Local food in Appalachian hills ... and more

My last post was pre-programmed as last week I drove to Tennessee, near Nashville, to my daughter and her family's home.  My husband had been staying there for two weeks enjoying our four grandchildren.  The week-end before I arrived they all had driven to Columbus, Ohio, to visit my husband's sister and her family.  On the way back to Nashville they stopped at the 364-acre (147 ha) Kings Island Park, east of Cincinnati.  It is advertized as the largest amusement park in the Midwest, with "thrilling" rides (I have never been in this park.)  There is even a, somewhat, replica of the Eiffel Tower there.  Below on the right is my husband with the grandchildren.  Our daughter is on the left holding our granddaughter and the young au-pair French lady from New Caledonia is on the right.  (Click on collage twice to enlarge.)

The grandchildren have so much energy - they kept my husband busy.  We had not seen them since last March and could tell that they had grown.

When it was time to go back home, I decided to drive on some Tennessee back roads for part of the trip.  From Murfreesboro, TN, we went to the little town of Beersheba Springs, TN.  I had read that it had been a resort in the 19th century.  In 1854, a rich Louisiana planter had bought property there and built a luxury hotel to accommodate 400 guests, cabins and stores.  French chefs cooked for the guests and music from New Orleans entertained them.  The hotel declined after the Civil War and in 1940 was purchased by the Methodist Church as a retreat and for summer camps.  There is a yearly arts and crafts festival there.  The resort area has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Below are photos and postcards of the hotel, with the current view at the bottom right, but now the town is tiny with only 477 inhabitants and it is hard to imagine it as a "resort."

The area is very hilly with narrow roads curving up and down.  The hills are not tall mountains but still when you get to the top and see all the hills surrounding you and the valleys way down below, it seems that we are pretty high.  It is difficult to take pictures because there are no places to stop and it is dangerous to stand by the road - it would be easy to tumble down if a car came by, but there were hardly any vehicles on the roads.  In the valley tall corn and other crops were surrounding us.

These hills are part of the Appalachian mountain range.  The name comes from the Apalachees, a Native tribe who used to inhabit the area.  This mountain system is very old, formed about 480 million years ago as a result of tectonic movement.  It is the oldest chain of mountains in North America and located mostly in the US apart for a small part extending into south-eastern Canada and France.  Yes, France, but France in North America.  Most people do not know that France is in North America in the northwestern ocean, facing Newfoundland, in the small islands of St Pierre et Miquelon.  We visited the islands in August 2008 and I wrote several posts about it (click on the post titles to read them) - Destination St Pierre et Miquelon, part one, then part two,  and part three, and lastly the final part.  Below are some pictures I took while at St Pierre et Miquelon where the hilly Appalachian terrain can be seen.

The Appalachian system of mountains extends for almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) with a width of from 100 to 300 miles (160 to 480 km) wide.  It spreads from Newfoundland and Labrador province in Canada to central Alabama in the USA.  The mountain used to be as high as the Alps or the Rocky Mountains but they eroded and now the average height is 3,000 ft.  In addition to the provinces in Canada (Newfoundland-Labrador, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, etc.) and France (St Pierre et Miquelon) the mountains cover parts of the US states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.  Most of the range of the Appalachian Mountains is covered with thick and extensive forest (evergreen, spruce, birch, oak, beech, etc.)  When you drive to the top of hills the view is very scenic.

Our little Kennesaw Mountain (1,000 feet high/300 m) is part of the Appalachian chain.  I took the photo below about 12 miles from the mountain coming back from a grocery store.

Hikers can walk the Appalachian Trail or Appalachian National Scenic Trail which is about 2,200 miles long (3,500 km.)  A while back I was at the place where it ends, or starts, in the North Georgia mountains.  It extends to Mount Katahdin, in Maine.  The top 4 pictures below were shot in Georgia (photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

From Beesheba Springs we drove down Highway 56-S to Tracy City.  We went up and down hills and winding mountain roads at least 3 times.  We stopped in Tracy City, in the foothills of Monteagle, as I had read that the oldest family bakery in Tennessee was located there.  We parked on the side of the building, facing some large squashes on a rack.  Across the road was the Tracy City Police Department and City Hall (population about 1,500.)  No one was around.

