Has the week's weather put a chill in your bones?
The good folks at North Carolina's The Mast Farm Inn are ready to warm you up with a series of down home, stick-to-your-ribs, country cooking themed getaways. Called Winter Weekends, they run through March with each featuring one hearty, delicious dish.
For meat lovers, they have Meat & Potatoes Weekend. If you're eating light, try Mountain Trout Weekend. Stew fans will be in heaven on Chicken & Dumplings Weekend. You can pick the pig on Heritage Pork Weekend. Then there is the one that makes me want to move to The Mast Farm Inn and live there forever, Pot Pie Weekend.
Behind each theme is a full meal complete with a signature cocktail (New River Apple Butter Butter Tini sounds amazing) along with a featured local supplier. The one for my beloved Pot Pie Weekend is New River Organic Growers, a cooperative located in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
As if this celebration of wintertime dishes isn't already remarkable enough, these special weekends benefit more than your belly. Five percent of lodging and food sales help out the community with causes ranging from an historic, art deco theater to a forward-thinking cafe where diners pay what they can.
You don't even have to stay overnight. (Though if you do, the rate is discounted). Locals can drop by the inn's dining room or its nearby restaurant Simplicity to enjoy these amazing wintertime meals.
So which will you choose? And, if you go, do you think you could FedEx me a pot pie?

When leaves get crunchy and temperatures drop, hand me just one thing. I don't need a jacket or wool socks. You can keep the gloves and mittens. Heck, I'm not even sure I have to wear pants after a few sips from my one fall requisite—a big jar of apple pie moonshine.
For me, this is the flavor of autumn. Spiced yet sweet and warm all the way down, the apple version of Appalachia's most famous export brings to mind so many things I love. It tastes of creek water from hidden hollows; crisp, country air; and driving fast around hard mountain bends.
Unfortunately, where I live in Washington, DC, it's easier to find an honest politician than a jar of homemade moonshine, so lately, I've been drinking the legal stuff.
I know. I know. All you hardcore mountaineers are shaking your heads and thinking, "This feller's just a bit too citified," but before y'all judge, know that my favorite brand comes from a certified ridge runner.
Junior Johnson was arrested in 1957, right as he was lighting a fire under his daddy's still. Yes, that is NASCAR legend Junior Johnson. This is before he won fifty races and owned a team all his own. He was just a country boy with a lead foot back then, one who ended up on the wrong side of the law.
Junior's got a great story, but don't take my word for it. Appalachian journalist and professor Fred Sauceman thinks pretty highly of him too. Fred included the below essay in his book  Buttermilk & Bible Burgers: More Stories from the Kitchens of Appalachia. It's an outlaw-to-entrepreneur tale that could only happen in Southern mountains, and it comes complete with recipes for using Junior's spirits.
Now I'm wondering—who else has tried the legal stuff? How do you think it measures up to homemade moonshine? And wherever you get yours, how do you like to drink your white lightning?

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Once a symbol of mountain rebellion and law-breaking abandon, moonshine is becoming, well, almost genteel.
[caption id="attachment_10425" align="alignright" width="175"] Old Fashioned Apple Pie made with Junior's moonshine.[/caption]
NASCAR legend Junior Johnson, who served eleven months of a two-year sentence for running illegal liquor in the mid-1950s, is co-owner of a completely legal and legitimate distillery in Madison, North Carolina, not far from where he once evaded law enforcement officers through wheel-screeching, middle-of-the-road U-turns in a car loaded with his daddy’s moonshine.
Piedmont Distillers opened in 2005, and Junior joined as a partner two years later. The craft distillery’s moonshine recipe, Midnight Moon, is one Junior learned from his father, Robert Lynn Johnson Sr.
“We triple-distill it, and it’s got a real soft taste and not a burny taste,” Junior tells me, over a plate of barbecue and beans in a Tennessee hollow, where he has stopped to eat before an appearance at nearby Bristol Motor Speedway. “My daddy always run 100 proof. Ours is eighty.
“We go up against them big-name vodkas and beat the fire out of them,” says Junior, who grew up about ten miles outside North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. “We work them over now, I’ll tell you. We’ve not come out with anything yet that didn’t sell to the top of our expectations.”
In February of 2011, Piedmont introduced a line of “fruit inclusion spirits.” Cherry, strawberry, and apple pie are the new flavors. Mason jars are hand-filled with fruit and Midnight Moon corn liquor.
[caption id="attachment_10431" align="alignleft" width="175"] Moonshine Martini.[/caption]
“The ladies really like the apple pie,” Junior tells me. “We’re in thirty-seven states now, and people up north, they’re just drinking these products like the devil.”
When Junior and his colleagues were in the market for a still, they visited Jack Daniel’s in Tennessee and Jim Beam in Kentucky for ideas.
“Then we contacted a manufacturer, and three days later they called back and told us there was a still available in North Carolina, just like what we wanted. And built in 1930. And we went and hunted it down, and it was all copper. It didn’t have no rust on it or nothing. We cleaned that booger up and set our fire and went to making liquor.”
Junior Johnson was one of five inductees in the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s inaugural class. He received a presidential pardon from Ronald Reagan in 1986 for his 1956 moonshining conviction.

