Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
There had been barely half an inch of rain in the last month. Yesterday, it rained — 1.56 inches. This morning you can almost feel the exuberance of the green things. The honeysuckle and the roses are just getting started. We’ve been eating lettuce for a week, and now we’re covered up with lettuce. The first broccoli probably will be harvested today, and mustard greens tomorrow. Soon there will be cabbage and onions.
Sometimes when I am out and about and the only choice is to eat what the natives eat or go hungry, I eat what the natives eat. One of the few reliable items on any country menu will be the hamburger. This is because it’s food they understand, and they have to make it fresh.
This classic American burger is at Jim’s Grill near Yadkinville, North Carolina. Jim’s Grill has been around for decades. In the 1950s, it was a hot spot, with curb service, a jukebox, burgers, shakes, and teen-agers. Now it’s a place where old people go for lunch. Many of those old people, no doubt, went there as teen-agers in the 1950s.
This apple tree looks spare and lanky because it was pruned heavily last winter. It won’t produce much fruit this year and instead will put all its 2014 effort into the growth of the tree. But, next year and in future years, the pruning will pay off.
Lucky is the man who has a mature, productive orchard. Starting an orchard is like trying to raise children in the Dark Ages — the investment is enormous, and the mortality and accompanying heartbreak run high. The oldest trees in the abbey’s orchard will be six years old this fall. The other trees vary in age, as trees that have been lost have been replaced. This process of death and replacement continues.
Among the lessons learned, a couple of things stand out. For one (as with dogs), know your breeder. Fruit trees that come from fruit-tree puppy mills may look nice when you see them at the big-box hardware store. But they may have come from nurseries far away, and they may be of stock and varieties that are not hardy and not suitable for your area.
The abbey’s strongest trees are all old Southern varieties of antique or heirloom apple trees from a nursery two counties to the east that specializes in such trees — Century Farm Orchards. Though I lost (and replaced) two of those twelve six-year-old trees, that mortality rate is good compared with the mortality rate of other fruit trees. We’ve almost given up on cherry trees. Insects defoliate them. We were on our second or third attempt at growing fig trees, and things were looking good, until the near-zero temperatures last winter killed the figs. So while the cherry trees, figs, and even the pears die of the whooping coughs, smallpoxes and scarlet fevers that afflict young fruit trees, the hardy old apple trees and peach trees carry on. Getting fruit trees to maturity is not a small challenge.
We were tempted to attempt olives. But we pretty quickly decided against it, because olives are not truly suited to this area, and the risk of mortality in any given year would be high. Even figs are a big risk. But we love figs so much that we soldier on.
If (at least in this area) you want maximum fruit and minimum grief in your young orchard, stick with apples and peaches, of old and proven varieties, from known nurseries with a track record and a nurseryman who will answer your emails (as David Vernon from Century Farm Orchards always does).
A baby peach
Baby apples
A fig stalk, killed by the cold winter, though its roots may still be alive
I have heard of ramps for many years, but not until today did I finally taste them. Ramps are members of the onion-garlic-leek family, and they grow wild all over the Appalachians. A friend gave them to me on a recent trip to Asheville. Ramps appear in April, I believe, and then they fade.
I made the tops of the ramps into pesto. Though the bulbs (which look like little onions) are as edible as the tops, I saved the bulbs to plant in the branch bottom where the May apples grow. There is a good chance that the ramps will naturalize here in the Stokes County foothills.
The tops have a mild oniony taste, much like leeks, but more tender. They made a delicious pesto.
I have one bit of advice on making high-fat, high-carb, homemade fried biscuits: Don’t.
But seriously, in spite of their rusticness, there is something exotic about them, reminiscent of Indian breads.
Fried oysters with salad and hushpuppies
One of the nicest new businesses to come on line in Stokes County lately is the Printin’ Office Eatery. It’s in Danbury, facing the main drag.
Part of the brilliance of the Printin’ Office is that the menu appeals to two sets of people — the locals, whose business of course is necessary if a restaurant is to succeed; and visitors, with somewhat more urban tastes, traveling through on their way to Hanging Rock State Park. They also have pizza, which is a good lick, because northern Stokes County is pretty much a pizza desert. The restaurant’s sign is a little hard to see, though, so look carefully to your right as you drive north through Danbury, just before you pass the old courthouse.
One of the beautiful things about a place like Stokes County (and one of the reasons I’m here) is that we don’t have the suburbanization and population density required to support fast food places. There are fast food places in King, far to the south, and a couple in Walnut Cove, but that’s it. Eateries out in the sticks are always small and locally owned.
The place gets its name from its location. The Danbury Reporter, a long-dead newspaper, used to be published in the printin’ office there.
I’m reproducing the menu here to share the local flavor.
P.S. They have free WIFI. Northern Stokes County is very poorly wired, but there is fiber under some of the main roads, including through Danbury, at least as far as the library and the county government center.
The long-range forecast calls for normal-ish temperatures and above-normal precipitation, so Ken planted the early garden today.
Spring has sprung.
I hope.
