Last week's cider-themed post was such a hit, I had to keep the apple-ish fun coming. While researching regional ciders, I stumbled across a dish that knocked my socks off. It was mentioned deep in the blog for Asheville's newest cidery, Noble Cider.
Back in May, the company's owners invited a handful of restauranters, bar owners, and mixologists to the premiere of their product, and in all her marketing wisdom, Joanna Baker, Noble's PR guru, knew that liquid cider, while delicious, was not enough. These folks would need to nosh, so she personally whipped up a trio of cider based foods—cider chutney to go with cheese and crackers, BBQ with cider BBQ sauce, and cupcakes with a cider frosting that threatened to upstage their product launch.
As soon as I spotted the above photo, I emailed Joanna and begged her to share the recipe with us. She sent a link right off to Cupcakes OMG, where she learned about the dish, and told me that folks wolfed down these baked delights.
"Anytime you add booze to a pastry," she said, "It's always going to be a hit!"
When I asked her what they tasted like, she said, "The traditionally heavy cream cheese icing lightened up with the addition of the hard cider. It had a hint of apple and a hint of alcohol - a perfect balance."
I mean, yum. I haven't had a chance to bake a batch yet, but if you do, please post a comment, letting us know how they turn out.

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2 cup of all purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder
3/4 teaspoon of baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
3 room temperature eggs
1 room temperature egg white
1 15 oz. can of pureed pumpkin (not the pie filling)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sweet, hard cider
Cider Cream Cheese frosting 


1. Line two cupcake tins; pre-heat oven to 400--we'll drop this to 350 once you pop the cupcakes in.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, soda, and spices in a bowl. Set aside.
3. Using a stand or hand mixer, combine eggs, pumpkin, sugars, oil, and cider until it resembles a boozy baby food.
4. In small batches, add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Mix until just incorporated.
5. Using an ice cream scoop, fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full
6. Pop these bad boys into the oven, and immediately drop the temp from 400 to 350 for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. This helps you achieve the beautiful dome effect.
7. While the cupcakes cool, make the frosting. Start by whipping the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy. Then add the spices and cider.Add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time.
8. Once cupcakes are completely cooled, pipe frosting onto cupcakes. Adorn with drizzles of caramel.

You wake up and stumble into the kitchen. What's the first thing you pour? A stiff cup of coffee? Hot water for tea? OJ? How about a tall glass of hard cider?
For more than a century, cider was the beverage of choice in North America—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and practically everyone drank it. Farm families, children and adults alike, washed down their eggs and bread with it. John Adams is said to have guzzled a tankard each morning too. Jefferson and Washington both made their own ciders and likely consumed it much more often than wine because cider was simply everywhere.
One reason for hard cider's popularity was a byproduct of fermenting. Heat and alcohol kill bacteria, and early European immigrants felt this made cider safer to drink than water, which they'd grown to distrust since it had often been contaminated in their homelands. So they drank it en masse. In fact, famed newspaper editor Horace Greeley said that a barrel of cider barely lasted his household for a week, with family and visitors filling their mugs again and again "until everybody was about as full as he could hold."
While most of us aren't yet ordering hard cider by the barrel full, it is making a big comeback. "Cider is the fastest-growing segment in the alcohol industry right now," said Diant Flint who owns the oldest cider making operation in the South, "the category grew over 60 percent last year.”
There might be a dozen reasons for this boom—cider has a romantic past, it's gluten free, it fits with our revived appreciation for artisanal products—but more than anything, cider just tastes good, and it has a great range. Some ciders are sweet as wine coolers while others are dry, drawing their flavor from apple varieties that are grown specifically for their tannins.
“If you want to make a really wonderful artisan hard cider, you need to start with excellent fruit,” said Flynt, who began her Foggy Ridge orchard in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountain back in the 1990s, and she says that many of those apples would never be eaten. "They’re very bitter, and quite tart, quite acidic."
While bitter apples are bad for pies, they're great for area business. At least thirteen cider makers have popped up in the Appalachian South. They stretch from Maryland clear to Georgia, with the biggest concentration in Virginia, where cider has become so popular the beverage now has its own week.
Governor Bob McDonald declared November 15-23, 2013 as Cider Week. Events across the state give folks a chance to see what cider mania is all about. If you're in the area, you might swing by the festivities, and even if you are not, it's easy to pick up a pint of this appley libation. Below is a list of cideries I've spotted in the region. (Let me know if I missed anyone.) Many have their own tasting rooms, and they all sell to area bars and restaurants.
So are you a cider drinker already? If so, what's your favorite kind? If not, ready to give it a try? We all wanna know—how do you like them apples?

