4th week of August: Things to Do--THE Quintessential North CarolinaTour (if you know me)

For anyone who has briefly been in the presence of me or my husband, you quickly understand how much we love our home state of North Carolina.  Proud Tar Heels that will only and forever pull for the Wolfpack, we've had friends tell us we should start a North Carolina travel agency. So, one day I thought about what would be the quintessential North Carolina tour that we'd take our friends on.

This would include some iconic NC spots, but mostly places that are dear to our hearts and our heritage. It would be a whirl-wind road trip, but that's part of the fun!  Most of the time would be spent driving, but when you are in NC the drive is always beautiful.

So, join us, won't you, as we mentally go through the proper 10 day NC tour!  (Warning, this post will contain a lot of links, the idea is for you to web-explore these places on your own!)

Day 1: Whiteville

Columbus County Courthouse: Whiteville, NC 

To begin, we'd start out from our current home town in South Carolina and drive north and slightly east up I-95 to I-74 (or is it HWY 74 here, who knows?) and go to the hometown of my husband, Whiteville, NC.  He could tour us around, try to find where A.R. Ammons grew up, go to the NC Forestry museum, drive through the back roads, maybe even to Crusoe Island, a small community with their own neat way of talkin' where Matt's family is from. (Called an island because they have bodies of water  completely surrounding them. Before the bridge was built, the members of this community had to cross water to go into "town".) The first night of our trip we'd stay in Whiteville.

Day 2:  Lake Waccamaw and Ayden

Pier at Lake Waccamaw, NC

Day 2 we would wake up early and drive to Lake Waccamaw (10 miles East) and hang out on a pier, or go to the state park and hike.  Then we'd drive up through Eastern NC on HWY 11 up to Ayden.  Ayden is where there is Pete Jones' Skylight Inn BBQ:  THE place for Eastern NC BBQ.  We'd eat there for a late lunch and then head on up through Little Washington to HWY 64 and drive East to Manteo, where we'd stop for the night.


Day 3:  Manteo/ OBX

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse: Buxton, NC

We'd spend the morning at Fort Raleigh and wondering about the mystery of the Lost Colony, then stroll through the beautiful Elizabethan Gardens, grab a lunch and explore downtown Manteo. Then we'd drive down HWY 12 to Cape Hatteras.  There we'd spend the afternoon walking on the beach, checking out a lighthouse or two, bird watching at Pea Island, and finish up with watching a sunset over the Pamlico Sound

Avon, NC

Or a moon rise over the Graveyard of the Atlantic:

Avon, NC

We'd drive back to Manteo for the night.


Day 4:   Raleigh

View of downtown Raleigh, NC at night from Boyland Bridge

Day 4 of our whirl-wind journey, we would get up early and drive 64 West to Raleigh.  Once there we can hang out with my awesome sister and brother-in-law and grab a hot dog at The Roast Grill (Which could have it's on blog post on here.  Maybe someday).  We'd then walk around our Alma Mater and finish by having dinner or a drink at the PR .  No need for fancy Raleigh "foodie" dinner, we're keeping it real.

The Roast Grill: Raleigh, NC

Day 5:  Lexington

Famous Lexington Barbecue (From The Monk)

Next morning we'd get a Char Grill Hamburger Steak burger on the way out of town.  We'd drive 64 West all the way to my home town of Lexington, NC.  Now here's the rub:  before we get to Lexington, we can spend a day at the NC Zoo, one of my favorite places.  However, then we will have less time in Lexington (and by Lexington I mean Winston Salem, cause there's not much to see in Lexington besides BBQ and my family).


Day 6: Lexington/Wine Country/ Boone

Horse Farm in Valle Crucis, outside Boone, NC

Get up and hang out with my awesome Grandpa!  Then get a Lexington BBQ sandwich for lunch (the best BBQ sandwich of your life and you can only get it at Lexington #1--or as we locals call it The Monk).  Don't be alarmed, though, I'll probably get a hamburger....(this is a story for another time!) Afterwards we'll drive HWY 421 through the foothills to Boone.  We may even stop somewhere in the Yadkin River Valley for refreshments!