Old Fashioned Apple Pie

Moonshine Martini

Splitdog Fitz

Any other yardeners out there—you know, folks who love growing food in their yards?
Haynes Mansfield sure is one. In fact, he introduced me to the term (which I may need to put on a t-shirt). Over on his blog, Life Appalachia, Haynes writes about everything from improvised jam made with less-than-perfect strawberries to filling his yard with mounds, an ancient planting technique.
Gardening topics come naturally for Haynes, maybe because he has ample inspiration. His quarter-acre in West Virginia's New River Gorge region is packed full of peas, cherries, beans, chard, and tomatoes, but one crop stood out for him recently. The golden delicious apple—a fruit that can be found in just about any supermarket, Hinton to Hong Kong—recently gave Haynes a history lesson, expanding his understanding of what it means to be a mountaineer.

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For months I’ve been patiently watching yellowish, mottle-skinned fruits swell. Young golden delicious apples bobbing tenuously in the breeze, testing the strength of my sapling’s little, bowing branches.
The tree, a couple years old now, has survived a transplant from a home I briefly owned and a near girdling winter attack of a winter-starved, bark chewing vole. But, despite youth and strain, the scrappy little tree managed to set fruit this year. No small feat, given that we were struck by a brutal frost right when fruit trees set bloom preventing most from pollinating. My older neighbor, who grew up in the coal town of Minden, West Virginia, pointed out recently that I now know the meaning of the term “nipped in the bud.” Huh, sure enough…that’s exactly where the turn of phrase originates.

While I knew my plucky little sapling stands testament to the spirit of the West Virginia mountaineer metaphorically, I didn’t realize it’s also literally mountaineer by birth.
West Virginia natives, particularly those who attended public school, know that the Golden Delicious apple hales from these hills. Not only the state’s official fruit, its origins lay in pasture in Clay County, West Virginia and date back to the early 1900's.
Apparently that first Golden Delicious tree was just as persistent as my little one. Legend, as published by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, explains that one of the Mullin’s boys, J.M. Mullins, was tasked with mowing a pasture by scythe when he stumbled across a young apple tree and decided to spare it from the blade. “Now, young feller, I’ll just leave you there” was the thought he later described regarding the tree. He continued the tradition in future mowings and the result was a hardy, fruit bearing apple tree.
After acquiring the Mullin’s family farm, J.M’s uncle, one Anderson Mullins, put some of the tree’s outstanding apples in the mail. He sent them to the famous apple propagator, Mr. Stark, of Stark Brothers orchard in Missouri. So impressed by the flavor, and long-storing qualities of this new apple Mr. Stark immediately sent a representative to the farm who purchased the tree, and thirty feet of land around it, for the company. The tree, it’s fruit, and propagation rights became exclusively those of Starks Brothers Nursery.
Facts get hazy, as history tends, in the area regarding compensation. Some claim that Starks purchased the rights of the apple soon to be named Golden Delicious for $5000. Others claim that only an initial payment of $25 was ever handed over to the Mullins family. Regardless, the trees that Stark propagated from this first specimen are the forefathers of all Golden Delicious apples in the world, including those often purchased on supermarket shelves.
I grew up in North Carolina where we paid homage to the long leaf pine, tobacco, and cotton. I learned of my home state’s fruit in my grandfather’s backyard where he grew the thick-skinned, musky flavored scuppernong grape. I missed the early education and Mountain State connection to the golden delicious apple. Knowing little about apples, my decision to plant this tree was of practical, agrarian reason. The golden delicious is one of the most prolific pollinators in the apple orchard. It sets heavy fruit and helps most other apple varieties pollinate. It is cold hardy and renowned for its flavor. It’s even the base of homemade mountaineer delicacies like applesauce and apple butter.

I’m also a yardener. It’s a term that I jokingly use as I’m in no way a farmer. But the boundary between my garden and landscaping is heavily blurred, making it difficult to fit my practices into the boundaries of vegetable gardening. While I have homesteading dreams, my house is on a small one-quarter acre lot tucked into the town of Fayetteville, West Virginia. My homestead plans include a small orchard, but for now I’ve satiated my dream by mixing apple, peach, and pear trees into my corner of the New River Gorge region.
I’ve also become interested in growing heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables, those which retain their ability to set true seed and typically are raised and propagated for their flavor and other culinary benefits versus those related to modern production agriculture, shipping and food storage. (Ever wonder why all those grocery store tomatoes look exactly the same? And taste exactly tasteless? It’s all about harvest and transport and has almost nothing to do with flavor.)
I’m not sure where I first stumbled across the fact, but learning that the Golden Delicious was not just West Virginia hardy, but of true Mountain State lineage, I became even more excited and full of admiration for my little apple tree.
This week, autumn nights have drifted towards cool temperatures, you know, when flip flops and jeans feel right and sleeping with the windows open is a must. Monarch butterflies are flitting through on their migration south and the New River Gorge has become adorned with the fall wildflower palette of gold and violet.
It’s apple season.
This week, I succumbed to my patient temptation. Gently supporting the whip like branch of my apple tree, I plucked one of the 4 apples from its perch. My favorite pin knife, with its chipped stag handle, slid its home in my jeans pocket and quartered the fruit. It’s juices puddled on the blade, a testament to peak freshness.
The first bite? Delicious, and, surely worth it’s weight in gold.

