Why Another Food Blog?

Apple stack cake

I love Appalachian food! Buttermilk biscuits smothered in white sausage gravy or just served with butter and wild honey, macaroni and local farmer's cheese, cornbread salad, soupbeans with hamhocks or salt pork, potatoes fixed a myriad of ways, Irish stew, beef stew, seasonal vegetables from your own garden: these foods aren't solely Appalachian, but they have their own Appalachian translations and they are delicious!

Deer crossing a stream near my home

Appalachia is that part of the United States that goes down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania to Georgia, including West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and western Virginia and North Carolina. It was originally settled by what were called Scotch-Irish. These were folks who lived in the Plantation of Ulster in northern Ireland, many of whom had been moved there from the Lowlands of Scotland by James I of England in order to get them out of his hair. From about 1710 to 1775, an estimated 250,000 of these people emigrated to colonial America. Many of them had no Scottish ancestry, but enough of them did that the term Scotch-Irish has been used to describe them ever since they got here.

Fall in Shawnee Forest less than 10 miles from my home

When they arrived, land around most of the coastal settlements was already owned or too expensive to buy. So they headed inland and settled on both sides of the Appalachian mountains. Land was cheaper and more available in the mountains, but life could be a real struggle because of the isolation and the rugged, heavily forested terrain. Poverty and hardship were common but they were familiar from life in Ulster. As a result, the immigrants hunkered down and developed the same kind of self-reliant and clannish culture they had in the old world. The term "hillbilly" is often applied to people who live in the mountainous areas of Appalachia, usually connoting poverty, ignorance, backwardness and violence. But the term is not an American invention; the word came with them from Scotland and Ireland. Until after World War II, much of Appalachian language, music, religion, art, architecture, dress, and food had changed very little since the 18th century. When I was studying Shakespeare in college in the mid 1960s, our professor remarked that if one wanted to hear Shakespeare's poetry spoken much the way it was originally, one only had to attend a performance deep in West Virginia.

My own ancestors came to colonial America in 1740 from Belfast in northern Ireland and eventually settled in Louisa, Kentucky. Whether the two brothers had any Scottish ancestry is unknown. I haven't been able to trace them any further back than Ulster. In the early 1900s, several of their descendants moved just across the Ohio River to Portsmouth, Ohio, to take jobs with the Norfolk & Western Railroad, the steel mill, and the shoe factories that were here then. Although our hills here are dwarfed by the main Appalachian Mountains, those of us who live here are still hillbillies and "briars", no matter how much we may try to deny it. My grandmother was born and raised near Huntington, West Virginia, and was an accomplished Appalachian cook. Thanksgiving in her home was something to behold. And enjoy. My mother was a wonderful cook too. She tended to have a little intellectual snobbery when it came to "country cooking", as she called it, but she just couldn't avoid putting some Appalachian touches on her classical French cooking. You can take the girl out of the country, but ...

Part of my herb garden along the back of our house

It is the food I'm particularly interested in and which will be the main subject of this blog. I plan to take a tour through Appalachian food from breakfast through supper, from spring through winter, and from ordinary through extraordinary. Along the way, we'll learn about what gives Appalachian food its character and what makes it different from the same dish prepared in another tradition. We'll learn about the history of the traditional tools and ingredients and how they affect the finished dish. There will be a liberal helping of recipes and techniques. Who knows, we may gain an appreciation for other things Appalachian as well.

In the meantime, I'm going to have some "kilt" autumn green salad, mountain country cornbread smothered with white sausage gravy and some apple stack cake for dessert.