The abbey is rich with eggs, so eggs are the default breakfast. But variation is needed. The French divide breakfasts into two broad categories — sweet breakfasts and salty breakfasts. Sweet breakfasts are awfully good sometimes, but it’s hard to keep sweet breakfasts from being cloying. Or they’re just too high carb, and one starts craving a high-carb lunch.
These banana-walnut broiler cakes are not exactly low carb, but they’re not as high carb as they look. Each cake contains only about 4 ounces of batter. The rest of it is banana and toasted walnuts.
Here’s a rough recipe.
1. Toast a generous quantity of walnuts in a skillet and set them aside.
2. Make a portion of your favorite pancake batter, but not too much. The cake in the photo was made with blue cornmeal batter.
3. Slice a banana into quarters and start browning the slices in a skillet. Use an interesting oil such as coconut oil.
4. When the bananas start to brown, throw on the toasted walnuts.
5. Pour on the batter.
6. When the bottom of the cake is nicely browned, pop the pan under the broiler.
7. Brown the top of the cake under the broiler. When it’s done, flip it onto a plate. The side that was browned in the skillet on the stovetop will be the prettiest side, so turn that up. The cake will fall apart, but that’s a feature, not a bug.
8. If you’re making more than one, keep them warm on the bottom rack of the oven, away from the broiler.
9. Serve ’em with butter and maple syrup.
These hotcakes are delicious, with a complex blend of flavors and textures. The toasted walnuts give it a roasted flavor. Browned bananas are divine. The coconut oil really brings out the walnut and banana flavors. And how can you go wrong with maple syrup?
By the way, Trader Joe’s has good bargains in Canadian maple syrup. I buy Grade B syrup. Grade B is not inferior. It’s just a little heavier and has a sassier taste than Grade A. And it’s cheaper.
Last week, Ken told me that he saw eggs at Whole Foods that cost more than $10 a dozen. I just had to see that for myself, so today I looked for them in the egg section. The most expensive eggs I saw were $7.99 a dozen. But, luckily, Whole Foods’ egg guy was there refilling the shelves, and I got to ask him some questions.
Yes indeed, he said. Last week they had eggs that cost more than $10 a dozen. But they already had sold out! I asked him what it was about the eggs that justified the price. He called this the “resume” of the eggs. The $10 eggs, he said, were (if I and he understood correctly) from grass-fed hens. Both he and I found that a bit strange. Grass-fed cows are a good thing, because cows are ruminants, and grass is their natural food. It’s different with chickens, though. Chickens do love grass, but it’s not something that they want to live on exclusively. From my reading on chicken husbandry, I understand that chickens will happily derive about a third of their calories from grass. But they also want seeds and any tasty worms, grubs, or insects that they can find. Not to mention kitchen scraps. So I’m skeptical about the concept of grass-fed chickens.
Today, the most expensive eggs at Whole Foods were the $7.99 eggs, and I understood that the $7.99 eggs came from the same North Carolina farm (in Durham) that the $10 eggs came from.
But this is amazing. People will pay more than $10 a dozen for eggs! Ken and I really wanted to sample those eggs, because we both believe that they couldn’t possibly be superior to the eggs laid by Acorn Abbey’s happy pastured hens. But that test will have to wait. So far, the Whole Foods guy said, they have not been able to get more of the $10 eggs, though they’re trying.
Ken keeps a spreadsheet that he calls “Abbey economics,” and in the spreadsheet he tracks the cost of keeping our hens vs. the value of the eggs. One thing is for sure. The abbey’s economics look a whole lot better if you value our amazing eggs at $10 a dozen. At that price, we’re probably saving money by having our own hens.
If Southerners still ate traditional Southern cuisine cooked at home, the statistics on our health wouldn’t be what they are. You only have to look at what people have in their carts at the grocery store to see that almost nobody cooks from scratch anymore. I have a lot of doubts about whether young people really learn to cook at all anymore. Often on Facebook I see pictures of dishes that I suspect pass for home cooking these days — concoctions of grated cheese, sausage, and biscuit mix, for example.
In this area, one of our cultural resources is the K&W Cafeteria, a regional chain that started in Winston-Salem in the 1930s, I believe. It’s been over 40 years since I first ate at a K&W, and almost nothing has changed. They do Southern cuisine pretty much from scratch, striking a pretty good balance between honesty of the cuisine and the low prices that people expect around here.
Many people look down on the K&W and wouldn’t want to be seen there. I am not among them. As a matter of fact, I’m a reverse snob when it comes to the K&W. When I have visitors from out of town (with the occasional exception of Californians), I almost always take them to the K&W to help acquaint them with traditional Southern cuisine. It was the favorite eating place of a friend from Europe (who made fun of restaurants that are considered fancy in these parts). And even those who look down on places popular with seniors and people of modest means have to grant that, at least, the K&W is not fast food.
Recently they started having lunch specials. One of those specials is four vegetables, plus bread and a drink, for $5.99. Today for lunch I had pinto beans (with onions), mashed potatoes, green beans, broccoli, corn bread and iced tea. How could you go wrong?
