pepper jelly and cream cheese
The only place around here that really attempts to champion local food is the Thomaston Rural Heritage Centre, where the Rural Studio has, over the last three years, been building a fantastic new base for them. Their most famous products are their amazing, world-beating barbeque and their pepper jelly, which is made from green peppers grown in their own garden. The Rural Studio project for them includes a state-of-the-art new kitchen to make all these things in, as well as a cafe space where they hope to both feed the community and provide classes in cooking healthy, locally available produce.
Last night was the 'grand opening' of the new building (despite the fact that, in true RS style, it's not quite finished yet) and we were treated to a feast of not-very-Alabama food cooked under the supervision of the wonderful Mrs Kardous, mother of a student on the team and so devoted to the project that she has driven down from North Carolina every weekend for the last few months to help out with it, and to whom the gallery space in the new centre has been dedicated. Being of Syrian extraction, she concocted beautiful hummus and other dips, meatballs, and about a dozen varieties of fantastic sweets, a mix between the Southern and the Syrian (A sort of baclava with pecan nuts? Mmm! And we had the barbeque, of course.
We were all given jars of pepper jelly and watermelon rind pickles to take home, alongside the supreme marketing ploy, coozies emblazoned with 'Eat Pepper Jelly'. [A coozie (spelling??) aka huggie, is, for Europeans, something made out of foam that you put around your beer can/bottle to keep it cool.] So today I sampled the pepper jelly in the traditional way, with cream cheese (well, mine was a soft goats cheese, not the Philadelphia that everyone here would swear by) on top of a toasted bagel and I can tell y'all, it's pretty damn good. Actually strangely addictive. You can buy it on the internet via their website.
The next ambition of the indefatigable Gayle Etheridge, who runs the centre, is to start up a co-op grocery store next to the farmer's market shelter that the RS built a few years back. For the sake of all our diets, let's hope it happens...
Last night was the 'grand opening' of the new building (despite the fact that, in true RS style, it's not quite finished yet) and we were treated to a feast of not-very-Alabama food cooked under the supervision of the wonderful Mrs Kardous, mother of a student on the team and so devoted to the project that she has driven down from North Carolina every weekend for the last few months to help out with it, and to whom the gallery space in the new centre has been dedicated. Being of Syrian extraction, she concocted beautiful hummus and other dips, meatballs, and about a dozen varieties of fantastic sweets, a mix between the Southern and the Syrian (A sort of baclava with pecan nuts? Mmm! And we had the barbeque, of course.
We were all given jars of pepper jelly and watermelon rind pickles to take home, alongside the supreme marketing ploy, coozies emblazoned with 'Eat Pepper Jelly'. [A coozie (spelling??) aka huggie, is, for Europeans, something made out of foam that you put around your beer can/bottle to keep it cool.] So today I sampled the pepper jelly in the traditional way, with cream cheese (well, mine was a soft goats cheese, not the Philadelphia that everyone here would swear by) on top of a toasted bagel and I can tell y'all, it's pretty damn good. Actually strangely addictive. You can buy it on the internet via their website.
The next ambition of the indefatigable Gayle Etheridge, who runs the centre, is to start up a co-op grocery store next to the farmer's market shelter that the RS built a few years back. For the sake of all our diets, let's hope it happens...
Comments