We entered the Dutch Maid Bakery, established in 1902.  At first, it is difficult to concentrate as the shop is full of baked goods, antiques, Americana, photographs, signs, vintage objects, etc.  In the center of the room were tables with small cakes and sample plates.  On the side were racks of breads - salt rising, sour dough, whole wheat, old world rye and more.  Cookies were displayed on top and inside glass display cases.

We sampled some of the little cakes.  My husband decided on chocolate chip cookies and I choose several of the small cakes in addition to a loaf of salt rising bread.  Fudgy brownies were just coming out of the oven, so we purchased one as well.

Two of the cakes I purchased were the Mixed Berry Mountain Moonshine cake and the Apple Pie Moonshine cake.  You could sure taste the liquor in the cakes!  When I came to the US I did not know what "moonshine" was.  Moonshine is high-proof distilled spirits, produced illegally, mostly during Prohibition (1920-1933.)  In Appalachia distillers produced moonshine (mostly corn mash) at night so as not to be detected.  Moonshine has many nicknames: white lightning, mountain dew, Tennessee white whiskey, hooch, city gin, skull cracker, ruckus juice, mule kick, panther's breath, cool water, happy Sally, wild cat, jump steady and many more.  It was a big industry in the backwoods of the Tennessee hills as well as other part of Appalachia such as Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, etc.  Government prosecutors would arrest bootleggers when found, send them to jail and destroy their still.  Below is a postcard of a still and two old photos from Grundy County, Tennessee, where both Beersheba Springs and Tracy City are located.

In the 1950s moonshining was widespread in the Southern states.  From 1954 to 1974 Federal Agents destroyed 72,000 stills in the Deep South!  Now you can legally purchase some moonshine brands but distillers are still producing it in large quantities, illegally.  In 2009, an 82-year old woman from North Carolina, was arrested for distributing moonshine out of her child day care center.  Two brothers were arrested, also in 2009, for producing 929 gallons of moonshine.  On the map below you can see the approximate route, in red, we took from our daughter's house outside of Nashville, to our home.  I circled number 44 which is the location on the map of the Dutch Maid Bakery in Tracy City.

We were so tired when we arrived home that we did not eat supper - just a couple of peaches.  The next morning we had a large breakfast at the J. Christopher restaurant - actually it was too large as we took half of it home.  My husband had the Route 66 Skillet: corned beef hash and oven-roasted potatoes capped with sunny-up eggs and an English muffin.  I had the J."Grits'-opher's" a bowl of cheddar grits topped with bacon and served with a biscuit.

In the afternoon we had a cup of tea, served in our new St. Petersburg, Russia, mugs and slices of the Mixed Berry Mountain Moonshine cake.  We kept the other moonshine cake, the maple cake, brownie and cookies for another day.

At the bakery, Appalachian local food maps were given, called Bon Appetit Appalachia!  I took one.  It shows the locations, in the Appalachia areas, of farmer markets, farm-to-fork restaurants, farm tours, festival and events, vineyards and wineries, craft breweries and spirits.  They have a site online and it is active - you can click on a number in a state and see what is offered at that location - click here to have a look.

We will certainly use this map again.  While looking online I saw that the historic Dutch Maid Bakery in Tracy City has a small YouTube video showing how they make their moonshine cakes.  The owner of the bakery does not give out the recipe.  I guess I am going to have to find some moonshine and bake my own version as Tracy City is a bit far away.  At the beginning and the end of the video you can see the roads and hills around Tracy City.  Here it is below.

It must have rained in Georgia while we were away as our plants in containers looked gorgeous.  Also some unknown mushrooms sprout up outside the kitchen window.  Anyone knows what type they are? Good to eat?

The Walker on the Cape – in Newfoundland

Several of my posts have been about St Pierre and Miquelon, the French islands south of Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula in Canada. My last post mentioning them was on January 19, 2012 in my post about selecting travel destinations, click here to see it. As I explained in that post, I had wished to visit these islands since childhood, the last remaining French territory in North America, and finally visited them in 2008. I had stamps from these islands in my collection and was intrigued by them – because as it says on the top stamp on the left below, it was France in North America.



The posts on St Pierre and Miquelon can be found by clicking on the index on my blog on the right under that name. On August 22, 2010 I wrote a Blog Intermission post entitled An Island – une île, with a poem and photos of various islands, click here to see it. I had included the photo of the Grand Bank lighthouse taken later on an afternoon and which is now at the top of this post. Below is the same lighthouse taken around noon the same day.

