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Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute
of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters
at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.
The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.
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Taste of Appalachia
Asheville NC and Environs
Hosted by Biltmore Estates
Join the Southern Foodways Alliance as we explore the rich
traditions of Appalachian food during our third annual Field Trip, August
1-3, 2003. Our host will be Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
Experience the diversity of the Southern mountains. Savor
smoked trout and sweetpotatoes and fresh-from-the-oven biscuits. Sip a
glass of Cabernet Franc. Tap your toe to the sounds of a dulcimer. Bend
an ear to a poet of the mountains.
THURSDAY, JULY 31
The Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau offers a menu of area restaurants
to ease you into the weekend. Pick and choose from the list you’ll
find in your registration packet, and sample some of Asheville’s
best. They’ll be expecting you.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 1
Get a behind-the-scenes tour of Biltmore Estate’s agricultural programs—its
vineyards and winery operations, livestock programs, and market garden.
Enjoy a Vanderbilt-style wild game lunch cooked by chef Scott Birch at
Inn on Biltmore Estate with wine pairings from Biltmore’s winemaker
Bernard Delille. Listen in on a discussion of Southern wines and wineries,
then taste and come to your own conclusions about our readiness to challenge
our California brethren. Panelists include Southern Living’s Scott
Jones; Frank Sutherland, editor of The Tennessean; Matt Lee, a contributing
writer for Travel + Leisure; and moderator Barbara Ensrud, who writes
about wine for the Wall Street Journal. Tour the kitchens and pantries
of Biltmore House. Savor an Appalachian supper at Biltmore Estate’s
one-time truck farm cottage, with bluegrass by Strictly Clean and Decent.
We’ll teach you to clog.
SATURDAY,AUGUST 2
Morning Choose your outing
• Visit Hickory Nut Gap Farm in Fairview, a multigenerational
operation established as a stagecoach stop in the early 1800s. Today
several generations of the Clarke family still farm, raising organic
produce as well as poultry and lamb. The homeplace is the site of one
of western North Carolina’s finest apple orchards and is located
in one of the region’s most scenic mountain valleys. Lunch from
the farm.
• Light out for the Great Smoky Mountains and explore
Sunburst Trout Farms with host Sally Eason. Situated in one of the most
beautiful spots in western North Carolina, Sunburst is winning converts
nationwide. This outing includes a trout-based, Native American lunch,
as well as Native American folklore and storytelling.
• Handmade in America, a nonprofit organization
dedicated to preserving native crafts, artists, farms, and gardens of
Western North Carolina, hosts a journey into the hills of Madison County
to examine traditional farming methods. The route will take in two traditional
Southern mountain farms and include lunch at a mountain B&B. Along
on the trip will be photographer Tim Barnwell, whose book, The Face
of Appalachia: Portraits from the Mountain Farm, is due this fall from
Norton.
Afternoon Reconvene
at the newly restored Grove Arcade in downtown Asheville. One of the best
examples of Art Deco architecture in the city, the Grove Arcade hosts
performances by musician/storyteller David Holt, a two-time Grammy Award
winner, and Eustace Conway, owner and operator of the nearby Turtle Island
Preserve and subject of the bestselling book The Last American Man. Author
signings in conjunction with Asheville’s own Malaprop’s Bookstore
round out the afternoon.
Evening On to the Orange Peel
Social Aid and Pleasure Club, where area chefs will provide a taste of
the region by way of an Appalachian Iron Skillet competition sponsored
by the North Carolina SweetPotato Council and Lodge Manufacturing. Later,
it’s Songs of the Mountain, music and entertainment by, among others,
award-winning bluegrass musician Tim O’Brien, whose recent compositions
have been inspired, in part, by Cold Mountain author and native western
North Carolinian Charles Frazier.
SUNDAY,AUGUST 3
Travel to the Swannanoa Valley and Warren Wilson College, a liberal arts
college with roots as an early 20th century farm school. Farming, along
with a nationally recognized program in creative writing, is still a large
part of campus life. White Lily will host a breakfast provided by John
and Julie Stehling of Asheville’s Early Girl Eatery, followed by
award-winning author Wilma Dykeman’s reminiscences of her lifelong
love affair with the mountains and her recollections of dining at Dixieland,
the boarding house owned and operated by Thomas Wolfe’s family.