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Maryland

Virginia

Winchester Ciderworks, 2502 North Frederick Pike, Winchester: Stephen Schuurman and Joshua Ussel produce cider from apples predominantly grown in the Shenandoah Valley.
Old Hill Cider, 17768 Honeyville Road, Timberville: Launched in May 2012, this is the cidermaking arm of Showalter's Orchard. The tasting room is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m through 5 p.m.
Potter's Craft Cider, Free Union: Tim Edmond and Dan Potter produce farmhouse-style cider made with Virginia Winesap, Albemarle Pippin, and other local varieties. While the cidery doesn't have a tasting room, it does host tastings in area bars and restaurants.
Castle Hill Cider, 6065 Turkey Sag Road, Keswick: With roots and ties to Thomas Jefferson, this Charlottesville cidery offers four varieties of cider. The tasting room is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Sunday.

When I was growing up, "foraging" meant one of two things: cruising the aisles at my local Kroger for a really great deal or dumpster diving, which can produce 100 free donuts if you know when to look.
Turns out, true foraging pre-dates my adolescent suburban version by about 200,000 years, and even today, it can land you some really amazing eats.
Ask Alan Muskat. He is founder of The Asheville Wild Foods Market, the first market specializing in foraged edibles in North America. Alan supplies some of North Carolina's top names with found edibles--Biltmore Estate, Grove Park Inn, Lantern Restaurant. They all serve food that has been raised, picked, caught, and carried in from the wild, often by Alan's two hands.
[caption id="attachment_8564" align="alignright" width="258"] Alan Muskat (right) and foragers with their finds.[/caption]
Not only does Alan know where to forage, he's also more than happy to show you. Take one of his classes, and you'll experience nature in a whole new way. Alan will guide you to found-food hotspots, some deep in the forest, others just a stone's throw from people's yards.
And he says that if you're a mushroom lover, now is the prime time to go. Chanterelles, lobster mushrooms, and milk caps are all over the place during August and September, just waiting to become part of your meal.
Why not make a weekend of it?
One of the areas most relaxing retreats, Sourwood Inn, makes it easy. Just ten minutes from downtown Asheville, this cedar and stone charmer sits on 100 acres at 3,200 feet. It offers a Wild Food Package that covers two people, including two nights lodging; full breakfasts; a three hour foraging adventure with Alan; a signed copy of Wild Mushrooms: A Taste of Enchantment; and an optional wild food dinner at Zambra, a popular tapas restaurant in Asheville.
[caption id="attachment_8567" align="alignleft" width="301"] Sourwood Inn.[/caption]
Zambra is one of about fifty area eateries that serve food found by Alan, so wild food dining options abound. They include The Market Place, the granddaddy of farm-to-table restaurants and Alan's longest standing customer. Since 1979, this Asheville institution has been melding cuisines from around the world with Appalachian traditions.
When The Market Place's Chef William Dissen heard that The Revivalist was running this piece, he graciously opened his recipe book and handpicked a dish that features the wild fungi that are so abundant this time of year.
Let us know if you try Chef Dissen's Foraged Mushroom Gratin or if you've found wild food of your own. Berries, mushrooms, wild onions, ramps--what has the forest provided for your dinner table?

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Foraged Mushroom Gratin

from Chef William Dissen

Right now, ramps are hotter than poppa bear's porridge. You can't walk into a farmer's market or restaurant without catching a whiff of their pungent delights. This is good for our taste buds--mine do a little dance with every rampy bite--but not so good for the plants themselves.

