With A Grain of Salt

Edit this sentence:

The best finishing salt in the world is from Maldon.

Correct?  No, incorrect.  It should read:

The best finishing salt in the world is from Malden.

Malden, West Virginia, not Maldon, England has the best salt in the world.  There is documentation to prove it.  In 1851 at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, J. Q. Dickinson salt was named the "Best Salt in the World," under the watchful eye of Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Samuel Colt, Lewis Carroll, Alfred Tennyson and Charlotte Brontë. It would take another thirty years before the Maldon Salt Company would produced their first bag of salt.


For over 100 years, J. Q. Dickinson produced a beautiful salt from the Iapetus Ocean, an ancient sea trapped under the Appalachian mountains about 600 million years ago. In the 1980's the J. Q. Dickinson company closed for a while until siblings and seventh-generation salt makers, Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne revived the family business.

Now J. Q. Dickinson salt is popping up in fine dinning restaurants, trendy home shops, and on my tomatoes.  While there are many ways to use it, during these waning days of "fresh tomatoes from the garden," there is no better use that on fresh tomatoes.  Come fall... salt caramels, salted chocolate truffles, who knows.

Find out more about J. Q. Dickinson Salt Works here, including great places to buy their salt.

Tobacco Barns

Back before the Internet and way, way back before direct mail, the Mail Pouch Tobacco company paid farmers to let them paint advertisements on the side of their barns.  There are are many of theses barns still around, including this one, a few miles from Doe Run Farm in West Virginia. 

Sad to say, there are far more tobacco chewers, than barns.  It is not safer than smoking and it is far more disgusting.  In an attempt to combat the proliferation of chewing tobacco consumption, especially by younger men, a West Virginian named Greg Puckett looked to the past.  Why not take the Mail Pouch model and turn it into a modern campaign to quit spit tobacco.

Not only has he been successful in bringing awareness to the perils of chewing tobacco, he has helped revive an old tradition of barn painters.  Read about his campaign in this Modern Farmer article.

Allium tricoccum

Yes, it's that time of the year.  Ramps abound.  Ramps have been a staple in West Virginia for years.  Now it seems that most of the ramps get shipped to New York for trendy chefs.  We recently saw a review of Jody Williams' cookbook, Buvette.  It contained the following sentence, "The book is packed with classic French cuisine with an occasional New York twist (ramps)."  Seriously, when did ramps become the "New York twist?" 

Like so many things that get appropriated, ramps are now more expensive than drugs in West Virginia, and in New York for that matter.

My three pounds of ramps got turned into a ramp and pecan pesto,

and into pickled ramps.

After hours of work, washing and cleaning and pickling and pesto-ing, we ended up with five tiny jars of pickles and a half-dozen, half-cups of pesto.  Between the ramps, pecans, and Glad containers, we estimated the cost at $12 a half-cup, not including the 3 hours invested.  

Still, we feel accomplished.  Now if we could get David Chang or Sean Brock to invest in our free-range possum farm (it's the NEW, new white meat)...keep watching Kickstarter!

West Virginia Water

Thanks to everyone who was worried about me in the West Virginia Water Crisis.  I am North of the spill, so my water is not affected...by this.

I was without water for four days due to frozen pipes.  By the end of it I was ready to KILL anyone who crossed my path.  We were never in any danger, mind you.  There was enough bottled water for cats, chickens and even me.  There was water for coffee and cooking.  After several days, though, there were no more clean dishes.  At that point, cooking is not an option.  The kitchen is beginning to get a bit odoriferous.  And my hair, lets not even go there.  Needless to say, I was ready to KILL. 

I did not have a baby in the house, nor and elderly person, nor anyone with the flu, and on and on so one can only imagine how 100,000 West Virginian's feel at day 4.


Here are some of the highlights of the water contamination:

First, lets just ask ourselves, who zones a chemical waste storage facility one mile ABOVE the water treatment plant? 

Naming your company, "Freedom" and slapping a red, white and blue logo on it does not make it "freedom."  Nor free, nor patriotic as you dump gallons of unidentified chemicals into the drinking water.

An associate of "Freedom Industries"  was dismayed that West Virginia reacted so harshly, this time.  This time??

When asked how long this emergency might last the Governor said he didn't think it would be weeks.  WEEKS??  Seriously, WEEKS.  So a week or two is OK but probably not WEEKS.

When asked WHAT chemicals were leaking, officials said chemicals that smelled like liquorice.  But the exact chemicals are proprietary.  This bodes well for fracking, as their chemicals are also proprietary. 

