"northcarolina" news and stories

Photo: N.C. Museum of History.

Thanks to an agricultural education collaborative that's planted the state's leading crops between the State Capitol and the North Carolina Legislative Building, North Carolina's halls of power are lined with cornstalks and tobacco leaves.

"It's been a great way to take the museum outdoors and let people reconnect with where their food comes from," says North Carolina Museum of History youth and family programs coordinator Emily Grant, who worked with the state's Department of Administration and Department of Agriculture to create a series of agricultural vignettes in decorative planters where maple trees and azaleas once grew.

"Our standard landscape planting was starting to die out from the drought," Grant says. "We thought we could pick out plants from North Carolina to talk about plant use and abuse."

The project this year took more than five planters of varying sizes. "We don't have a big lawn where we can just plow the back," Grant says of the urban museum, sowing seeds for a Three Sisters garden of beans, corn and squash; cotton; tobacco; sweet potatoes and peanuts.

Lonesome Valley's Canyon Kitchen. Photo courtesy of Lonesome Valley

With the competition to sell exclusive mountain lots becoming increasingly cutthroat, developers have begun using black-eyed peas and collard greens to lure prospective buyers through their gates.

Planned communities in the Southeast have long relied on free rounds of golf, celebrity appearances and swanky wine-and-cheese soirees to show off their properties. But Lonesome Valley, an 800-acre spread in Cashiers, N.C., is perhaps the first development to acknowledge the quickest way to a Southern land hunter's wallet is through his stomach: The development last month unveiled Canyon Kitchen, a weekends-only restaurant helmed by superstar chef John Fleer.

"We have 200 lots here and about 50 that we've sold," explains food and beverage manager Sallie Peterkin. "So we've invited the public. We've got reservations coming out of our ears."

Fret not, Southern beer drinkers: While the region's craft beer scene has gone and grown up, its fans (if a newly released documentary is any indication) show no signs of maturing.

"Beer Y'all," billed as "rock-and-roll road trip across North Carolina," follows a scruffy septet of wannabe homebrewers on a nine-day pilgrimage to 27 microbreweries across the state. Like any great epic, the film has a hero (the guy in Allegheny County who lets the travelers crash on his couch); obstacles (drunken ping-pong); encounters with inscrutable seers (brewmasters who mumble about keg conditioning) and a moral that inspired the industry crowd at last night's world premiere screening to hoist their pitchers in appreciation: Beer shouldn't be taken too seriously.

While the dudes filmmakers marvel politely at the tanks their hosts show off, they have little patience for academic discussions of wort and hops. They'd rather get drunk and watch "Lethal Weapon 2." They like to nap. It takes 48 minutes before anyone in the film mentions how the ales taste, which leaves plenty of time for backyard volleyball playin', lazy guitar pickin' and mongrel dog scratchin'. That's Southern beer, y'all.

"Beer Y'all" will be screening in parts of the Tarheel State this summer.

If you can believe it, there's sweet potato in this tasty treat.

Slashfood had the delicious task this Wednesday of helping judge the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission's blogger recipe contest. One of the finalists was this delectable cheesecake sweetie by East Village Kitchen.

The contest asked bloggers to come up with recipes that used sweet potatoes in new ways to encourage home cooks to get them on the table after the Thanksgiving dinner season.

Get the cheesecake recipe, see the winner and learn the difference between a sweet potato and a Southern yam after the jump.

I'll certainly admit to having one heck of a lot of 'cue country exploration left to do in my lifetime, but thus far I've yet to encounter any venue outside of North Carolina slinging BBQ slaw alongside their meat. It's an essential side for Lexington style, vinegar-kissed chopped pork, and gets its characteristic pink tint from a dollop of ketchup or barbecue sauce. Also -- it's pretty darned delicious, and provides a pleasantly crunchy textural contrast with the rich, soft strands of slow-cooked shoulder.

From Searching for the Dixie Barbecue, Journeys into the Southern Psyche by Wilber W. Caldwell (2005):

"In the central North Carolina Piedmont you will often find what locals there call "red coleslaw" on the plate next to your chopped pork barbecue. This tangy variation replaces the usual mayonnaise-based slaw dressing with a catsup-and-vinegar-based dressing. In fact, it is not unusual for Upcountry slaw all over Dixie to be spiked with a big splash of barbecue finishing sauce. Whether a sweet/sour tomato-based, spicy mix, either right from the store-bought jar or from some dusty bottle of secret brew, this spicy addition turns the coleslaw sauce either red or a rich brown color and creates what most Southerners called "barbecued coleslaw."

Surely food experts and gourmets all over the planet will ... most certainly suggest that this "barbecue on barbecue" presentation robs the meal of balance. ... Southerners will scoff at this suggestion. Everyone down here knows that if a little barbecue sauce it good, then a whole lot is even better."

If you happen by High Point, NC, do stop into Carter Brothers BBQ (from whence the above pictured platter of BBQ came on this most recent Christmas Eve) for some of the finest chopped (regular or coarse -- they're both good) pork BBQ you'll ever have the pleasure of eating.

BBQ Slaw is recipe after the jump. Got one of your own? Might you please be so kind as to kick back with a Cheerwine and share it in the comments?