"Ya'll eat yet?" An Appalachian Greeting

Encouraging my teenage students to be in tune with and celebrate their home culture is something akin to what I imagine it’d be like to call up my central Appalachian granny and ask her to adopt a new culture for the rest of her life: worship Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu in place of Jesus, begin making and eating naan instead of biscuits and wear a sari instead of her blue jeans and Keds. In other words many of my teenage students seem terribly intimidated by recognizing their cultural norms and practices.  

My students tend to see culture as far-off exotic celebrations of fantastical clothing, precise rituals, beautiful artistic expressions and strange foods. Nevermind that my students live in one of the most inherently Appalachian culture-oriented towns in our region. I suppose it makes sense that an appreciation for your home culture often comes after you’ve moved on or meet others with different cultures to have a point of comparison. I certainly didn’t consider myself “Appalachian” until college and since then I have introduced myself as nothing else. 

The one thing I often succeed in helping students understand is unique to our culture is our relationship with food. The marriage of growing, cooking, and preserving of sustenance in the mountains is something many of them relate to and appreciate. Food also provides the basis for many conversations.

We Appalachians worry ourselves to death over whether or not each other has eaten. And we don’t go to visit friends or family without calling ahead first to see what they could use from our garden or pantry. My go-to wedding gift to friends and family is something we’ve canned. And I’ve traveled to the Pound many a time with rhubarb stalks, jars of moonshine, pickled peppers and more cukes than I could count. And come back with zucchini bread, canned beans, kraut, and slicing tomatoes.

And as soon as we arrive we can barely get in the door before being asked if we’re ready to eat. And even if the truth is that we ate on the road, we lie. Because they already have chicken fried or scratch-made biscuits in the oven. It’s our answer to any problem (much like the Golden Girls and cheesecake) except ours might just be a sliced cucumber which in my experience is just as effective as cheesecake.

 We attended a wedding this weekend and when I finally got a chance to hug the bride at the reception before I could stop it I heard myself ask, “Did ya’ll get to eat yet?” I guess it’s also Appalachian for congratulations. 

Learning to Love all things Kitchen

In our new place the kitchen was one of the things we compromised on because we were crazy over the living/dining and wonderful outdoor space. It has it's good points, there is a deep freezer which is perfect for my deer hunter and for our veggies and fruit we've already started filling it with. However, the storage is quite pitiful.

This is it. For food and everything.

In all of our other places, even our first little apartment we had TONS of cabinet space and sometimes even a pantry. When we got married my mother in law had us a pampered chef shower and then we also had the usual household shower so we have lots of trinkets and kitchen schtuff. Especially for people who are generally sorta blah about cooking.

We purchased this little pretty at Target and it has made a big difference. We were left with 4 lovely yellow stools from the last place and this allows us to use them, occasionally, with the leaf on the back of said cart.

We still have lots of kitchen stuff in boxes upstairs that we go and rummage through when we need things like casserole dishes.

Drew's next task is to find a way to creatively hang pots and pans to clear out some drawer space. I'm hoping for something like this....

I'm not sure what it is about the new place if it's all the windows or the availability of such fresh ingredients right outside my door or the summer but I've loved cooking as of late.

Sunday we had chicken tacos and Mexican style corn on the cob. It was so fresh and delish. I could eat the slaw mixture with a spoon.

I prefer fish tacos and the recipe I used (found here) is technically for fish tacos but I had no fish on hand and I'm cautious about fixing it. I also did not use the that particular brand of sriracha. 

The corn is sooo easy (I cheat and fix corn on the cob in the microwave, wrap it in a damp paper towel for 1.5 minutes) then I rubbed it with butter. Sprinkled fresh parm a little chilli powder and squeezed lots of lime juice. Oh it is just grand! 

Yesterday I was inspired by The Barefoot Contessa (as I often am but very rarely feel adequate enough to tackle her recipes). Last week she made summer garden pasta and I tried it yesterday. It was so fresh and summery and stinky. As I told Drew this morning there was a cloud of garlic hanging over our bedroom from our stinky garlic breath. But totally worth it. The link above is to a half recipe for 2-3 but Ina's recipe is here. 

We had dinner at the home of a couple we recently met on Monday and I was asked to bring dessert. I was inspired by a new foodie friend I met at the baby shower last weekend to try Accidental Chocolate Cake. 

