Rick mcDaniel: An Irresistible History of Southern Food
By Arnold Wengrow

If you were born in the South—or just got here as soon as you could—life has fundamentals. The plural “Y’all” never applies to one person. When your mother calls, you reply, “Yes, ma’am,” and Hoppin’ John and collards are always eaten on New Year’s. Southern speech and food are surely two things that make us so endlessly fascinating to outsiders.

Asheville writer Rick McDaniel has Southern tale-telling and down-home cooking in his genes, and has put them together in his first book, An Irresistible History of Southern Food. Part popular social his- tory, part recipe book, it’s as tempting as fresh pecan pie with homemade vanilla ice cream. Subtitled Four Centuries of Black-eyed Peas, Collard Greens and Whole Hog Barbecue, it takes you through chapters about rice and grits, fish and shellfish, ham and pork, chicken, wild game (including alligator and squirrel), gumbos, soups and stews, and vegetables, fruits, and breads. There’s a chapter titled “Gravies, Sops, Sauces and Condiments,” and iced tea, the inescapable Southern drink, gets its own chapter, along with “A Few Stronger Beverages.”

Even the table of contents says you’re in for an entertaining, appetite-tickling read. Chicken is “the gospel bird.” (“Any Southerner will tell you that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was the only church supper in his- tory that didn’t include fried chicken,” Rick writes.) Barbecue is “Nature’s Most Perfect Food.” Pickles, relishes, jams, and preserves are “Glory in a Jar.”

Born in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, near Charlotte, Rick says his food fascination emerged “about the time I grew teeth. I was surrounded by food from the earliest days.” All the women in his close-knit family were great cooks. His Grandmother Hill lived next door, and his grandfather cracked and grated the coconut for her coconut cake. His father made oyster stew once a week. On Saturday mornings he cooked eggs with ketchup and hog brains, which Rick calls “one of the most disgusting things in the world.”

Rick went from eating Southern food to cooking it when he was at Western Carolina University. Dining hall food didn’t satisfy his by now well-tuned palate. With little to do on Saturday afternoons in Cullowhee except watch pre-cable TV, he discovered New Orleans chef Justin Wilson “whipping up these incredible dishes that didn’t cost a whole lot of money. We would hightail it to the A&P, get all the ingredients, and cook for friends.”

The first dinner he made was Wilson’s shrimp etouffee. “I had to make a roux,” Rick says, “which was a trip unto itself. Justin had used crawfish but you didn’t find that at the A&P in Sylva.”

He points out that much of Southern cooking originated in Africa, brought by people enslaved from that continent. That connec- tion struck Asheville caterer Celine Lurey who says, “That explains why black-eyed peas in Cairo taste just like the black-eyed peas in Charleston.” She adds she bought a copy of Rick’s book to give to her daughter, then laughs heartily. “The truth is, I kept it for myself.”

An Irresistible History of Southern Food: Four Centuries of Black-Eyed Peas, Collard Greens and Whole Hog Barbecue, nonfiction, softcover, $24.99, by Rick Mc- Daniel, 2011, is published by The History Press. Arnold Wengrow is an Asheville writer and a contributing editor of Theatre Design and Technology magazine.

Timothy P. Spira: Wildflowers & Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains & Piedmont

Tim Spira’s love affair with nature began in the mountains of California where he studied wild- flowers and, as a graduate student, did rare plant surveys for the U.S. Forest Service. Once he completed his Ph.D. in botany at the University of California/Berkeley, he spent the next 30 years teaching, including ten years at Georgia Southern University and 18 years at Clemson University where he currently teaches courses that include the natural history of wildflowers.

He’s now sharing with the general public his passion for plants with his new book Wild- flowers & Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains & Piedmont (subtitled, A Naturalist’s Guide to the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia & Tennessee). It’s a richly illustrated field guide that will help you answer that frequent question: “I wonder what that flower is?”

