700,000 results (0.24 seconds).” Thanks to Google’s new search algorithm, these top-ranking hits reflect my general location so I get an idea of how popular this trend is in my neck of the woods. Give it a try and see what your results […]