True Grits

Via TastingTable:

For years, most cooks looking for an artisanal alternative to the ubiquitous Quaker brand had only one option: Anson Mills. This Columbia, South Carolina-based company has dominated the heirloom-grits scene since it launched in 1997, thanks to a cultishly loyal chef base and wide distribution. But these four producers have brought some diversity to the market, and in the process are leading a Grits Belt renaissance.

Boykin Mill Farms (Rembert, South Carolina) These old-fashioned yellow grits are ground in a water-powered mill and come in old-school paper or cloth bags ($5 for a two-pound bag; boykinmillfarms.com).

Carolina Plantation (Darlington, South Carolina) In the unofficial home of NASCAR, local farmers use granite stones to produce these [coarse]-ground grits. ($4 for a two-pound bag; carolinaplantationrice.com).

Mill of Old Guilford (Oak Ridge, North Carolina) Heirloom white corn and a made-to-order philosophy set these speckled grits apart from the pack ($15 for 2 two-pound bags; boiledpeanuts.com).

Mills Farm (Athens, Georgia) Tim and Alice Mills rely on one acre of corn and a trusty mule to produce the Red Mule grits local chef Hugh Acheson loves (redmulegrits.com; call 706-543-8113 for current prices).

I have historically been an Anson Mills partisan (as foodie friends in NYC will attest) but look forward to checking these other sources out.

Southern cooking

Meet Sir Shambling:

Due to Sir Shambling’s age, weight and general physical condition the emphasis here is on the slower side of things – not just by way of personal preference for those gritty ballads but also to act as a counter-weight to all the Northern soul and dance sites that exist. And while the great names of Southern soul will all feature here, so will a lot of lesser known artists. Again not just for the thrill of the obscure, but because so many rarer performances deserve to be valued and appreciated properly.

So the aim of the site is to attempt to bring this wonderful music to as wide an audience as possible. But while words and pictures can help this process the best method is obviously to listen to the tracks described here. So highlighted throughout the individual artist and article pages are soundclips of the best tracks concerned. These sound files are not digital copies of recorded works but considerably downgraded representations of the sounds, in lossy, gloriously low-fi MP3 format. The aim of these is to demonstrate the sounds, in order to promote the interest in this music and consequently promote the buying of original copies of the recordings, on vinyl or on CD. They are not meant to, and their low quality does not permit them to, serve as a replacement for the original recordings. Sadly as we all know there is a problem with sharing music via the Net. My own personal view is that the widest possible exposure to music is the best way to keep it alive, to promote interest in the artists themselves and to generate activity in the legitimate reissue business – and I could quote several examples of this taking place, so the soundclips are designed to do just that.

Like blond highlights in the hair of a third rate soccer player, scattered amongst the articles are discographies of sorts. Help with these would be most appreciated.

Welcome To Sir Shambling's Web Site!

Related:

• Artist Index @ Sir Shambling
• Article Index @ Sir Shambling

North Carolina (unofficially) in the Obama column

It looks like Obama will hold on to his slim margin of victory in North Carolina, the state I was born in (and grew up in.)

This is absolutely incredible to me.

As the article excerpted below notes, North Carolina has long had a well-deserved reputation as "one of the more moderate states in the South on race issues," but let's face it, that's a pretty weak statement; major elections were turning on the exploitation of racial issues in North Carolina well into the 1980s and 1990s.

It's about like saying that apartheid South Africa, back in its day, had one of the better human rights records compared to other countries in Africa; it's absolutely true, but it's true only because things were so unimaginably awful elsewhere.

At any rate... check out how far we've come in 50 years.

As part of the Old Confederacy, North Carolina had a legacy of slavery and segregation. But it has been regarded since the 1940s as one of the most moderate states in the South on race issues. And it is a state that has undergone rapid Sunbelt growth in recent decades, with millions of new residents moving here from around the country.

In the unofficial returns, Obama led Republican John McCain by 13,746 votes. Gary Bartlett, the state elections director, said Obama should be considered the unofficial victor. Bartlett said an estimated 40,000 provisional ballots still must be counted, but based on experience, the outcome is not likely to change when the State Board of Elections certifies the results on Nov. 25.

[...]

Henry Frye, a 76-year-old Greensboro lawyer, was the first black elected to North Carolina's state legislature in the 20th century and later became chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

In 1956, as an Air Force captain who had been admitted to UNC's law school, Frye tried to register to vote in his home, Richmond County. He was required to name five signers of the Declaration of Independence and the 12th president of the United States. When he failed, he was not allowed to register. Like Chambers, he did not expect to see a black president in his lifetime.

He said Obama's strength in North Carolina was the result of the nation's problems.

"The right circumstances have to come together," Frye said. "The thing that may have pushed it over the top is the terrible economic news we've had over the last month or so.

"But beyond that, the most significant thing is that North Carolina can vote and will vote for a minority."

By Wednesday afternoon, Obama had won 2,123,332 votes in North Carolina to McCain's 2,109,586.

Obama Turns Tide in NC (News and Observer, 6 November 2008)

Update: AP "officially" calls NC for Obama.

The supper table, in high summer

Down in Raleigh this week. 

The North Carolina Farmer's Market (in downtown Raleigh) is an embarrassment of riches at this time of year, and the gardens of our friends and neighbors are starting to come in, too.

The summer supper I just ate could convince anyone to go vegan, I think, or at least seasonally vegan. :-)

• Silver Queen corn, cooked and served on the cob
• Stewed field peas
• Yellow squash simmered with onion until it all cooked down to mush (maybe you have to grow up eating it like this, but it's absolutely ambrosial to me.)
• Fried okra (not battered; dredged in a little cornmeal and fried in vegetable oil)
  
• Sliced tomatoes
• Sliced cucumber
• Fresh cantaloupe.
  