 

Ramps season 2013 is one for the books. Festivals have sprouted up faster than ramp shoots, ramp recipes are being traded like baseball cards, and the media must be smoking ramp leaves. The New York Times alone has published nine ramp-themed articles in the last two weeks.

 

While the rest of the world is catching up with our longstanding ramp obsession, Asheville food-writer and today's guest blogger Mackensy Lunsford is hunkering down. She's busy sterilizing Ball jars and pickling her favorite odiferous root.

 

Come the end of ramp season, Mackensy won't be suffering from withdrawal like all those newbies. She'll still be stinking up her kitchen with ramps and eggs, ramp bread, and, perhaps her favorite, ramp fried hash browns.

 

 

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Smokehouse master Allan Benton — he of the famed bacon and country hams — is fond of saying “Tax Day is ramp day.”

 

Ramps, the wild mascot of Appalachian spring, are coming into their pungent finest in early April. The distinctive odor of the wild allium is almost impossible to describe, but once you're familiar with it, it becomes unmistakable.

 

Here in Asheville, North Carolina, ramps are still abundant (but, sadly, on their way out). Fresh at farmers markets, local chefs are starting to put up the spring's harvest in Ball jars, so they'll be ready for ready for summer omelets and winter cheese plates.

 

Ramps can even be found at random local music festivals. At the All Go West Festival in West Asheville last weekend, a chef from a very casual restaurant topped pork belly sliders with whole ramp leaves and sold them to the crowd with almost zero fanfare.

 

No advertising was required — you could smell what he was up to from 20 yards away.

 

If you're lucky enough to get a hold of fresh ramps by the bunch, know that the leaves don't require — or deserve, for that matter — excessive tampering. Treat them as garlicky, yet tender, herbs. Separate them from the stem and sauté them simply, serving them on the side of seared trout.

 

Or, roast whole, fresh-dug fingerling potatoes with de-stemmed shiitakes in a skillet with a knob of butter, fresh thyme and salt in an oven preheated at about 375 degrees. Just as soon as the potatoes start to soften, add the chopped leaves and toss occasionally.

 

Or, simply cook chopped leaves in an omelet stuffed with goat cheese and fresh herbs. While we're on the subject of breakfast, shredded potatoes, pressed into a skillet to make a 10-inch cake of hash browns, are begging to be layered with chopped ramp leaves and seasoned with truffle salt.

 

All of these ideas may leave the observant home cook to wonder what to do with the leftover stems. Do what Asheville chefs do and preserve them for use throughout the year. Though the season for ramps is fleeting, pickles last much longer.

 

Try pickled ramps in dirty Appalachian martinis or as part of a pungent kimchi. They're also delightful on sandwiches or in springtime salads (particularly when countered with berries and fresh goat cheese).

 

Simple Pickled Ramps

 

(with a nod to David Chang)

 

Makes about 1 quart, and will pickle approximately 1 pound of ramp stems. Multiply according to pickling needs.

 

Basic brine

1 cup water

½ cup rice wine vinegar

6 tablespoons sugar

2.5 teaspoons kosher salt

 

Flavorings (be creative)

Peppercorns

Bay leaves

Red pepper flakes

Dill seed

Juniper berry

 

Sterilize Ball jar(s) according to canning instructions. Place a pinch of each flavoring into jar(s). Pack thoroughly washed ramp stems into each jar. Bring brine to a boil and pour over ramp stems. Screw top on tightly and let cool. Keep refrigerated. Of course, it is not that type of packaging that offers the best storage conditions for products (check out this piece for professional packaging options), but still it can last for some time.

 

Alternately, use the same recipe, but substitute radishes for up to ¾ of the ramps in each jar.

Spring has finally sprung, and it has Crystal Vaughan, our friend over at Red Hill General Store, pulling out her spade and watering can. An avid gardener, she took time this week to share her top seven tips for a springtime garden.
Which ones will you be trying out? And what’s your secret to a great garden?

