Tag: Virginia

Doing What’s Necessary: The Logical Outcome of Haute Cuisine, or, An Extremely Brief Meditation on the History of Privies and Toilets

May 31, 2013

I came face to face with the truth about outhouses on my first day in my Peace Corps village. Not that I’d never seen (or used) an outhouse before; I became intimately acquainted with the concept during the summer I worked as the assistant cook on an archaeological dig in Ozette, Washington. There, the pit … More Doing What’s Necessary: The Logical Outcome of Haute Cuisine, or, An Extremely Brief Meditation on the History of Privies and Toilets

* “We raise the wheat, they give us the corn” : a reflection on life in antebellum Virginia

February 4, 2013

Not too long ago, before the snow fell and kept falling, I drove down to Critz, Virginia, the homeplace of Virginia tobacco baron, J. R. Reynolds. Reynolds’s parents, Hardin Reynolds and Nancy Jane Cox Reynolds, owned  several hundred slaves, who worked the 717-acre Rock Spring plantation. One of these slaves went by the name of … More * “We raise the wheat, they give us the corn” : a reflection on life in antebellum Virginia

*”Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new”: A Sweet Potato Rhapsody

January 25, 2013

“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new,” or so confessed St. Augustine, a Catholic saint born in 354 A.D., in what is now Algeria. And I, I could also say the same, about many things. One of them being sweet potatoes, a beloved Southern staple.** It was a Thanksgiving Day. I … More *”Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new”: A Sweet Potato Rhapsody

* Biscuits and Buttermilk: A New Year and New Directions

January 2, 2013

After a long fallow period, spent baking (and eating) many Christmas cookies, I have decided to bloom/cook where I am planted, so to speak. Lately I’ve become more intrigued by the cuisine that surrounds me, here in the American South.  After all, I’ve basically been a Southerner for over 30 years. Although many cookbook authors … More * Biscuits and Buttermilk: A New Year and New Directions

Savoring the Daily on the Fringes of the Coalfields

December 8, 2012

Although grocery shopping here in the United States doesn’t quite reach the challenges I faced when grocery shopping in Morocco or Burkina Faso, the very act of buying food makes me think hard about eating and cooking and just plain living. Shopping for food entails making decisions. What choices do I make when my only … More Savoring the Daily on the Fringes of the Coalfields

Thomas Jefferson and His Magic “Maccaroni” Machine

January 11, 2010

Thomas Jefferson, rightly or wrongly credited with first bringing pasta to the tables of Americans, drew a picture of  a pasta-making machine. This drawing, now in the Library of Congress, resulted from a trip to Italy taken by Jefferson in 1787. Don’t forget that “macaroni” served as a generic name for pasta and doesn’t necessarily … More Thomas Jefferson and His Magic “Maccaroni” Machine