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(Download PDF) The Month of Their Ripening North Carolina Heritage Foods Through The Year Georgann Eubanks Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) The Month of Their Ripening North Carolina Heritage Foods Through The Year Georgann Eubanks Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
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The Month of Their Ripening
The Month of
Their Ripening
North Carolina Heritage
Foods through the Year
GEORGANN EUBANKS
Epilogue 245
Acknowledgments 249
Bibliography 253
Index 263
Remind yourself that the one you love is mortal,
that what you love does not belong to you,
it is given you for the present time, not irrevocably or for ever,
but just like a fig or a bunch of grapes at the season of ripeness.
This book explores a dozen such North Carolina foods that are exemplary of
our state’s culture and history. The seasonal fruits, vegetables, dairy, and sea-
xi
food to be considered—some wild and others cultivated—offer more than
physical nourishment. They help to elaborate our collective story—past and
present—as people of many tastes and habits. They are part of the vernacu-
lar of North Carolina kitchens and our varied landscape. Some also serve as
bellwethers of North Carolina’s environmental future.
Organized by the month of their arrival, these heritage foods are quite
perishable and therefore most precious in their fresh form. They epitomize
the kinds of flavors that make us long for the harvest, yearning for their bright
tastes on our tongues, even as we pull out preserves and frozen facsimiles
from the fridge in bleakest winter. Writers of fiction, poetry, and essay have
extolled their virtues. Discerning restaurants and drive-by diners incorpo-
rate them into their seasonal menus. But most important, these are foods
that are not available year-round. We have to long for them, and in that long-
ing is their special character.
It is easy to become complacent, thanks to the profusion at the gro-
cery—fruits and vegetables shipped green from afar, ultimately turning up
near-ripe in the produce section. This staged array lasts all year long, but at
what cost? For instance, how many modes of transportation did it take to
ship those blackberries in February from Chile? Or how true to their real
ripened character are the figs that have traveled 3,000 miles from a tree in
California? How much fuel did these products consume before we con-
sumed them? And who has not despaired at the taste of a bright red but
cardboard-flavored winter tomato that began life in a greenhouse under hot
artificial light, its roots shot through with synthetic nutrition?
As novelist and naturalist Barbara Kingsolver explains in Animal, Vege-
table, Miracle, “For modern kids who intuitively believe in the spontaneous
generation of fruits and vegetables in the produce section, trying to get their
minds around the slow speciation of the plant kingdom may be a stretch.”
Thus, for our own sake and the benefit of our children, we need to re-
capture the practice of anticipation. Then later we can savor the rewards of
those authentic, local, seasonal foods whose arrival is driven by nature, not
commerce.
Food, memory, and season are inextricably linked, most directly by the
gift of smell. As Diane Ackerman, in A Natural History of the Senses, puts it,
“Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision
leaps out of the undergrowth.”
It’s not a stretch, then, to consider how, beyond fond family memo-
ries, once-a-year foods also help us to build community, containing for us
xii Preface
the sweet and savory traditions particular to place, climate, soil, and season.
Chef Peter Hoffman, writing in the magazine Edible Manhattan, pretty much
sums it up: “Food unique to a certain time and place still calls out to us with
a power and urgency that ubiquitous dishes found on menus in all 50 states
never can.”
Terroir, a concept most commonly discussed in relation to wines, is the
combination of unique environmental factors that affect a crop beyond the
variety of the plant itself—external factors, such as soil, water, sunshine, and
the slope of the land. Few states have the biodiversity of North Carolina,
with its range of climate, soil, and altitude. Some plants flourish all across
the state; others are more discretely regional. Either way, our state’s food-
ways are born of a special bounty and regional interpretations across many
kitchens.
North Carolina oyster lovers have been known to invoke the term “mer-
roir” when considering the relative salinity associated with the location of
oyster beds in the state’s many inlets. In December, when little else is being
harvested, oysters are a most delicious prize and the subject of great debate
among aficionados about whether the bivalves of Stump Sound on the back-
side of Topsail Island in Pender County or the oysters from Stumpy Point
in Dare County have the finest taste. Of course, there are many other con-
tenders, too, but most oyster lovers would agree that there’s hardly anything
better on a crisp, starlit night than an oyster roast where the hardwood fire
is smoldering beneath the metal altar on which the oysters are laid, bathing
all comers in a savory scent that clings to our clothes until bedtime. Such a
sweet communion of salt, smoke, and friends: elbow to elbow, each with one
hand gloved and the other bare, twisting an oyster knife; then, at intervals,
raising up our half shells for the sacred slurp.
It can be misleading when you google the phrase “unique foods in
North Carolina” only to land on a list of brand names: Pepsi, Cheerwine,
Texas Pete, Krispy Kreme, Hardee’s, Bojangles, K&W, Lance, and Mt. Olive
Pickles—all interesting products with daring stories of bootstrap entrepre-
neurship behind them. But in this project, I aimed to meet the growers and
fisherfolk, the professional and home cooks who are carrying on culinary tra-
ditions more deeply rooted in North Carolina terroir than these commercial
products are.
Among the twelve foods considered here, some have been better known
in the past, such as the intensely sweet Ridgeway cantaloupes of Warren
County, cultivated as early as the 1880s by German farmers who worked their
Prefacexiii
magic on the local soil and then shipped their harvest by train up the East
Coast to such restaurants as the one in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Today there is only one farmer left, a descendent of those early German
settlers, who grows the original Ridgeway.