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When I think of April, I think of the smell of rain and the feel of earth in my hands as I work in my garden. Having grown up in a small rural area in the Appalachian Mountains I never knew of anyone who didn’t do some sort of gardening as every single person who lived there were GardenAware. Even if it was just growing tomatoes to always have some fresh and on hand for a good tomato sandwich on a hot summer day.
But as I grew older and learned more about the world around me, it seemed like gardening was actually quite rare in the greater scheme of things. Eventually I too forgot about running around barefoot in my grandparents’ garden helping to plant and, then later, harvest the vegetables. I moved to a city for a few years. Between that and college I didn’t have time to relish the act of simply planting a seed and caring for it as it grew.
Now, when I’m reading blogs and news articles or even just standing in line at the grocery store, I’m noticing more and more people expressing the desire to get back to nature, to create their own gardens, and to even start homesteads. This movement back towards gardening and being willing to get their hands dirty says a lot to me about the cycle of things. I’ve been gardening on the small scale lately with a container garden. I created it from a large galvanized metal tub that I purchased from where I work, Red Hill General Store. It is great for growing tomatoes.
With the interest in gardening that has been going on lately, I wanted to share some ideas on making gardening a little easier:
1) Before you start planting, be sure that the spot you’ve chosen for your garden gets plenty of sunlight throughout the day. It needs to be close enough to your home that you aren’t tempted to neglect or forget about your garden, and it should be in an easy place to water in case of a drought over the summer.
2) Become knowledgeable about companion planting. You wouldn’t believe what a huge difference it can make in the size, flavor, and growth of your vegetables just by what plants you grow side by side. I’ve found that tomatoes that are grown near basil have a wonderful flavor to them.
3) Make your own compost. This is a great way to give your plants the extra nutrients they need in a natural way without having to spend a lot of money on fertilizers. Worm castings is a perfect organic fertilizer for weed as well.
4) If you are seeding a large garden, you will want to invest in some tools to help you. Planting one seed at a time by hand in a large space can kill your back and knees. Look into investing in a garden seeder to help make the job easier and quicker.
5) Don’t let the thought of a large garden scare you away from growing your own vegetables. A container garden is a great way to start out. Do a little research and start small. Do not over-plant your container, I made this mistake my first year and was lucky that my tomatoes came out well; the peppers unfortunately did not. Also be sure that your containers will drain properly before putting your plants into them.
6) Keep an eye out for garden pests that will eat your garden and be prepared with ways to deter them. Use scarecrows, wind chimes, fake owls, and objects that have human scent on them, such as hair from your local barber. Assaulting all of the animal’s senses will make them more fearful of your garden.
7) The best advice I can give any beginner gardener is to find someone local to you who has gardening experience. They will be able to help you more than any book or website ever can as they know your area, what the soil needs, what plants thrive there, and which plants will need a little extra TLC just to make it by. And once you are comfortable calling yourself a gardener, pay it forward and help out the next generation of gardeners.
I hope if you give gardening a try, that you will find out how meditative and rewarding it can be. To me, being in a garden is as close to making time stand still as anything I’ve ever experienced.

Lately, I've been making a lot of Cadbury Cream Egg runs. I'll be at the gym or out for errands, and Ryan will text -- Can you go to CVS? I know what comes next. He can buy his own deodorant and fill his own prescriptions, but for some reason, Cream Eggs taste better when I pick them up. Not that I mind. I'd never hit the candy isle for myself, but if I'm buying him treats and my arm should bump a box of Peeps that falls into my shopping basket, well, I consider that an act of God. I did, at least, until I clicked on the Website for French Broad Chocolates. This Asheville based confectioner makes their treats by hand, and by comparison, off-the-shelf candy looks like it came from inferno's eighth circle. Just look at the shop's candy chicks and peanut butter eggs. They're adorable, crafted right in their Asheville factory, and made from a mix of organic and imported ingredients like Peruvian dark chocolate. The best thing is that you can order them through March 26 and have them in time to for Easter morning. If you're running behind on Easter planning and find yourself with empty baskets just days before, don't despair. Local candy stores across the region are offering equally tantalizing sweets. Here are a few of my favorites. Where are yours? Where you do you go for mountain-made treats?