Long before they were frozen in cardboard boxes, before they formed tall heaps on grocers' shelves, even before they were planted in pioneer gardens, green beans grew in Appalachia. According to today's guest blogger, they've been nourishing folks in our mountains for some 1,400 years.
While Fred Sauceman can't remember quite that far back, he has always loved the "snap and ping" of green beans—breaking off their ends and tossing beans into an enamel pan. As he tells us in the below post, this was the soundtrack to countless front porch sessions and family conversations when he was growing up.
Maybe it was for you too. Do you crave the rhythm of the snap and ping? Where do you like to break your beans? And where do you get them—from a local farm, from Kroger, or are you part of a lucky family with its own heirloom variety?
We'd love to hear about your relationship with this classic veggie, and if you'd like to see more essay's from Fred, check out his book Buttermilk & Bible Burgers: More Stories from the Kitchens of Appalachia.Full of pretty pictures and quirky tales, it spotlights some of the region's best and most unusual eats.

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Kentucky Wonders. Half-runners. Turkey Craws. Greasy Cut-Shorts. Just the terms themselves conjure summertime memories. Green beans are among the land’s most precious gifts this time of year.
If you’ve ever broken a bean, you’ll never forget the snap and then the ping you hear when you toss it into an enamel pan. Green bean snap and ping are two of summer’s most unforgettable sounds. Fresh garden vegetables are the most healthiest food that you can possibly eat. But one needs to be extra careful about lectin that is present vegetables like tomatoes. Make sure that you check out the best way to remove lectins from tomatoes before you eat raw vegetables from your garden.
Now coming back to beans, I’ve heard my people talk of breaking beans all my life. My parents broke them, they tell me, the day before I was born. The breaking always brought forth speculation on how weather affected the thickness of the bean strings and talk of long-forgotten varieties like the Myers Family Bean of Greene County, Tennessee. Never trust a stringless bean, I was always told.
There’s a rhythm to the breaking of beans. And a ritual—of fan-swept front porches, antique pans, scallop-shaped metal chairs, and newspapers in laps.
In the 1930s, when my grandmother heard the engine of the produce truck echoing off the pavement of Carson Street in Greeneville, Tennessee, she’d grab a pan and head to the house of the buyer, to offer her services as volunteer bean-breaker, no compensation or trade for labor required.
Green beans brought out the best in folks. Still do. My father always said the more green beans you gave away, the better your plants produced.
My friend Bill Best, a North Carolinian who now lives in Berea, Kentucky, knows more about green beans than anyone I’ve ever met. Bill’s a seed-saver, preserving what we’ve come to call heirloom varieties. He told me once about a Noble Bean, probably named for a family but I’d like to think for its character, too.
This bean once traveled from West Virginia to Oregon. The great-granddaughter of the man who brought the bean to the Northwest sent Bill some seeds that weren’t germinating. They’d been in a container for about twenty years. Meticulously, Bill coaxed six seeds out of 100 to germinate. All of them died but one. From that one plant, he saved eleven seeds.
“If I’m lucky,” he says, “I will have helped bring this bean back from extinction.”
Green beans are as resilient as the mountain people who cherish them. Archaeologists tell us that green beans have been growing in the Appalachians for at least 1,400 years.
“These were cut-short varieties, with beans so closely packed that they square off on the ends,” Bill says. “Cut-shorts would have been highly valued by native peoples because of their high protein content. They’re still highly valued today.”
So are Greasy Beans. In fact, Bill Davidson, owner of Davidson’s Country Store and Farm near Rogersville, Tennessee, calls them “the green bean connoisseur’s green bean.” And they’re named not for taste and texture but rather for their slick, oily-looking appearance. As green beans go, they’re finicky. If the temperature reaches seventy degrees at night and stays there for awhile, they can abort their blooms.
No matter the variety, in the kitchen, green beans adapt well to the speed of the pressure cooker or the languor of the Dutch oven, to the opulence of fatback or the prudence of olive oil.
They freeze, they can, they pickle. And for those unbroken, they dry and rattle, threaded onto a piece of string as “leather britches,” their richness to be reconstituted in water long after the growing season has ended.
“Beans were woven into the fabric of everything we did as a family and community,” remembers Bill Best.
Those backyard, under-the-maple-trees bean-breaking sessions attracted neighbors, grandparents, and cousins, brought together by the immediate promise of green beans and new potatoes right off the stove, as well as the hope of a warm weather meal and memory come winter.