If you’re feeling sleepy, Randall Sluder of Mountain City Coffee
Roasters will pour you a cup or two. And Laura Boosinger will teach you
to shape-note sing.
• Tim Barnwell is a commercial
and fine art photographer in Asheville, North Carolina. His images have
appeared in Time, Newsweek, and House Beautiful.
• Scott Birch, executive chef at
the Inn on Biltmore Estate, is a veteran of the Windsor Court Hotel
in New Orleans, where he served as chef de cuisine for the Grill Room.
• Laura Boosinger’s concert
performances and recordings have earned for her a well-deserved reputation
as one of North Carolina’s most talented singers.
• Emoke B’Racz has built
Malaprop’s, her bookstore and café in downtown Asheville,
into a must-see, must-experience spot in a town in love with books and
writers.
• Eustace Conway founded Turtle
Island Preserve near Boone, North Carolina. He has lived in the woods
for 20 years without electricity or running water.
• Bernard Delille, Biltmore Estate
winemaker since 1995, holds a master’s degree from the Faculty
of Science in Lyon, France, and served his internship in the Bordeaux
region.
• Wilma Dykeman, a native of Asheville,
is the author of compelling works of fiction, nonfiction, and social
history including The Tall Woman and Return the Innocent Earth.
• Barbara Ensrud is a freelance
wine journalist, frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal,
and book author formerly based in New York and currently living in North
Carolina.
• David Holt of Fairview, North
Carolina, is a Grammy Award-winning musician, storyteller, historian,
and entertainer dedicated to performing and preserving traditional American
music and storytelling.
• Scott Jones of Birmingham, Alabama,
is food editor of Southern Living. He holds a degree from the
Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and is the author
of the Southern Living Wine Guide and Journal.
• Matt Lee and his brother Ted
own and operate the Lee Bros. Boiled Peanut Company. The Lees are contributing
editors to Travel + Leisure and write frequently for the New
York Times. The Lee Bros. Cookbook will be published by
W.W. Norton in 2004.
• Randall Sluder of Mountain City
Coffee Roasters serves locally roasted specialty coffees by the cup
at Asheville’s Grove Arcade and by the pound for home or office.
• John and Julie Stehling, owners
of Asheville’s Early Girl Eatery, treat their
customers to wonderful made-from-scratch Southern cooking using fresh
foods from local farms.
• Frank Sutherland is the editor
of the Tennessean in Nashville and author of a syndicated wine
column for Gannett News Service.
• Songs from the Mountain teams bluegrass great
Tim O’Brien with old-time musicians John
Herrmann and Dirk Powell. They will play a collection of songs
inspired by Charles Frazier’s best-selling novel Cold Mountain.
• Strictly Clean and Decent is
Patrick Crouch, Ron Shuffler, and Kay Crouch. Based in Lenoir, North
Carolina, the group is dedicated to the various musical folk traditions
associated with Appalachia—from Celtic airs and Irish dance tunes
to traditional and contemporary bluegrass.
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BILTMORE ESTATE
George Vanderbilt established Biltmore Estate as a country retreat and
working farm in 1895. Now a National Historic Landmark open to the public,
Biltmore House, its gardens, Biltmore Estate Winery, and the Inn on Biltmore
Estate remain privately owned by Vanderbilt’s heirs.
LODGE MANUFACTURING
Since 1896, Lodge Manufacturing has supplied cast-iron cookware to American
families. Strong commitment to quality, environment, and good cooking
goes into every piece of Lodge’s 135-
piece product line.
NORTH CAROLINA SWEETPOTATO COMMISSION
The North Carolina SweetPotato Commission represents the 467 sweetpotato
growers in the Tar Heel State. Sweetpotatoes are the No. 1 vegetable produced
in North Carolina, providing 40 percent of the nation’s supply.
Total production value is $67 million. No wonder sweetpotatoes are the
official state vegetable!
WHITE LILY
For more than a century, White Lily, the premier miller of pure, soft
winter wheat, has supplied the cooks of Appalachia with flour for biscuits,
cakes, and pie crusts. White Lily is committed to nurturing Southern food
traditions and welcomes the opportunity to partner, once again, with the
Southern Foodways Alliance.
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