Finding food

Originally published August 17, 2015

One of the most important things to me in this earthly life is food. I mean, it's important to all of us, it is life-giving to all of us. But I take it up a notch. Each meal is home cooked, from scratch and preferably from local, fresh ingredients. I make granola. I make bread. I make the pie crust. Then the pie. I make jam. I make the pizza crust. Then the pizza. I fry the chicken. I bread the okra. I make the ice cream.

Even on vacation on the SC coast this summer: local fried okra, succotash, watermelon salad and fresh fish.

This is my mom's fault, of course. She made granola. She made bread. Every meal was homemade. On Saturday afternoon we'd bake a cake. When I was a kid, our birthdays were special because we actually got a store-bought cake. I mean, fancy! I don't slaughter the chicken or milk the cow or slice the bacon, maybe.... I have dabbled in gardens. One year at the St. Peter's community garden we grew lettuce and tomatoes. I know that all lettuce comes out of the ground, but lettuce that you planted and pulled out of the ground tastes more delicious. And there's nothing like picking a cherry tomato off the vine at 4 p.m., after it's been warming in the sun all day. No grocery store or even farmer's market tomato tastes like that. But as much as I'd like, my life has not lent me the ability, acreage or sunshine to grow prolific gardens. So I have, along with the country, enjoyed the return to local produce and artisnal food movement. It just makes me sick that today's global economy makes it possible to have strawberries in February. Yuck. I cannot think of anything more distasteful. It doesn't even taste, for crying out loud! Strawberries grow in the spring, people!!

May: Strawberry pie: Beechwood strawberries

And tomatoes in March? Tomatoes ripen in the summer sun, don't you know?? When it's warm outside, and the sunshine turns it red, or yellow, or pink!

August: Tomato Pie, Tullahoma tomatoes

And blueberries are available for a minute, in the heat of summer, July.

July: Blueberry Pie, Happy Berry berries

And corn only lasts a little bit longer than blueberries.

Early august: Peaches and Cream Corn, Sugar Baby Watermelon, hydroponic lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, all from the South Cumberland Plateau

And don't even get me started on apples! They pick in the fall, on the verge of cold weather, at the top of a mountain.

September: Sky Top apple pie

Confession: I have cheated. I have bought tomatoes in April, because I cannot wait one more minute to make tomato pie. But then I always regret it, because it's not as good, not as sweet, not as red as a tomato that actually grew in the sunshine near my house. So my operating philosophy is to eat in season, and eat as much of it as you can. Yes, we get sick of corn every night, but it's only for a few weeks. Then I look forward to its return next summer. You can't miss something if it's not gone, right? Now that you fully understand my obsession with food, you may empathize with my fear that here, in Middle Tennessee, on the side of a mountain, there would be no food sources. Irrational? Yes. Did you just read my above discourse about food? "But if we have food ..., we will be content with that." 1 Timothy 6:8 Only in our second week here, we are content with food, for sure. God has provided. Duh. Where is my trust level? I've discovered Moonies, a local organic/gourmet market just three miles from our house. They even have my tea tree shampoo there, and fresh sourdough bread, made in nearby Monteagle.

All from Moonies (except the steak, from Piggly Wiggly): Organic sweet potato, for the pie, my first made here; local lettuce and cherry tomatoes, and sourdough bread. Enough to live on for sure.

And then I found the South Cumberland Online Farmers Market. Awesome. On Saturday night, you login and wander through the new additions for the week. All with a picture, and a description of taste and sometimes, how they were grown. You can read about the farms too, and keep up with what they're challenges and success are. Place your order, then pick up Tuesday night at the Community Center. Cool!!

From the market: cantaloupe, watermelon, okra, lettuce and tomatoes. Pork roast from Piggly Wiggly.

I have a stockpile of meat in the freezer from Costco, admittedly, because I feared (again, irrationally) that meat would be in short supply. And I do love Costco meat. But that was before I met Vicki, Annabelle's mom, from Isabel's school. They are ranchers in Alabama, and have an actual butcher shop in South Pittsburg, a little burg at the bottom of the mountain! Had I only known before I was irrational. I will get there soon.

So, we are not starving for lack of food on the side of this mountain. I fear, actually, that it will be quite the opposite. Even the restaurants (yes, they have those here) are really good. And I'm really critical of restaurants....