If any of us can actually contemplate dessert tonight, there are dead-ripe peaches and fresh blueberries on offer.

Consider the lilies of the flour aisle

Yet another hallowed Southern tradition is now officially endangered: White Lily flour will no longer be produced in the South.

For generations of Southern bakers, the secret to weightless biscuits has been one simple ingredient passed from grandmother to mother to child: White Lily all-purpose flour.

Biscuit dives and high-end Southern restaurants like Watershed in Atlanta and Blackberry Farm outside Knoxville use it. Blue-ribbon winners at state fair baking contests depend on it. On food lovers’ Web sites, transplanted Southerners share tips on where to find it, and some of them returning from trips back home have been known to attract attention when airport security officers detect a suspicious white dust on their luggage.

White Lily is distinctly Southern: it has been milled here in downtown Knoxville since 1883 and its white bags (extra tall because the flour weighs less per cup than other brands) are distributed almost solely in Southern supermarkets, although specialty stores like Williams-Sonoma and Dean & DeLuca have carried it at premium prices.

But at the end of June, the mill, with its shiny wood floors, turquoise and red grinders and jiggling armoire-size sifters, will shut its doors. The J. M. Smucker Company, which bought the brand a year ago, has already begun producing White Lily at two plants in the Midwest, causing ripples of anxiety that Southern biscuits will never be the same.

Southern Bakers Worry as a Treasured Flour Mill Moves North (New York Times, 18 June 2008)

I grew up making biscuits with Martha White flour (produced on the same principles as White Lily) - it produces light biscuits of uniform density, and there really is no substitute for a proper biscuit flour. (For extra cracker credibility points, Martha White is the longest running sponsor of the Grand Ole Opry.)

Damned if Smucker's didn't buy Martha White, too.

Oh, lord. I hope the Jelly Barons at least leave me my locally-produced stone-ground cornmeal.

Strange Maps: Barbecue Sauce Styles

Learned discourse from barbecue authority and UNC sociology professor emeritus John Shelton Reed, on the styles of barbecue sauce in use in South Carolina:

* The vinegar and pepper region covers the eastern quarter of the state. This is “a southward extension of eastern North Carolina-style sauce,” states Mr Reed.

* “The tomato region ditto for North Carolina’s Piedmont- or Lexington-style sauce, which is basically the eastern sauce with a little tomato added, still thin and vinegar-flavored.”

* The ketchup region is influenced by what they serve in Georgia “and most of the trans-Appalachian South – or for that matter in grocery stores – a thick, sweet, ketchupy sauce.”

* Unique to South Carolina, though, is “the mustard sauce of central South Carolina, (which) is unique to that state, and (which) gives it more distinct barbecue regions than any other.”

Strange Maps #246: Southern Sauce Sources

Delightfully, a commenter in the thread at Strange Maps made an appropriately-colored Google Maps overlay of the South Carolina Sauce Map.

See here for the North Carolina Google Sauce Map.

And there's much discussion, in the comments, of where the precise dividing lines are.

Barbecue is serious business.

Bar culture in Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is awash in bourbon. And beer. It's a drinking person’s town, due in no small part to the state’s bourbon heritage and the city’s nickname-namesake brewery, Falls City. This is where the Old Fashioned was invented. It’s where Al Capone dodged the law during prohibition, ducking out of the Seelbach Hotel through secret passageways. And it’s where barkeeps plied their customers with rolled oysters and bean soup to keep them coming back. Louisville’s private clubs, hotel bars, and neighborhood taverns are rich with drinking history and lore, and there’s always time for another round.

In January Southern Foodways Alliance oral historian Amy Evans bellied up to many a bar in Falls City, chatting up bartenders, bar owners, and bar patrons, gathering their stories one drink at a time. She met with John C. Johnson, 50-year employee of the Pendennis Club, where the Old Fashioned was born. Greg Haner, fourth-generation owner of Mazzoni’s, talked about his family’s 100-plus-year history of making and serving rolled oysters. Edward Winfield shared stories of the legendary Seelbach Hotel and the much-loved Louisville bartender Max Allen Jr., whom he had the opportunity to learn from before he passed.

Serious Eats/Southern Foodways: Bar Culture in Louisville, Kentucky — An Oral History Project

The interviews will be posted on the web at SouthernFoodways.com this spring.

Snapshot of a rapidly changing South

Friday newspaper circular for a Southern grocery store chain, third page:

"Celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights!"

It accompanies ads for a whole host of Indian foods (spices, condiments, frozen meals) that, suffice it to say, we never saw at the Winn Dixie or the Big Star back in the day.

New accredited vendor

I don't know how their opening escaped me, but here's a place I just gotta check out this weekend.

Epiphany at Exit 71

Or, "The scales fell from my eyes on the road to Savannah..."

At exit 71 on the NC stretch of I-95 southbound, there are two gigantic bulletin boards.

The one on the left, says, more or less: JESUS CHRIST IS LORD AND SAVIOR / ACCEPT HIM INTO YOUR HEART TODAY.

The one on the right reads, "TOPLESS! TOPLESS! WE DARE TO BARE! CAFE RISQUE!"

And then, at the bottom, in the biggest letters of all: GOOD FOOD!

No, the epiphany has nothing to do with the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane in the South; that theme has been done to death, and all you have to do is drive around the outskirts of a small town counting churches and massage parlors and do the math yourself.

Rather, the blinding flash of insight was this:

Only in the South would a "gentleman's club" find it important to reassure you that the cooking was good, too.