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The Candy Factory, Charleston, West Virginia: Chocolates shaped like West Virginia and made right in Kanawha City! 'Nuff said. [caption id="attachment_7991" align="alignright" width="148"] WV candy from The Candy Factory.[/caption] The Hot Chocolatier, Chattanooga, Tennessee: In addition to chocolates, you can pick up pastries and deserts. Who doesn't love an Easter croissant? The Fudge Factory, Dahlonega, Georgia: Serving up handmade fudge and their signature "Dahlonega Nuggets" for more than thirty years. McFarland Candies, Frostburg, Maryland: The shop was founded in 1944 when Edgar and Jewelle McFarland began making their own Easter candies. It's been a Frostburg mainstay ever since.

Y'all know I love apple butter. I spread it on toast; I eat it with biscuits; and (as noted elsewhere) I gobble it down straight from the spoon. I've yet to find a bad way to eat the stuff, but I keep trying.
This week, I started scrounging the internet for a new method to infuse apple butter into my diet. I had a hankering for some kind of baked good, so I skipped over apple butter glazed ham and apple butter casserole. There were a dozen recipes for apple butter bread, but none wowed me. I kept clicking, determined to find a dish that elevated apple butter to a new level, that took my favorite food, lit solid rocket boosters on either side its jar, and sent it into orbit.
I know. Lofty goals just beg for failure, but not this day. A truly magnificent name and a miracle of culinary engineering popped onto my screen.
APPLE BUTTER DOUGHNUT MUFFINS
Before I clicked those dizzying words, I tried to make sense of their combination. Apple butter + doughtnut + muffin? I mean, is this kind of excess even legal?

One glance. That's all it took, and I knew it was time to fish out my muffin tin. Sixteen ingredients and one hour later, I was biting into a mini-cake that exceeded my towering expectations. It was gooey and doughy with chewy bits of apple in the middle. It was sweet on top of sweet. It was satisfying beyond words. To experience the real joy of these delights, you just need to bake some.
Go now. Seriously. Go and gather your ingredients. I know you've got other stuff to do, but you'll thank me. When you're done, come back and tell us how these baked goods were more life changing than a month-long retreat with Oprah.

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Apple Butter Doughnut Muffins
yields 12 muffins
Adapted from Everyday Food by Apt 2B Baking Co. Used with permission here. (Thank you, Yossy!)
The results of this recipe rest heavily on the apple butter you choose to use in this recipe. The apple butter I make at home is lightly sweetened and spiced so the amounts of additional sugar and spice in this recipe reflect that. If your apple butter is heavily spiced you may want to hold off on adding additional spices, but do make sure there is a bit of nutmeg in there. The nutmeg is the key to the donutty flavor. I imagine they would also bake up quite nicely in a doughnut pan.
12 3/4 ounces all purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon allspice
5 ounces softened butter
3 3/4 ounces brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces buttermilk
8 ounces prepared apple butter
1 small apple, peeled and diced into 1/4'' cubes
For the Topping/Coating

3.5 ounces granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 ounces melted butter
1 ounce confectioner's sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350º and butter and flour a 12 cup muffin tin
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. In another small bowl whisk together the buttermilk and apple butter.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in an electric mixer, beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, then add the vanilla extract.
3. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in three additions alternating with the apple butter mixture. Remove the bowl from the mixer and gently fold in the diced apple by hand. The mixture will be very thick.
4. Scoop 1/3 cup batter into each muffin cup and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean, about 30 minutes.
5. While the muffins are baking prepare the topping by mixing the cinnamon and sugar together in a small bowl. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then, working with one at a time, brush the muffins with butter and toss to coat in the cinnamon sugar mixture. When completely cool, dust with confectioner's sugar (optional). These muffins taste best the day that they are made.