From the Athens, Tennessee home where one Trula Bailey experimented with Appalachian cooking to local restaurants like Mario’s Fishbowl—a West Virginia hotspot for competitive eating—Fred Sauceman has uncovered Appalachia’s foodways with an eye for the colorful.
His new book Buttermilk & Bible Burgers: More Stories from the Kitchens of Appalachia shows off some of the region's best and most unusual eats. There’s the general store where you have to reserve your ribs, the fancy hotel that serves peanut soup, the drug store counter where you pour your own coffee, and even a nod to Thomas Wolfe’s food addiction.
Appalachia’s dietary quirks have never been in more capable hands. Fred turns out tale after tale, each with mouthwatering photos and prose that makes you feel like you're right in the kitchen with him, but none pull my heartstrings more than "Remembering Trula Bailey." It's the story of a woman who became famous for her muffins and, in the process, became part of a family.
Big thanks to Fred for sharing it on The Revivalist.

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Her name was almost musical. Trula Bailey. Her falsetto laugh would get you every time. But what she could do with a frying pan and a bowl of flour was almost miraculous.
I’m sure she fed me my first mushroom. My fascination with eggplant began with her. And to this day, over thirty years later, I still say she made the prettiest pie I’ve ever seen, an apricot chiffon.
I suppose some would have called Trula Bailey a domestic. I never used that word. Although she worked for my aunt and uncle, Mary Nelle and Grover Graves, in Athens, Tennessee, for decades, it was never, to them, much of an employer-employee relationship. Trula did the kinds of things people in white uniforms did in the 1950s and ’60s. She cooked. She cleaned. But above all the chores, she cared.
Trula needed a family. She never had much luck with men. “I’m going to divide your head,” she reportedly said once to her husband after he had been out all night.
She remained childless. After her mother died, a blind sister was her only relative. It was the Graves family, white and well off, that shaped her world. While my uncle ran the First National Bank and my aunt worked in the President’s Office at Tennessee Wesleyan College, Trula oversaw operations on the homefront, 102 Forrest Avenue.
To the duties of running a busy household, she added the responsibilities of a self-taught health care pro, helping my grandmother learn to walk and talk and write again after a devastating stroke.
Trula always spoke with a smile in her voice. With the exception of encounters involving errant spouses, most of her stories were happy ones.
She had grown up in Vonore, with both Cherokee and African American ancestry. My uncle’s first wife taught her to read, in the 1930s. Equipped with that new skill, she scoured cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers and combined the trendy with the tried-and-true, coming up with a cooking style all her own.
Take the wholewheat muffins she made for my uncle’s two sons, who stuffed them into their pockets and headed off for school. She built such a reputation in Athens with those muffins that folks began calling them “Trula Rolls.”
Yet no one could replicate them. In her later years, I attempted to document the recipe. I never believed that Trula was being less than forthcoming with me by withholding an ingredient, but I could never match her results.
In Ford Times, a small magazine published by the motor company, Trula noticed an eggplant recipe and fashioned it as her own: Stuffed Eggplant on the Half Shell. Its Ritz cracker topping and silver knife doneness test speak of the 1950s. We still make it today.
Trula could take a piece of round steak, some flour, some oil, and salt and pepper and make gravy with a flavor so deep, you’d swear she’d emptied the spice shelf.
Trula took most of her meals alone, in the Graves kitchen, and when guests wanted seconds, which they invariably did, my aunt would ring a bell for service. But as civil rights advances occurred in the 1960s, that bell, eventually, was put away, and Trula finally claimed her rightful spot at the long wooden table in the family dining room.
That house, once filled with the smell of baking country hams and bourbon-laced sweet potatoes, is no longer in the family. The last meal I had there was more than fifteen years ago. Most of the people who sat around that table and celebrated my grandmother’s birthday every March 6 with coconut cake and boiled custard are gone.
Trula was one of the last to go. She died on January 6, 2002, at age ninety-two, and is buried in Athens alongside her mother, sister, and that husband she once threatened.
Now, on our dining room wall in Johnson City hangs a watercolor, painted by Nancy Earnest, from a photograph. It’s Trula, breaking into a big smile and offering up one of her enigmatic wholewheat muffins, once again.

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Trula Bailey’s Stuffed Eggplant on the Half Shell
1 large eggplant, split lengthwise
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup celery, chopped
¼ cup onion, chopped
3 ounces butter
2 eggs, well-beaten
1 cup milk
½ cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup Ritz crackers, rolled, plus extra for topping
Scoop insides from eggplant and cook in salt water until tender. Drain, chop, and season with salt and pepper. Cook celery and onion in butter until tender. Mix with seasoned eggplant and remaining ingredients and place in eggplant halves. Sprinkle top with additional cracker crumbs. Bake one hour in a 350-degree oven, or until a silver knife inserted comes out clean. Serves four.