Likewise, shad, the focus for March, is the largest member of the herring
family but not as well known or plentiful in North Carolina as it was during
the Civil War. Back then, one commercial shad fishery was reportedly shut
down and the proprietor imprisoned by Union forces in an effort to cut off a
key food source for hungry Confederate troops come spring. Even as herring
have been dreadfully overfished in the commercial waters off the coast, shad
still swim inland and upstream in our eastern North Carolina rivers each
year, and they are prized both for sport and sustenance.
Other foods considered here are much more commonly known and ap-
preciated. The month of May presents the story of two purveyors of soft-
shell crabs: Murray Bridges of Colington Island, who has mentored many
younger fishermen, including his good friend Willy Phillips, who sells thou-
sands of dozens of the creatures each year, working out of a roadside seafood
market on Highway 64 in Columbia, North Carolina.
The February essay moves among goat dairies—one developed by Lilian
Steichen Sandburg, the poet Carl Sandburg’s wife, in 1945 near Flat Rock, in
the western mountains. Her goat breeding expertise led to the relocation of
the national headquarters of the American Dairy Goat Association to Spin-
dale, North Carolina. Sampling the first goat’s milk of the year may not be to
everyone’s taste, but its nutritional value and the creative dishes into which
“the other white milk” is now being applied could yet change some minds
and palates.
Along the way, each essay also provides suggested destinations where
you might sample these foods, take in a local celebration, or learn more
about the agricultural and historical resources of the region. And when
there’s a recipe that you won’t find elsewhere, that’s included, too.
So let us begin. Herein we joyfully celebrate a dozen North Carolina
native foods ready to taste in the month of their ripening and then to pine
for as another year goes by. They provide us with both nourishment and the
rare chance to practice the art of anticipation.
xiv Preface
The Month of Their Ripening
This page intentionally left blank
Shelby Stephenson, poet laureate of North Carolina, stands at a window watching
the weather in the Johnston County plank house where he was born.
(Used by permission of the photographer, Jan G. Hensley)
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Rautalammin
runoniekan Albert Kukkosen runoja
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and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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Language: Finnish
Kirj.
Albert Kukkonen
SISÄLLYS:
Runoilijan alkulause.
Johdanto.
Eero Varis Albert Kukkoselle
Runoilija Pentti Lyytisen patsasta paljastaissa.
Nykyinen aika.
Kansanjuhlassa Rautalammilla.
Kansanopistolla Äänekoskella lukuvuotta alkaissa.
Vanhan miehen miettehiä Lomakurssien lopussa.
Nuorisoseuran kokouksessa.
Vielä virttä viinan töistä.
Maamiespäivillä Rautalammilla.
Pellervon päivillä Helsingissä.
Valtiopäiväin avaamisesta.
Keisari Aleksanterin kuolinpäivästä.
Kiistelystä kielen päältä valtiopäivillä.
Suomenkielen asia ritari- ja aatelisäädyssä valtiopäivillä.
Hiljaiset Valtiopäivät.
Nuorisollen neuvoksi välttämähän väkijuomat.
Entisistä ja nykyisistä ajoista.
Rautatie-kokouksessa Pieksämäellä.
Muistelmia Iisalmen näyttelyssä käynnistä.
Teaterihuoneella juhlassa kylvettäjäin hyväksi Kuopiossa.
Kirurgisessa sairaalassa olostani Helsingissä.
Muistelmia vuosisadan vaihteessa.
RUNOILIJAN ALKULAUSE.
Rupeaisinpa runollen,
Läksisinpä laulutyöllen,
Kuin ois oppia otsassa,
Tuntoa tuolla tukan alla
Eli taitoa takana;
Vaan olen aivan oppimaton
Kirjoitusta koittamahan,
Paperille piirtämähän.
———
Kuin ois kaunis Kalevala,
Kantelettaret kädessä,
Niissä oppia olisi,
Oivallista ojennusta,
Kaikki kaunista tekoa,
Niissä on runot rustattuna,
Niissä laulut laitettuna,
Sananlaskutkin saneltu,
Kaikki laatunsa mukaiset,
Joka sorttihin sopivat:
llolaulut, surulaulut,
Miesten laulut, naisten laulut,
Vaimojen valituslaulut,
Laulut lapsille hyville,
Laulut päiville pahoille,
Neitosille naitaville,
Kosioillen katsottuna.
Vielä on vanhan Väinämöisen
Loihturunot runsahasti
Kalevalahan koottu,
Joissa on oppi oivallinen,
Kaikki taito tarpeellinen,
Suomen kielellen sopiva
Suomalaisten suosioksi.
———
Kiitän vielä viimeseksi
Niiden herrojen hyvyyttä,
Jotka ylös ottelevat,
Vanhat laulut laittelevat,
Kelpo kirjaksi kyhäävät.
Olkoon kiitos kirjoitettu,
Sanottu Savon ukolta,
Teillen taitavat tekiät,
Hyvät herrat Helsingissä,
Että ootten etsinynnä
Suomesta suloiset laulut.
Niinpä saatamme sanoa
Maamme puolelta puhua:
Ei ne herrat helpommasti
Maata, ruualle rupia,
Jotka kaikki kiertelevät,
Laajaa maata matkustavat,
Suomen sukua hakevat.
Suomella on vähän sukua,
Aivan vähä aatelia,
Vielä on Virossa vähäsen,
Venäjällä veikkosia.