{"id":1872,"date":"2011-12-28T10:14:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T15:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2011-12-28T10:14:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-28T15:14:49","slug":"nyt-growing-number-of-southern-farmers-want-to-reclaim-the-agrarian-roots-of-southern-cooking-restore-its-lost-traditions-and-dignity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2011\/12\/28\/nyt-growing-number-of-southern-farmers-want-to-reclaim-the-agrarian-roots-of-southern-cooking-restore-its-lost-traditions-and-dignity\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT: Growing number of Southern farmers &#8220;want to reclaim the agrarian roots of Southern cooking, restore its lost traditions and dignity&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Medium Rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8584504377\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in &#8220;slow food&#8221;, &#8220;farm to table&#8221;, &#8220;eating local&#8221;, or any of the other relatively recent efforts to bring back old ways of thinking about food production, purchase, and consumption &#8212; or if you are just interested in good Southern cooking &#8212; then you might want to check out a great piece in the New York Times today: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/28\/dining\/southern-farmers-vanquish-the-cliches.html?_r=1&#038;smid=fb-share&#038;pagewanted=all\" target=\"_blank\">Southern Farmers Vanquish the Cliches<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the opening:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S not hard to get Emile DeFelice riled up. Just mention Paula Deen, the so-called queen of Southern food, who cooks with canned fruit and Crisco. Or say something like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look like a Southern pig farmer.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll practically hit the ceiling of his Prius.<\/p>\n<p>Because there are a few things about Southern food that the man just can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand: its hayseed image, the insiders who feed that image and the ignorant outsiders who believe in it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Just because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a farmer doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean I spend all my time feeding pigs,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Mr. DeFelice, a natty, voluble fellow who raises 200 pigs here at Caw Caw Creek Farm in the softly forested hills north of Charleston, S.C. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an absurd proposition.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The piece focuses on South Carolina and mentions various farms, growers, mills and restaurants (including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huskrestaurant.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Husk<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.magnolias-blossom-cypress.com\/cypress.asp?catID=20437\" target=\"_blank\">Cypress<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wildoliverestaurant.com\" target=\"_blank\">Wild Olive<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The sheer number of players and the level of detail in the piece make it plain that Southern cooking just might be transformed by this movement. <\/p>\n<p>Or maybe we&#8217;ll see an ironic divergence, with poorer people continuing to eat cheaper pre-prepared and overly processed foods and only wealthier people able to afford to eat the local delicacies talked about in the piece? Price is only mentioned once, and that&#8217;s in the context of high prices helping support small producers.<\/p>\n<p>That concern aside, there are some other interesting &#8212; and heartening &#8212; passages, like this one: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153As an obsessive person, you realize that there is a better version of everything out there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Sean Brock, the Charleston chef whose restaurant Husk serves only food produced south of the Mason-Dixon line, from Georgia olive oil to Tennessee chocolate to capers made from locally foraged elderberries. Many Southern chefs are working along similar lines \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Frank Stitt, Mike Lata, Andrea Reusing and Linton Hopkins are just a few \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but Mr. Brock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rigor has redefined what it means to cook like a Southerner today. Young chefs are joining in, learning butchery and fermentation, putting up chowchow and piccalilli, experimenting with wood ash to make their own hominy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Around Charleston, the relationships between chefs and producers are particularly intimate. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The guys who taught me how to mill are stuck in their ways,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Greg Johnsman, the owner of Geechie Boy Mill on Edisto Island, who drives around the region collecting antique machines used to preserve the particular bran-oil-starch ratio of his cornmeal and grits. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153These days, the food comes from factories, and only the chefs care about how things taste.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even if you&#8217;re down to one or two free articles on the NYT this month, you might want to take a look at this one.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Paul Deen has also made other news today. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine included <em>Paula Deen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Southern Cooking Bible<\/em> on its list of the five most unhealthy cookbooks published last year. Mary Landers of the Savannah Morning News has interesting and entertaining coverage <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahnow.com\/news\/2011-12-28\/paula-deens-bible-named-unhealthiest-cookbook\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"4\" style=\"float: none; margin:4px 0 4px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Another large rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"0042810896\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 336;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 280;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re interested in &#8220;slow food&#8221;, &#8220;farm to table&#8221;, &#8220;eating local&#8221;, or any of the other relatively recent efforts to bring back old ways of thinking about food production, purchase, and consumption &#8212; or if you are just interested in&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2011\/12\/28\/nyt-growing-number-of-southern-farmers-want-to-reclaim-the-agrarian-roots-of-southern-cooking-restore-its-lost-traditions-and-dignity\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[85,66],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Picture-21.png?fit=484%2C449","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-uc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}