Full-color photo keys enable you to rapidly preview plants organized within each of the 21 major plant communities. The illus- trated species descriptions for each of the 340 featured plants include fascinating information about the ecology and the natural history of each plant. This format shows readers how the mountain and piedmont landscapes form a mosaic of plant communities that harbor particu- lar groups of plants. The book also includes a glossary, illustrations of plant structures, and descriptions of sug- gested sites to visit.

Because of the instructional nature of Tim’s book, it will be a useful companion for casual hikers interested in their surroundings and beginning naturalists, as well as for expert botanists.

“Tim Spira’s book breaks new and fertile ground in the field of natural history,” says Robert Wyatt, profes- sor emeritus of botany and ecology at the University of Georgia. “Using what is quickly becoming the state- of-the-art approach to understanding native plants—by considering them fully within their natural communities— (he) has successfully created a wonderful guide to the southern Appalachian region.”

Dr. Peter White, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says the book “will be of immense interest to field naturalists as well as birders, wildflower enthusiasts, hikers, nature lovers, and photographers.”

The author has published more than 30 research papers in scientific journals, and his photographs have appeared in books, scientific journals and magazines. Tim and his wife Lisa Wagner divide their time between Clemson, South Carolina, and Asheville where they’ve transformed their lawn into meadows, shrub borders, and woodlands featuring native plants.

Wildflowers & Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains & Piedmont,nonfiction, softcover, by Timothy P. Spira, $26.00, 2011, is published by University of North Carolina Press.

Carolyn Guy
Autumn Bends the Rebel Tree

After her husband dies, Clarinda’s strength of character and love for her children steel her as she fights for her family’s survival. Debut author Carolyn Guy paints a vivid portrait of a family’s saga in her novel Autumn Bends the Rebel Tree released last month.

Eleven of the family’s 17 children still lived at home at the time of their father’s death, and so Clarinda is forced to hook rugs and trade them for secondhand clothes for her offspring, and to work two other jobs besides. Five years later, Clarinda marries an older, prosperous man, but the marriage splits her family apart and then she loses a son in a war. Faced with a bleak existence with an angry husband, she takes her children and walks off the farm with nothing but the clothes they’re wearing.

“One of the most authentic portrayals of the 1930s and 1940s Appalachian life I’ve read,” says Dona Akers Warmuth, author of Legends, Stories and Ghostly Tales of Abingdon and Washington County.

Carolyn is a member of High Country Writers in Boone and also of Ap- palachian Voices. She lives in a mountain home in Western North Carolina where she maintains a large vegetable garden and a blueberry patch.

Autumn Bends the Rebel Tree, fiction, softcover, $16.95, by Carolyn Guy, is published by Canter- bury House Publishing.

Jeanne Webster
Strays

If the animals and plants around us could speak, they’d probably display the simple and practical wisdom offered by the diverse cast of characters in Strays: A Woman, a Dog and the Timeless Wisdom of Nature, a new book by Jeanne Webster. This fictional work—lighthearted yet profound—features a plot interwoven with thoughtful lessons we can apply in our everyday lives.

Twenty-four-year-old Jane Morgan seeks seclusion in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains. She’s just been laid off from her job and needs some time for reflection and self-evaluation. While there, she slips and hits her head and the accident leaves her with the uncanny ability to understand the language of other species. “You asked for it, you prayed for it, and now you will be graced with the answers,” says a spider. “You will be shown what your kind has forgotten.”

Then an abandoned dog named Max, a stray, shows Jane nature’s point of view. With humor and love, he helps her find the way to enlightened self- knowledge.

“Once in a while, a book comes along that expands our concept of one- ness. This is such a book,” says best-selling author James Twyman. “Strays reminds us that we are never alone and that separation is truly an illusion.”

Jeanne Webster, of Franklin, is an award-winning author, speaker, and columnist. Strays is her third book and her first work of fiction.

Strays: A Woman, a Dog and the Timeless Wisdom of Nature, fiction, softcover, $14.95, by Jeanne Webster, is published by Personhood Press.