When asked if the leak was underground, officials said no, there was a hole in the side of the tank.  A hole no one noticed until you could smell the chemicals in your car as you were driving up to the water treatment facility a mile away...

Freedom Industries said "We have mitigated the risk, we believe."   We believe in Santa.  "Mitigated", does that mean they duct taped the hole?

C.W. Sigman, an emergency manager for one of the counties involved, said the tank appeared to be "antique."  He said  it didn't appear the company was in emergency mode when his team began to arrive Thursday. "They didn't appear to understand the magnitude of the incident at the time, and we didn't either because we just got there," he said, adding that investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency had also arrived and took the lead in the investigation. "It took a little bit of time to get a determination how serious it was," he continued. "I never got a good indication from the plant folks how bad the leak was, how much was going to the river, anything else. It was probably a little ways into the incident before we realized how bad it was getting into the river."

 But, hey, lets give these companies TAX breaks.  Let's invite gas companies to drill and pump chemicals into the ground, and give them TAX breaks.  Let's disband the Environment Protection Agency! But whatever you do, don't extend unemployment benefits, or give someone an extra $32 in Food Stamps!  But I digress...




Again, thanks to everyone who expressed concern. 

Happy Sesquicentennial

Today is the sesquicentennial of West Virginia.   Our 150th Birthday.

West Virginia has the distinction of being the only state to secede from the Confederacy!

Their first choice for a state name was Kanawha.  No one liked it.  Nor were they fond of Allegheny, New Virginia, Augusta, Columbia nor Western Virginia, so finally they decided on West Virginia.


Check out Bootstraps and Biscuits:  300 wonderful wild recipes from the hills of West Virginia at Cookbook Of The Day.

AN ASIDE:

I just love the word "sesquicentennial" and one must wait 150 years to use it and then it's over. The prefix "sesqui" translates to one and one-half.  It forms one of my other favorite words (one that can be used on any occasion)  "sesquipedalian."   Coined by Horace in his Ars Poetica it literally translates to a foot and half long, but it means to use big words, like "sesquicentennial."

Calling Me Home

I don't listen to a lot of Kathy Mattea, but she is from West Virginia.  Her new album is rooted in West Virginia, so we have been listening to it this weekend, and we have been loving it.  So if you like bluegrass with some country, or if your are from West Virgina or passing through, check it out.

Clearly, I Need To Get Out More...

Renoir found at West Virginia flea market likely to fetch $100,000 at auction.

So it would seem that two years ago, some woman stopped at a flea market in West Virginia and forked over $7 for a box of stuff because she like the plastic cow in the box. She though she could sell the leather doll and double her money.  The crappy painting she left in the box and stuffed it in the garage.   She was thinking the frame might be useful in a later project.  When she did ask someone about the frame, she got a bit of a surprise.  Go forth and shop!

Oliverio’s Cash & Carry

When I first moved to West Virginia, found the coolest little store, Oliverio’s Cash & Carry. It was a kind of "mom and pop" grocery with a twist. They have many Italian specialities, including their own line of peppers and pickles vegetables. But in the back, they made their own sausage. Hand made. In a crank-handled Enterprise sausage stuffer.



The Enterprise Sausage Stuffer/ Fruit Press/ Lard Extractor is one of the most beautiful machines ever made. This picture doesn't do it justice. I would have photographed my Enterprise but alas, I don't own one. Shocking, I know. Trust me, it is high on my list of acquisitions. Some women covet Christian Louboutin shoes, I covet an Enterprise sausage stuffer, fruit press, lard extractor.


Don't get me wrong, I would look great in these shoes, but for $700 I could have two or three Enterprise sausage stuffers, a 2-quart, a 4-quart AND an 8-quart or just a 4-quart and two pigs! I don't know if Martha Stewart has an Enterprise stuffer, she probably does. I know she has Christian Louboutin shoes; she has her assistant take a black magic marker and color the souls, because she doesn't like the red.

But I greatly digress...

back to Oliverio’s Cash & Carry. Right after I moved here, Jane and Michael Stern, of Roadfood fame, wrote a big article for Gourmet about West Virginia and included Oliverio's. After that article came out, you needed to call to make sure they had sausage available.

This week, The New York Times did a big food article about West Virginia and mentioned Oliverio’s Cash & Carry. So now it is official, Oliverio’s Cash & Carry has the best sausage in the world. Alas, like Birkin Bags, one may now have to get on a waiting list just to get some sausage. I assure you, it will be worth the wait. In the meantime, snack on a pepperoni roll.