Dig deep beneath the Appalachian mountains, and you'll never believe what you'll find—the last, briny remnants of an ancient ocean. Our region was once underwater, covered by the Iapetus Ocean (grandpa to today's Atlantic), and while our mountains rose high and dry a few hundred million years ago, the Iapetus left a delicious gift behind.
Salt.
This was news to me, but turns out, it isn't a recent discovery. Back in 1814, William Dickinson of Bedford, Virginia learned that across the Allegheny Mountains folks were boiling brine from local springs to extract the sodium-chloride. A savvy entrepreneur, Dickinson bought property in Malden, Virginia (now West Virginia) and within three years was producing his own brand of mountain salt. Soon this corner of Appalachia was being called “the salt making capital of the east."
[caption id="attachment_9753" align="alignright" width="260"] Photo provided by Lauren Stonestreet, Elle Effect Photography.[/caption]
Fast forward about two hundreds years. Big producers like Morton Salt have long since put smaller competitors out of business, but a new artisinal spirit is taking hold. Local meat and cheese is growing in popularity; farmers markets are all the rage; and Dickinson's descendants, siblings Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne, begin thinking about their unusual heritage. Drawing water from the same well used by their forebearer, they evaporate the brine using "the power of the sun and gentle mountain breezes," and in the process, they revive a product that everyone thought was lost to time.
J. Q. Dickinson Salt-Works now produces a farm-to-table seasoning like no other. This local salt is free of the contaminants and heavy metals that can be found in salt drawn from above-ground oceans. It is naturally high in minerals, and having formed some 400,000 millennia ago, it takes heritage cooking to a whole new level.
So what do you think—are you ready to give local salt a try? How would you use it? Any other seasonings from the region that you'd recommend?

To celebrate the upcoming Appalachian Food Summit, author Kendra Bailey Morris generously offered to give away a signed copy of her hit cookbook The Southern Slow Cooker. This gastronomic page-turner opens with a question and an answer that might surprise you.

What is Southern food?
Southern food is the welcome table, a convivial place where you can savor a hearty meal cooked with love and where there's always room for one more chair. It doesn't matter whether you're born and bred, a transplant, or just passing through: you are welcome here.

Isn't it interesting that Kendra doesn't define Southern food by naming specific dishes, ingredients, or even places?
She recognizes that, in the South, how we eat is as important as what we eat. If you agree, you can enter to win her autographed cookbook. Just retweet this piece from The Revivalist's Twitter page or share it from our Facebook page. The winner will be selected from entries received by noon ET on Sunday, May 18, 2014 and announced on both of those sites.
As it turns out, that's the same day as the Appalachian Food Summit in Hindman, Kentucky. If you're in the area, swing by, meet Kendra, and help celebrate our region's signature foods in this first of its kind gathering, which brings together authors, chefs, farmers, advocates, scholars, and regular folk who know good eats. Highlights include...

• A fair featuring regional food and farm organizations
• An oral history booth where you can share Appalachian food memories
• A book signing with Appalachian cookbook authors, including Kendra
• A talk on heirloom plants by renowned seed-saver Bill Best
• Remarks from Jamie Ross, who produced and co-wrote the PBS documentary Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People

The big finale is a dinner prepared by acclaimed chef Travis Milton, who recently shared a recipe here for farmer's cheese with ramps and herbs. While the dinner is sold out (I know—I shouldn't have even told you about it), all of the other activities are open to the public and free. Festivities start at noon and run until 6:00 PM at the Hindman Settlement School.
If you go, be sure to let us know what you thought of the event!