Finally! Someone outside our mountain homeland has opened a restaurant that isn't just Southern, that isn't just down-home, that isn't just rustic, but that's a full-on Appalachian outpost. It's called Hillbilly Tea, and it has the fine folks of Louisville, Kentucky trading in their derby pies for heaping piles of corn pone.
Housed in an old store front, the restaurant marries downtown hip and backwoods barn. Exposed brick is the backdrop for hanging ladder-back chairs. Raw wood shelves adorn the walls. And every tabletop sports napkins held shut with clothes-pins.
[caption id="attachment_6738" align="alignright" width="186"] Photo Provided by Matt Feifarek on Flickr.[/caption]
Founders Karter Louis and Chef Arpad Lengyel (affectionately known as Chef Arpi) strike a similar balance on their menu. Their food is country to the core--smoked catfish, succotash, pork with chow chow, biscuits and gravy--but some dishes get a twist with citified fixins. For instance, you can order yourself a bunch of chicken fried tofu or a mess of white bean and sage fritters.
Quirks like these may sound funny, but they keep notoriously fickle urban diners coming back. Oh, and the killer bar menu helps too. True to its name, Hillbilly Tea offers all kinds of beverages--hot, cold, boozy, and boozeless--and a surprising number are tea based, including one that made my heart skip a beat. It's called "The Revival," and it's a mix of remedy tea hooch, a house infused concoction; simple syrup; and soda water.
Sounds like a reason to give praise, don't it?
Have you sipped one of Hilbilly Tea's signature beverages? If so, let us know if they live up to their inspirational names. In fact, if you've had anything there, we'd love to hear about it. Most of us live too far away to swing by, but we ain't above a vicarious visit.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THEBITTENWORD ON FLICKR.

Now we've seen a lot of posts about apple stack cake. It's been a mainstay on Appalachian tables since God was a boy, but we've not seen a specific history of the dish until now. Today's guest writer, Dave Tabler, shares the origins of this popular dessert along with a recipe that will leave your mouth watering and your feet running to the kitchen. Dave leads the excellent blog Appalachian History, which features stories, quotes and anecdotes from Appalachia, with an emphasis on the Depression era.

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The dried apple stack cake is one of the most popular southern Appalachian cakes— no surprise considering apples are found aplenty in the mountains.

 

Culturally it’s akin to the classic European torte. It looks like a stack of thick pancakes, with apple preserves, dried apples or apple butter spread between each layer.

At holidays and weddings, early mountain settlers traditionally served stack cake in lieu of more fancy, and costly, cakes. Neighbors, according to folk wisdom, would each bring a layer of the cake to the bride’s family, which they spread with apple filling as they arrived. It was said that the number of cake layers the bride got determined how popular she was.

Kentucky lays claim to originating the dessert via Kentucky pioneer washday cake. “Some food historians say that James Harrod, the colonist and farmer who founded Harrodsburg in 1774, brought the stack cake to Kentucky from his home in Pennsylvania,” observes Mark F. Sohn in Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture, and Recipes. “While Harrod may have brought the first stack cake to Kentucky, the cake could not have been common until more than 100 years later when flour became readily available.”

Tennessee proudly points to Tennessee stack cake as the first, but in fact variations of the cake abound throughout the region. The cake is many layered, low in fat, and not sweet. It’s made with layers of stiff cookie like dough flavored with ginger and sorghum and spread with a spiced apple filling. When served, the cake is tall, heavy, and moist.