In May 2012 I received an email from a Mr. Mike Martin asking if he could use the photo of the Grand Bank lighthouse – the one at the top of this post – for the cover of his upcoming book, a mystery set in Grand Bank, Newfoundland. I answered him that he could and to send me a copy of his book when it was published. In early July Mike Martin sent me another email saying that his book had been published and would I like a copy. Yes, indeed I replied. Here is the book below "The Walker on the Cape" – and my photograph on the cover, with the special effect, looks a lot better than my original picture.

click on the collage to enlarge it then click on each picture to biggify it and read about it

The Walker on the Cape

I had also asked him to autograph the book for me, and he did. I have not read the book yet but am looking forward to it as I enjoy a good mystery and one set in Newfoundland will be a first for me.

Along the years I had looked at ways to go and visit St Pierre et Miquelon from Atlanta, but I had to go to Paris and visit my mother – St Pierre was not on the way and it was expensive to take a flight from Halifax or Montreal. When I retired though I tried again to see how we could visit the islands. We had enough frequent flyers miles to get a round-trip flight to St. John’s, Newfoundland.



From there it looked like if we rented a car and drove down the Burin Peninsula to Fortune in southern Newfoundland, we could take a ferry to St. Pierre. So this is what we did. Below is a vintage postcard of St Pierre and Miquelon islands. On the extreme right you can see Terre-Neuve (New Land, the French name for Newfoundland) and Fortune above it.



I frankly did not know much about Newfoundland. I read a bit about it and found out it is quite a large island. It has an area of 108,860 square kilometers or 42,031 square miles. It is a little less than the area contained in Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands combined. You can see St Pierre et Miquelon in the bottom center of the map with Grand Bank across on the right.



We arrived late in the evening in St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, and stayed the night. The next morning we drove toward the Burin Peninsula. I was very surprised by the landscape. I frankly had never seen anything like it. There was one road, called the Trans-Canada Highway, with hardly any cars on it. It is one of the longest highways in the world as it goes from Newfoundland, across Canada, and ends in Victoria, Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I’d love to drive on this “Route Transcanadienne” all 8,030 kms or 4,990 miles of it. Everything looked so green – no trees, just shrubs and many little lakes or ponds were on both sides of the highway. We drove carefully as we had been told that numerous moose were on the roadsides and could cross unexpectedly. You can see the road on the top left of the photo below.



The distance between St John’s and Fortune is 363 kms – 226 miles or 5 hours, but we had a Bed and Breakfast reservation in a town on the way, called Marystown. We stopped for lunch at a gas station restaurant – actually the first one we had seen (and the last one until Marystown.) I still remember that I had cod with cod’s tongue and cod’s cheeks. It was very tasty. I was not taking many photos at the time as I had just purchased my new digital camera. I loved the scenery of rolling heaths and bogs.



Newfoundlanders call their island “The Rock” because it is a giant rock. There is little topsoil so the trees are very short and stunted by their exposure to the strong elements and winds. Here we are below taking a break from driving.



Vikings came here in the 11th century – Viking Leif Eriksson called the land “Vinland” then John Cabot called it “new found isle” in 1497. Portuguese and French called it Terra Nova or Terre Neuve and Newfoundland.



Newfoundland was British until 1949 and then became the 10th province of the Canadian Confederation. Since 2001 the province is officially called Newfoundland and Labrador, but most people call is Newfoundland only.



This island has been inhabited for thousands of years and traces of people go back to 9,000 years ago. In 1960, Norwegian explorers discovered the only authenticated Norse settlement in North America dating to about the year 999.

Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows (courtesy Toronto Sun)

Native Americans from this island were the Beothuk (now extinct) and the Mi’kmaq. One interesting note about the Mi’kmaqs – when I was a child in Paris and played “Indians and cowboys” with my little friends I called myself a “Micmac” Indian. I don’t know where in 1945 I could have ever heard the name if at all. My friend’s brother told me I invented the name, that there were no such Indians in the USA. I said that maybe they were in Texas. He said I should be a Sioux or Apache because these were true Indians. We had fights about it and I always wanted to stay a Micmac. So, when I read about Newfoundland and found out that the Mi’kmaqs were indeed a First Nation from Newfoundland, I was thrilled – who knew…

Queen Elizabeth is greeted by Mi'kmaq First Nations Grand Chief Ben Sylliboy and his daughter Christina Sylliboy, in 2010 (Courtesy Reuters)

On our second day in Newfoundland we drove to Fortune and bought our ticket for a round-trip passage to St. Pierre. We looked around but it is not a large town – they had some interesting fire hydrants though.