The cake is gluten free, dairy free, and grain free. It was quite moist, healthy, and still delicious CHOCOLATE. There are not pictures because it didn't last long enough but I'm now a believer in coconut oil which I had never used prior to this recipe. See ya butter!

I'm looking forward to trying out some apple and blackberry recipes which I've recently begun filling our deep freeze with.

Here goes...

I'm sitting in my car waiting on the MegaBus carrying my gal pal to arrive. And I thought I would enlighten you to my views on Duck Dynasty.... Nah I'm just kidding I just wanted to brag about a couple things. 

First of all I have discovered the most amazing grocery store: Fresh Market. Perhaps I'm years behind on this, but that's pretty standard for me. It's just such a nice place. You don't feel depressed and overwhelmed as soon as you walk in. 

It feels like a warm little kitchen that's gonna make you healthy and happy. I made friends with the butcher and was able to purchase everything on my list. Minus velveeta. But honestly, does anyone want to do the bulk of their grocing (yep made that up) at a store that sells velveeta??? Didn't think so. 

Also, my Christmas present (to myself) arrived today: 

Ignore the mess and focus on how happy I am. Just in time for the game against the Steelers. Yes I'm a new convert, but this makes it official and bonus: I got it cheaper because I ordered an XL in kids. Also I'll no longer be intimidated by everyone wearing a jersey at Bdubs on Sundays. 

Dinner is in the crockpot at home and I am anxious to get home because the consistency of it when I left was curious. I'll keep you posted. 

A Birthday and the haps 'round here

Don't ask me how I decided which of those words up there to capitalize and which ones not to. So today is my 24th and currently I'm celebrating by doing this:

Laying in bed, eating activia and reading online.

And I plan on staying right here until I have to leave for class at 3:00.


Other than that excitement our life has been pretty busy.  But I think we are now taking a swing toward more relaxation. We traveled to NoVa this weekend to work a wine festival which was quite the experience.

I will use this space to tell you the positives: we stayed for free in a nice hotel (I'm such a kid when it comes to hotels they excite me like nothing else can) we bonded with some friends over the experience and I got to eat out of a food truck for the first time.

The negatives include: having a panic attack, getting chewed out as a volunteer, not actually getting to sample any wines, and leaving my puppy.

This is the only picture I took all weekend:

In other news my blogger friend Colleen wrote about emeals a while back and I did some research and quickly became a believer.  I'm sure you all remember this post I wrote a while back so I'm hoping this cures me of that or at least makes life a little easier. We began yesterday and this was dinner last night, so far I'm very impressed. And to make it even better we grew the spinach ourselves!!! Our first garden food this year!

 

Emeals delivered a store list and meal plan to my e-mail yesterday and had every ingredient separated out to it's location in the store. It is a God send and made meal planning easy peasy. I chose crock-pot meals because they are easier but there are tons of other options. If you are a meal planner, I strongly recommend it.

 

And speaking of our garden it has come into it's own lately.

 



The lovely bags are to scare away deer because some got into our lettuce while we were away and Ike wasn't here to chase them off. I'm quite proud of our little patch of heaven on earth.

So that's the haps here in the Burg. Hope your summer so far is sunny and full of fresh garden foods too!

Let's Get Real.

Real Honest. I don't like to cook. It's something I've recently come to terms with. I fell into the wifely trap where I felt as though I had to cook and I had to like it. But if I'm honest I have never been very good at it.

God blessed me with a husband who would eat gravel if I sat it in front of him and told him I'd cooked it and he wouldn't complain. He'd just add lots of salt.

There is nothing I cook (or if I'm being honest that anyone I know cooks) that I look forward to. Not like what I look forward to at a restaurant. Cooking is overrated. It's a lot of damn work and in my case it's never worth it.

The day I finally said it out loud to Drew was one day last week. I'd come home between school and work to put dinner in the crock-pot. A pinterest recipe: Hawaiian Crockpot Chicken. And from the moment I put it in, I dreaded the minute I would have to come home and eat it.

I admitted to Drew how I truly felt about cooking as I pushed the chicken around my plate and snuck most of it under the table to Ike.

I always felt good about cooking because I knew it was saving us money and I know that makes Drew happy. But I also know that Drew doesn't want me to eat cereal for dinner after he eats whatever mess I've prepared that day which had become the norm.