Stack Cake Recipe

Courtesy of Sheri Castle and Our State

Makes 12 to 16 servings Dried Apple

Filling

• 1 pound (4 to 5 packed cups) dried unsulphured apples

• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon ground ginger

• 1/2 teaspoon ground mace or nutmeg

• 4 to 5 cups water, divided

Cake Layers

• 5 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 2/3 cup vegetable shortening

• 1 cup granulated sugar

• 1 cup sorghum molasses

• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

• 1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

CLICK TO SEE THE FULL RECIPE

 

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The other day I wrote about signs of home outside Appalachia, and that got me to thinking. Our quirky mountain culture has been exported to nearly every corner of the globe. You can hear bluegrass in Japan and learn how to cook ramps on The Food Network. We've influenced food, music, literature, and language far beyond our mountain borders, and frankly, I don't think we get nearly the credit we deserve.
Well, here's my small attempt to correct that. It's a new blog series called Appalachian Influence. When I bump into signs of home outside the mountain fold, I'll share them. I hope you'll do the same. If you spot a way we've influenced the big, wide world, drop a line. I'd love to hear about it and consider it for the blog.
This past week, I was hanging in Savannah. While cruising through the town's famous squares on my own, my belly began to rumble. I'd passed plenty of restaurants--sushi, subs, greasy spoons--but I'm notoriously ill-content when it comes to meals. I can walk a city for hours, be on the verge of a hunger coma, and still turn down a top-rated filet mignon if I'm not in the mood.
Crossing Madison Square, I spotted a regal sign. The word Gryphon was printed in gold on black, and as I approached, I could see dark panels and sparkling glass inside. This wasn't johnny-come-lately decor, so I pressed my nose against the window to get a better look. Old wood shelves lined the walls, chock full of antique books. Stained glass domed above the diners and across the bar. With my hand over my eyes to block the sun, I made out a familiar pattern in the colored glass--a mortar and pestle. This was an old pharmacy turned restaurant!
I am a preservation geek, so there was no resisting. Without looking at the menu, I knew I'd found my place. The host seated me at the dark wooden bar, which was, no doubt, a lively soda fountain in its prior life.
Wiping drool from my chin, I managed to force my eyes down, away from the room's beautiful details to the menu. Though it was well appointed, Gryphon had some reasonably priced options, which was a relief since I'd lost sight of my travel budget when faced with an opulent dining room. I scanned the sandwiches (any menu's economy section) and two words popped out--apple butter.
I did a double take. A sandwich with apple butter?
The combo didn't compute, but there it was. Turkey was listed to apple butter's left, and wheat bread was on its right. Reading the accompaniments--brie, arugula, Granny Smith apples--I tried to imagine the taste. Cool. A mix of smooth and crunchy. A little sweet. A little meaty.
Did I mention that it was hot as a coal-fired boiler in Savannah?
A cold sandwich would be just right, but truth be told, I'd have ordered this one even if it were parka weather. A quirky menu item with Appalachian overtones--really, this was a predetermined lunch.
I tapped the counter and rubbed my growling belly while I waited. It wasn't long in real time, but hunger time works differently. I felt like I could have written a novel, built a house, or ended cancer at that bar.
When the sandwich showed, it had cucumber salad on the side, and, true to my Southern roots, I'd ordered a big iced tea. I wish I could say that I took time to admire this ideal summertime meal, but not really. The hunger took hold. My plate was barely stationary before I shoved half the sandwich into my mouth.
It was exactly as I'd pictured. Turkey was the first filling to hit my tongue, providing the perfect cold base. Then the salty brie and the tangy lettuce piqued my taste buds. Finally, a wave of sweet and tart followed. The apples and apple butter were related but not identical, like two fun cousins who livened up a family reunion. Honestly, they made the sandwich. Without this fruity twist, I would have just been eating a turkey club sans bacon, but this was something special--a taste of home when I least expected it.
After this first bite, I forced myself to pause. I left the sandwich on the plate long enough to take a picture. That's it at the top of the post. I knew that I wanted to share this treat with you, but I barely held out through one shutter snap. As soon as I had the shot, the sandwich was back at my mouth, and I was chowing.
The bartender didn't have a chance to refill my tea before I'd cleared my plate. She laughed and asked, "In a rush?"
My fickle belly was sated, so I smiled and asked for the bill. A few photos of the restaurant, and I was back on Savannah's steamy streets. Spanish moss and palm fronds insisted that I was in the coastal South, but I couldn't deny the sweet lingering taste of apple butter. It reminded me that, no matter where I travel, the mountains are with me, down deep in my gut.