WILD RAMPS. PHOTO BY KRISS LARSON. "First, step back about three feet. I can tell you've been munching those ramps. Second, isn't cheese really hard to make?" It's late spring. By now, I trust you've tiptoed into the woods, maybe under cover of darkness; pinched your nose with one hand; and fast as a rabbit, harvested your secret ramp stash using the other.Your kitchen—make that your whole house—probably smells like you've rubbed the walls with garlic and onions. Neighbors have stopped visiting, haven't they? Has your dog run off yet? Did the rest of the family decide to take a trip without you?Don't worry. They'll come back, and in the meantime, you've got ramps to eat. Ramps with eggs. Ramps with home fries. Ramps aioli. Grilled ramps. Pickled ramps. I'm sure you've worked your way through the list and by now, you're looking for something new.Chef Travis Milton has you covered. This Appalachian native grew up roaming the hillsides of Southwest Virginia and pestering chefs in his family's Russell County restaurant. Today, he marries his love of mountains with his love of food at Hickory, an upscale yet down-home restaurant in Bristol, Virginia. CHEF TRAVIS MILTON Bristol, Tennessee Since March 2022, Travis has helmed the Appalachian-inspired Hickory. The restaurant's website explains that he draws from his Southwest Virginia roots but approaches traditional foods "in a fresh way that he hopes will build upon the cuisine’s heritage."This unique eatery is part of the sprawling Nicewonder Farm & Vineyard, which also offers lodging and award-winning wine. When Travis told me about farmer's cheese with ramps and herbs, I said, "First, step back about three feet. I can tell you've been munching those ramps. Second, isn't cheese really hard to make?""Nope," he said, "That's a myth."And he's right. Cheese can be easier than I ever thought and tastier than I imagined when it's loaded with our favorite stinky leek. FARMER'S CHEESE WITH RAMPS AND HERBS Ingredients1 qt. half and half1 cup buttermilk1 tsp. lemon juice½ tbsp. butter 5 tbsp. ramps (chopped)1 tsp. fresh thyme (chopped)2 tsp. flat leaf parsley (chopped)½ tsp. chopped tarragon½ tsp. sumac (optional)1 tbsp. heavy creamSalt and black pepper to taste RAMPS YEAR ROUND {% assign oriCollection = collection %} {% assign collection = collections['ramps'] %} {% assign productCount = collection.products | size | at_most: 3 %} {% if productCount > 0 %} {% paginate collection.products by 3 %} {% for product in collection.products %} {% assign imageLink = '' %} {% if product.images.size > 0 %} {% assign imageLink = product.images[0].src | img_url: 'original' %} {% endif %} {% assign alternateImageLink = imageLink %} {% if product.images.size > 1 %} {% assign alternateImageLink = product.images[1].src | img_url: 'original' %} {% endif %} {% if imageLink != '' %} {% if true %} {% else %} {% endif %} {% if 'none' == 'zoom' %} {% endif %} {% if 'none' == 'alternate' %} {% endif %} {% else %} This product has no images. {% endif %} {% if true %} {% else %} {% endif %} {{product.title}} {% endfor %} {% endpaginate %} {% else %} {% if 'RAMPS' == '' %} Please choose collection to show products from sidebar. {% else %} No products found. Please add some products to the collection first. {% endif %} {% endif %} {% assign collection = oriCollection %} 1. Combine half and half, buttermilk, and lemon juice in medium saucepot and bring to a soft rolling boil. (Be careful to not let it boil over.) Reduce heat and simmer for six to eight minutes. You will be able to see the liquid begin to separate into curds and whey very soon after it starts to boil.2. Pour the mixture through a mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth or muslin.3. Once you have caught the curd in the cloth, cinch the cloth around the curd by bringing all the edges together. Lift then twist. This will put pressure on the curd and force some of the remaining whey out. 4. Transfer your curd to a small mixing bowl and let cool.5. Heat a small sauté pan on medium/high heat. Once your butter has melted add you chopped ramps. Sweat the ramps for 3-4 minutes or until the white parts begin to get a little translucent. Set aside to cool.6. Add herbs, sumac, heavy cream, and cooled ramps to the curd. Salt and pepper the mixture to taste, and mix well, making sure to combine all ingredients thoroughly. This story was updated on May 10, 2023. FARMER'S CHEESE WITH RAMPS AND HERBS. PHOTO BY TRAVIS MILTON. Mark Lynn Ferguson founded Woodshed. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Virginia Living, and many Appalachian publications. He lives in Roanoke, Virginia, where he loves cooking a mess of fried taters, picking pawpaws, and exploring the old family farm he and his husband bought in 2021. PICKLE RAMPS WHILE YOU CAN SEE MORE NEXT UP OTHER APPALACHIAN FLAVORS

Visit my place, and you'll see heirlooms galore. A rusty lock from my great, great, great grandparents' house. Momma's favorite bookends, made from railroad spikes. My daddy's baby quilt.
I adore these objects; they keep my heritage alive and with me, even when I live some 250 miles from home, but none of them grow. Not a one respirates. Which begs the question—what about living heirlooms, the plants that sustained my fore-bearers? Could they be part of my heritage too?
Joyce Pinson sure thinks so. She helped launch the Appalachian Seed Swap in Pikeville, Kentucky. Now in its second year, the event draws people from hundreds of miles, all eager to find fruits and veggies that have been planted in the region for generations.
[caption id="attachment_9301" align="alignright" width="245"] Joyce Pinson cooking on camera.[/caption]
No one goes home disappointed. The morning of April 5, 2014, baggies and jars will take over the Pike County Extension Office, each filled with seeds. Gourds like cushaw, that were once mainstays on Appalachian dinner tables. Bean varieties that half of us have never heard of but that our grannies and grandpas would know. Corn, okra, peppers, tomatoes. No genetic modifications here. Just real, delicious, time-tested food along with fun activities like gardening demonstrations and book signings.
You might remember the sorghum sugar cookierecipe Joyce shared a while ago. Now she's back to tell us why heirloom's really matter and which beans she'll fight you for.