Another friend of mine who shares my view of cooking said someone told her recently:
 "You need to cook for your family." I call bull shit. I am a much more pleasant member of this family if I'm sitting across from Drew at a meal I didn't have to prepare, dread eating all day, try, be disappointed and then have to worry about the huge mess that's left.

Feel free to shake your head as you prepare a 5-course meal for your family tonight, go ahead and feel sorry for my future children and give Drew permission to seek a new wife. I'm no longer lying to myself. I don't like it and I suspect there are some of you out there who are right there with me.

This was sooo much better than Hawaiian crockpot chicken.

Recent Happenings, Crockpot Love and Hair Update

It seems its time for a blog that won't warrant serious discussion. I mean perhaps someone will want to discuss whether or not my hair really is naturally curly. Or whether or not the crock pot makes life too easy. Or someone may want to argue that Virginia is not the most beautiful state in the fall. Okay that last one is taking it a little too far. But please let's put our opposing views aside for this incredibly important post.

Curls

First of all: an update on the curls! (not to be confused with the "girls" cause those are just fine).

Some of you may look at it and think, that poor girl with the mess atop her head. But I look at it and say hallelujah, my curls are back. Granted there are still days I go around like this:

Awkward facial expression and all. Eek. And admittedly I still love my "do-rags" as some would say. Others may say bandanna. I like to call it my Rosie the Riveter look. But all in all I'm pleased with my curls when I take the time to fix them.

Crockpot Cooking

 As things have become more busy with school, observation, and research I'm grateful that Drew has picked up another wife to help around the house. Her cooking is much better than mine and it takes her no time to get cleaned up. Frankly, she makes me look bad. Okay, I kid. But using the crockpot is totally like having another set of hands around here to help with dinner. Tonight she is making us chicken and rice. A couple of days ago she made us spinach dip. In the past couple of weeks she's made tomato basil parmesan soup, white chicken chilli, pulled pork bbq, beef roast and deer meat. Please ladies, do yourself a favor and let someone else do the work. There is nothing better than a crockpot meal on a cold night. Pinterest is full of recipes, I'm thinking of starting a whole board just for those recipes I can put on in the morning and have it ready for me when I get home. I'm much more pleasant when I don't have to come home and still make a "home-cooked" meal and this way we still get good home-cooking and I'm not scowling by the time we finally sit down to dinner. If anyone needs some recipes comment or send me a message I would be happy to share my knowledge to make everyone's life easier.

Recent Happenings

A couple of weekends ago Drew's parents came to visit. We headed to Floyd to Chateau Morrisette winery. It was beautiful and we had a great time and I think Drew's parents did too. We had lunch there and it was delicious. (Their wine is amazing also and I know for a fact they carry it at Food City in Wise so go grab some Wise Countians, just look for the black dog on the bottle).

After lunch we explored the winery and headed to downtown Floyd to the Country Store for some ghost stories.

It's truly like going back in time. I believe with all of my heart that Drew and I will live there one day. If you never visit any other small town in Virginia, make it Floyd. And if you can make it on a Friday night all the better. My Appalachian Geography professor plays bluegrass outside the country store every Friday night. I mean not just him, but lots of people. Even you if you want, take your banjo or guitar and join in.

 I took this pic on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Sweet Virginia.

It was a fun weekend and I was glad that Drew's parents got to come for a visit!

 Other happenings have been that I purchased my first bird feeder right before our first snow. We were out buying a propane heater, gallons of water and a Coleman stove in case we lost power. And Drew looked at me like I had 3 heads when I told him we have to help the birds prepare for bad weather too.

 As a bird lover's daughter I know birdies are like people and they love to eat when it snows. It has been out for almost two weeks and I finally saw three eating at it yesterday. The mistake, however, was telling my mom because she immediately quizzes me about what kind of birds they were. And I'm left saying things like "the regular kind" or "small and black" she's never been more ashamed I'm sure.

Other than that excitingness we have just been doing the regular ol' things. My mom asked me the other night if we were "the party house" because we were having people over again. But I love having people here. Granted I have to close off the disaster that is our bedroom right now but I love that people feel comfortable just stopping by or staying the night. So anyone in the mood for a road trip come see us! I hope to have Christmas up in the next week or so, so come one come all. The crock pot will cook us an amazing meal and I will let you fix my hair. It'll be a blast!