It was early so we drove back to Grand Bank - 7 kms or 4.3 miles away. The French used Grand Bank as a fishing station as early as 1650. Fishing was the major industry for centuries until the death of the cod fishing industry in the 1990s (because of over fishing.) Fishing was done in the inshore and near offshore of the Grand Banks, which are shallow plateaus.

Grand Banks Fishermen by Barbara Furhovde, Canadian, contemporary

We parked the car and walked around. This was in August but we did not see hardly any tourist. I just realized that I am standing near the painting of the man, left on the wall on the photo taken near the parking area, top center of collage below.

Historic Grand Bank has some lovely houses painted vivid colors. I would have liked to stay at the Bed and Breakfast facing the harbor (below, behind my husband – top left) a Queen Anne revival style home built in 1917 by Captain John Thornhill, a famous fisherman.




But it was getting close to lunch and the "Sharon’s Nook Tea Room" looked inviting. We ate a delicious lunch there and a great dessert. There even was a book signing of Mike Martin’s Walker on the Cape at this tea room today.



After lunch we walked around some more and stopped in front of a colorfully painted building.



Then we walked back toward the Thornhill house in front of the port and lighthouse and our car. It was a short drive back to Fortune – we were still early and sat with the other few tourists to wait for our ferry to St Pierre. Then our Atlantic Jet ferry arrived (carrying foot passengers only.)



There have been about 500,000 tourists visiting Newfoundland last year, which is a large increase but still not a large number when you consider that 81.4 million tourists visited France last year as well. I heard that you either love or hate Newfoundland. I loved it and hope to return there someday. I can’t describe the feeling I had when visiting Newfoundland – it is like being in an unblemished land, unsullied by humanity – a different atmosphere, miles from malls, traffic and people – a mystical quality in the air – a primeval purity if you will.

Selecting travel destinations (Part one)

Not long ago I read an article on the Internet written by travel marketers on the destination selection process of travelers. It said: “…How, and when, do leisure travelers decide where to go? What factors influence the decision to visit a particular destination? … for travelers everywhere, the destination decision itself is complicated and highly personal.” This made me think about my travel decisions. When my parents were still with us a great majority of my travels were to visit them in Paris. (Click on pictures to enlarge them.)

A Parisian Street with Sacré-Coeur by Luigi Loir, French 1845-1916

Starting in 1963 until 1982 I went to Paris every two years or 9 times. Then after my widowed mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease I traveled to Paris twice a year from 1982 to 1999 or 34 times. From 1999 until she passed away in 2002 I went to visit her 3 times a year or 12 times, and since then I have gone back about 4 times, so let’s see, that is a total of about 59 trips to Paris. That may sound like a lot of trips to France but many people visit their parents at least once a year or more – it just happens that mine lived in Paris. These were not “tourist” trips to visit Paris – I did not take many pictures, just family pictures. I started taking pictures of Paris in the last 5 years or so – usually in the same areas – where I used to live and go to school.

Place St Michel et Notre-Dame by Edouard-Léon Cortès, French 1882-1969

Many of my other trips were for the usual reasons – interest in the cities or countries and airline sales. So far I have traveled to 56 countries and islands - and some of them several times. However, I did plan trips because of unusual reasons. I’ll recount some of them below with the reason for the trip or the chain of events.

Stamps

When I was a child I started a stamp collection. Some of my favorite stamps were from the islands of St Pierre et Miquelon. I was totally intrigued by what they represented and dreamed of one day going there.




These islands are an integral part of France. They are France’s oldest remaining North American territory. For fun I would sometime ask American friends where in North America was French land. They never guessed. St Pierre & Miquelon is south of Newfoundland – you need a passport to go there and they use Euros. I finally traveled there in 2008, about 58 years after first hoping to go! I have written several posts on this blog about my trip, starting with the post here. This trip was a result of my early interest in collecting postage stamps and made me enormously happy.

Top right: View of the Ile aux Marins (Sailor’s Island) (a small inhabited island across from St Pierre) – near port of St Pierre Island - lower picture – my husband and I on a Zodiac Raft going to l’Anglade Island near St Pierre.