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TR: Joyce, I know you're busy planning the swap and keeping up your own blog. Thanks for taking time to talk. Now let's say I'm a novice gardener (which I am) who's been picking up seeds at my hardware store (which I have; don't judge). Why should I seek out heirloom veggies instead? 
JP: The number one reason I grow heirloom vegetables is for taste. These vegetables are not bred to fit the size of some company's shipping box. They are bred for flavor, and if I am going to make the effort to cook a meal, I want to begin with the freshest, most flavorful ingredients I can find.
Also, when the nieces and nephews come around, they know that the food on the table is food they helped grow in the garden. I tell them that it is the same food our grandparents and great grandparents grew, and that connects them to our history in Appalachia.
[caption id="attachment_9307" align="alignleft" width="216"] Cushaw pie.[/caption]
TR: I'd love to hear about the heirloom seeds from your family. What have you all been growing and for how long?
JP: We always grow green striped cushaws, and as a little girl, my Grandpa Friend always grew cushaws for our produce stand. From a toddler's perspective, I thought they looked like an army of geese with pin-stripes. I took cushaws for granted, until I could not find the seed offered in mainstream seed catalagues. I cannot imagine a fall table set without roasted cushaws and greens, without cushaw bread, cushaw pie, or even a cushaw custard topped with, you guessed it, cushaw ice cream.
For Charlie, my husband, the quest for heirlooms became paramount when we lost the bean the Pinson's had grown for generations. They did not get stored properly. Mildew and rot destroyed them. Luckily, in mountain communities everyone shares seed. It took a year or two, but we found the bean growing in a distant cousin's garden down the creek. That restored part of our family history.
TR: When I'm at the swap, what seeds will I see that are unique to the Southern Appalachians?
JP: Seed swaps are a roll of the dice. You never know what will show up. In Bristol, Tennessee, I received some Wise County Dent Corn. It is a beautiful, speckled corn with many colors that has traditionally been used for cornmeal.
A friend from Carolina, Rodger Winn, got me started on Cabbage Collards. They are a mild, yellow-tinged green that grows in rosettes, similar to cabbage. I had never heard of them. But they thrive in fall gardens here, and we were enjoying them up until a very hard freeze this year.
Beans are a big draw in the mountains. We love Turkey Craws and Goose Beans. We will fight you for a pound of White Hastings. Many families have their own variety of fall beans, ones that mature later in the season but produce a rich, flavorful bean.
[caption id="attachment_9310" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Heirloom tomatoes from Joyce's garden.[/caption]
TR: I understand that, at the event, you have a lot of activities beyond swapping seeds. What's your favorite?
JP: My favorite is filming oral histories. I set up in a back room, and people come and tell me their stories. Who grew their seeds. How they lived. How they came to have these beans, corn, tomatoes, squash. How they stored the seed. How the food was prepared. Why this vegetable is so special to them. Why they are sharing something that, at one time, would have been guarded as a family treasure.
The answers move me, inspire me. There is an agricultural renaissance going on in Appalachia, and for the first time in a long time, the older generation and the younger generation are having important exchanges. Older folks offer wisdom; younger folks offer unbridled enthusiasm. Food brings them together at a common table.
TR: And for folks who aren't close enough to swing by, how can they find heirloom seeds in their communities? 
JP: Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Virginia offers many varieties of heirloom vegetable seeds that are recognized as "food markers" of Appalachia. Hobbyist should definitely check out Baker Creek Seed and Landreth Seeds.
Also, go to the older generation. Take some homemade jam or a loaf of homemade bread, sit down, and visit. Tell them that you want to preserve their stories and their heritage.
I am at an age where many of my peers' parents are passing on, and I advise them to quit fighting over the china and silver. Look in the freezer instead, and get the bean seeds. That is the true heirloom worth squabbling over, and the beauty is you can grow more!

When most new restauranteurs open a second location, they pick a spot across town or maybe in a neighboring city. Not so for Hillbilly Tea's Karter Louis.
The owner of Louisville's Appalachian-themed restaurant is exporting mountain cuisine halfway around the world. In this interview with Rabbit Hole magazine, he explains how his second location is giving China "an example of what we're really eating in the heart of America."
 
http://vimeo.com/80271468#embed

After being named Beer City USA four years in a row, you'd think it would be hard for Asheville to have a banner year for brewskies. That said, 2014 looks like it could actually break new ground. It starts with the release of the official 2014 Asheville Beer Calendar. Featuring gorgeous photos from the local brew scene, the calendar is a hot item in area bookstores and bars. (Don't worry, out-of-towners; you can also order it online.)
The calendar's creator, Christopher “Critter” Thomas of Asheville Brewery Tours, made sure his images didn't start and end with breweries. "I wanted to include some retail, and I wanted to include some production," said Thomas. He added a hops farm, a traditional floor malting facility, and beer-serving eateries to the mix, explaining, "They help tell the story of Asheville beer."
[caption id="attachment_9057" align="alignright" width="287"] Sierra Nevada's new brewery in Mills River, North Carolina.[/caption]
Once you have your calendar in hand, get a pen. You might want to mark some big dates in 2014, starting with the long-awaited opening of Sierra Nevada's East Coast production facility. The building is complete, and many employees are in-place. For months, they've been testing batch after batch of this legendary brewery's most popular brands, including Sierra Nevada Stout, Pale Ale, and Torpedo.
When it opens early this year, the facility will deliver beer faster and fresher across the eastern United States, and it will be a boost to the local economy, employing 80-100 full-time staff plus another 40-60 part timers who will work the tap room and restaurant and lead brewery tours.
Turns out, Sierra Nevada isn't the only major brewery opening a facility in Asheville. In May, New Belgium will begin constructing a huge plant in the city's River Arts District, which, starting in 2015, will churn our 500,000 barrels of beer annually. Also, area micro-brew Catawba Brewing Co. will open a “boutique” satellite brewery in Biltmore Village. With a tasting room on the second floor, this new facility will focus on specialty and seasonal offerings. “This will give us the much-needed ability to make the small batch, highly diverse beers we just don’t have the room to do in our Morganton location,” said co-owner Billy Pyatt. 
[caption id="attachment_9064" align="alignleft" width="228"] The New Look for Highland Brewing Co. beers.[/caption]
Changes in 2014 don't end at brew houses. They extend clear to grocers' shelves, where customers will see a new look for Asheville's oldest beer. Now in its 20th year, Highland Brewing Co. is giving its five year-round brews facelifts. "Craft beer drinkers are conscientious about their beer," said Leah Wong Ashburn, Vice President at the company. That's why the new bottles will feature bolder, cleaner colors and more info about the beer itself.
All of these changes are good for Asheville, but what about the rest of the Appalachian South?
Whether you're in Kentucky, Maryland or West Virginia, there are pluses for you too. 2014 will make it easier to buy beer that supports the Appalachian economy wherever you are, and every news story on Asheville's beer boom helps distill those nasty Deliverance-esque stereotypes that have plagued our mountains for centuries.
So let's raise our glasses, bottles, and mugs. Here's to the year of beer in Asheville!

It wasn't too long ago that fine dining in Roanoke meant going to a stodgy, pseudo-French restaurant that was sandwiched between car dealerships in a strip mall on Franklin Road. Nothing against strip malls, but...oh wait...everything against strip malls. They're kinda ugly. They waste land. They trap us in our cars, forcing us to drive endlessly from mediocre restaurant to mediocre restaurant.
[caption id="attachment_9015" align="alignright" width="199"] 20 beers on tap at 1906 Ale House.[/caption]
*Deep breath. Deep looooong breath.*
This post is not about city planning. It's about the resurgence of good food in Roanoke. New, interesting, urban eateries have been popping up in the Star City faster than I can visit. Each trip home, I hit a couple of them by wooing relatives away from the tried and true (sorry, Denny's), and after my most recent round, I have a batch of newish favorites just in time for the new year.
Here are a few eateries that have wowed me, but it's in no way an exhaustive list. Which newcomers to Roanoke's restaurant scene have your mouth watering? And if you don't live in Roanoke, which would you like to try during a visit?

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Lucky, 18 Kirk Avenue: Let's start with fried chicken. In an unusual bout of good meal-ordering judgement (I routinely order the worst thing on any menu), I picked it at Lucky. Not only was the bird humanely raised, which made me feel good about eating it, it was also moist and breaded with a flavorful, crisp crust that, to borrow a term, would make you wanna smack your mamma. Many places bill themselves as gastropubs, but Lucky actually holds up on both measures—gastro and pub. The food is delicious, and the drinks have been voted the best in town. To top it all off, the interior is cozy with a huge, dark wood bar and intimate booths, each illuminated by a retro, red "Exit" sign, which makes mealtime feel intimate and just a little bit funky.
1906 Ale House, 1910 Memorial Avenue: First, a disclaimer—try as I might, I don't like beer—but my friend Jess, who was visiting Roanoke from New York City does. Before we ordered dinner, he noticed that 21st Amendment, a San Francisco craft beer, was among the twenty on tap. Jess raised his eyebrows. "That's a really good beer," he said, clearly surprised to encounter this West coast brew in a Blue Ridge valley. Thankfully, beer isn't the only surprise at 1906 Ale House. Our muscles and grass-fed bison burgers were cooked to perfection, so good, that I dragged family there for a dinner redux just a few days later.
[caption id="attachment_9019" align="alignleft" width="280"] Le Hot Club de Big Lick performs at Wasena City Tap Room and Grill.[/caption]
Local Roots, 1314 Grandin Road, Southwest: Next door to the historic Grandin Theater (where yours truly was once a projectionist), is Roanoke's most committed farm to table restaurant. Local Roots lives up to its name with many menu items telling you exactly where they originated—Hollow Hill Bison Strip, Sunburst Farm Trout, Bramble Hollow Heritage Chicken. There's no guess work here. Just good eatin that does of good job of helping local farmers.
The River and Rail, 2201 Crystal Spring Avenue: My brother Mike and I found ourselves starved in Roanoke's Crystal Springs neighborhood a few weeks back. We stumbled into The River and Rail, drawn by the restored Lipes Pharmacy sign on the building's side. Inside, we were greeted by another historic touch—railroad themed photos, many by the famous photographer O. Winston Link—and plate after plate of good food. The deviled eggs were like Momma would have made...had Momma been a regionally renowned chef. Mike said his roast beef sandwich was just about the best he'd ever had, and he works at a Roanoke bar known for its subs and sandwiches. My burger was thick, moist, and dripping with the restaurant's signature "fancy sauce." And if burgers tickle your fancy, watch the restaurant's Facebook page for periodic half-priced burger nights.
[caption id="attachment_9024" align="alignright" width="291"] Dining Room at Local Roots.[/caption]
Wasena City Tap Room and Grill, 806 Wasena Avenue: I go to the Tap Room for its location as much as its food. Everything I've ordered there—burgers, fish tacos, salads, fries—has been tasty with generous portions, but what stands out for me is the space. Located in a former ice house with luxury apartments on the upper floors, this neighborhood bar is open, bright, and just a little gritty. Inside, red brick soars up to giant crisscrossed beams. Outside, the patio sits yards away from the Roanoke River and one of the city's best parks, which, consequently, is the perfect spot to walk off a belly full of food or those mimosas you shouldn't have had with brunch.