Postcard

On my posts I have shown many of my postcards. I started collecting postcards when I was a wee child (after my grand dad gave me his collection when I was 5 or 6 years old.) Once when I was about 11 years old or so I wrote my name at the end of a chain letter which was supposed to bring me many postcards. One girl, from Martinique, sent me a postcard of the style of clothes worn in Martinique. She became my pen pal - I’ll have a post on this soon. Because of this postcard (which I misplaced along the way) Martinique was another French island I dreamed to visit. Finally this last December we were able to visit Martinique. Below is a postcard I purchased showing the pretty Martiniquaises.



An unexpected trip to Canada because of a Bus trip

When I came to the US I had a “Greyhound” bus pass which I had purchased in Paris – 3 months of unlimited bus travel for $99. I visited about 23 states. On a Friday on a bus journey in Michigan, a middle-age French lady sat in the seat next to me. We started talking. She told me she was traveling to a small city near Toronto, Ontario Canada to see her daughter who had a farm there. When I exclaimed that I would love to visit Canada, she asked me to come with her. I did not know her but she seemed very nice, so impulsively I said "OK" and went with her. I had a great week-end at the farm with her daughter’s family. On Saturday we drove to Toronto. I don’t recall exactly everything I saw but I distinctly remember watching a wedding at what they called “Casa Loma” castle. I was taking slides photos them with my Voigtländer film camera. Below is an vintage postcard of the castle.



Article in National Geographic magazine

We had a subscription to National Geographic for several years. In one issue, the January 1983 issue I believe, was an article about Borobudur, the 9th century Mahayana Buddhist monument in Central Java, Indonesia. It was a fascinating article – it explained how this huge monument lay hidden for centuries under volcanic ash and jungle growth and had been rescued. It was restored and placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. I entered this monument on my destination list. Then in 1991 because of a “sale “promotion from Singapore Airlines I was able to go to Indonesia from Paris and visit this beautiful site (I’ll write a post on this in the future.) This was an extraordinary trip and I am pleased I read that issue of the magazine.

Picture taken at Borobudur with my Canon 35 mm film camera

Art Exhibit

Somewhere in 1997 I read an article about Claude Monet, the famous French impressionist painter. It explained how, after a trip to the French Riviera in 1884, followed by trips to Antibes, France in 1888 then Venice in 1908, Monet had tried to capture the transitory effects of light in that area. His idea was to paint the same landscape at various time of the day. For example he had painted Cap d’Antibes at least 4 times in the same location, in the morning, noon, evening and so forth.

Cap d’Antibes by Claude Monet, French 1840-1926

These paintings had been sold to museums and private collectors around the word but never exhibited together until…..Joachim Pissarro (great-grandson of Camille Pissarro, a contemporary of Monet,) then curator of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, assembled 70 works from Monet’s trip in the Mediterranean. This way one could see the paintings side by side for the first time. For example there were four paintings of the same olive trees at different time of the day – they had never been exhibited together. This was in June 1997 – it was our 30th wedding anniversary month – a perfect reason to celebrate in Fort Worth and visit the museum. We flew to Fort Worth – we spent a whole day studying Monet’s light effects. I still remember this “once in a lifetime” exhibit with fondness.

Book purchased at the exhibit below picture of my husband standing next to a Monet museum sign

A Song

The radio stations we listened to when I was a teenager in France played a variety of music, unlike in the US where a radio station only plays rock, or country music, or classical. The stations played everything, every style from many countries. One of my favorite genre of music was the Portuguese “fado” (from the Latin fatum which means fate or destiny.) I had bought some 45 rpm records of the Portuguese fado singer Amalia Rodrigues.



I could listen to Amalia for hours. One of my favorite songs was “Lisboa” (Lisbon.) So it was that in 1955 Lisbon became another city that I dreamed of visiting. It would take until 2004 for me to go there. In early 2004 I had already booked a trip to France with Air France when they sent me an advertisement for cheap flights to Lisbon from Paris – finally I could see Lisbon. My husband and I had a great time in Lisbon. We visited the “Fado Museum,” listened to much fado music and brought back several CDs of fado songs and instrumental music. Below are photos (scanned from my 35 mm Olympus camera) showing a couple of rooms inside the Lisbon Fado Museum.



Below is a clip showing the major sights of Lisbon, Portugal with the voice of Amalia Rodrigues in the background.





Next week I‘ll list several more destinations that were on my travel list because of unusual reasons.

More to come…..

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Note: Top photo is a view of the Ile des Marins (Sailor’s Island) - an abandoned settlement close to St Pierre Island.