Day 7:  Boone/ Crabtree Meadows/ Mt. Mitchell**

Mt. Mitchell

Get up early and have breakfast somewhere "hip" in Boone, like Proper or Stick Boy. Then we'd drive the "BRP" down past Grandfather Mountain to Crabtree Meadows (mile post 340).  Here we'd hike to my favorite spot in all of North Carolina.

Crabtree Falls

Then, if time allows, we'd keep driving south and head up towards Mt. Mitchell--the highest peak east of the Mississippi!  Afterwards, we'd keep going  until we end up in Asheville, where we'd spend the next 2 nights.

**Matt and I had plans to do this leg of the trip when we go to the mountains in September, however a road closure on the BRP has made it impossible.  Also Crabtree Meadows is closed for the 2013 season.

Day 8:  Asheville

Downtown Asheville

Spend the day in Asheville, hang out, go to Biltmore, whatever we want!  Asheville kind of has it all: Shopping, Hiking, Eating, Drinking, Exploring!

Gargoyle over looking Biltmore House

Day 9: Bryson City

Bryson City Garveyard

Drive BRP to Bryson City and hang out with the Cherokees in the Smokies! If time allows, we may drive up to Newfound Gap or search for some family cemeteries in the National Park. We can stop for the night in Bryson City and head home the next morning, or if we have more time that we thought, we can drive through the winding mountain roads and Pisgah Forest to Brevard and stay there for the night.

Smokies, near Newfound Gap

Some nerd hiking off of the Road to Nowhere

Day 10: Home

Triple Falls in Dupont State Forest

Again, depending on how tired we are, we can get up from Bryson City and head home.  Or if we've stopped in Brevard the previous evening, we can go to Dupont State Forest and discover waterfalls before heading home.  We'll be tired, but happy to have spent the last 10 days in the home-land, the land of the long leaf pine, the summer land where the sun doth shine....

Sunset over my backyard, through the screen porch

3rd Week of August: Food -- Angel Biscuits

So this weekend we had a few friends over for a fancy farewell to THE Ali who inspired this blog.  We're currently not sure how we're going to survive with her more than a few minutes away.  Stay tuned to see how we do...  Matt grilled chicken wings and I planned to make biscuits.  I know, we're so "fancy". I ended up having no time to make biscuits, but maybe this weekend!

The thought of making biscuits inspired me to make those delicious gluten-filled carbohydrates the subject matter for my first food installment on the blog, so here it goes.....

Several years ago for Christmas, my Mom gave me, my sister and my cousin a collection of some of her favorite recipes.

It's a well used little book, with food stains and recipes that are falling out and stuffed in.  It has recipes like Chocolate Chess Pie, Italian Eggplant (Eggplant Parmigiana), Grandma's Christmas Cookies, Lexington BBQ Slaw, etc. Mom also included some photocopies of my Grandma's hand-written recipes, a sweet reminder of how wonderful a cook she was.  These were recipes like Chow Chow and Dried Figs and Beets in Spiced Vinegar.

And a recipe she called "Angel Biscuits".

(I write notes on all my recipes that I try: ya know, how it turned out and what to add or change.  This recipe's note is simply, "mmm...")

I was ecstatic that I finally had a family biscuit recipe!  My husband and I often discuss the difference and importance of "side bread" and what it can mean for you and your family.  The type of bread you are used to at the dinner table often signifies class, or culture, or history or some other small family story that may be very telling and important.  Matt always grew up with these delectable biscuits that were like little toasted clouds.  He also grew up with cornbread, but what you would know as a fried johnny cake--NOT a muffin.

I, however, always grew up with store bought yeast rolls (kept warm in a dish towel in a metal colander by the dinner table).  I still don't know if this was just for ease or if my grandma didn't have enough space in her kitchen to make biscuits--and when you are making a rump roast (which she always did for Sunday/Special Occasion Dinner) it does take up most of your oven.  A small pan of yeast rolls can be shoved into a corner in the oven, or brown while the meat is resting. Biscuits, on the other hand, require a lot more effort, timing and space. At least in my experience.

Maybe there is no reason why I never knew her to make biscuits. Maybe she just preferred yeast rolls.

So naturally, when I see this recipe in my Grandmother's handwriting I was so delighted. "Aha!" I said.  "She DID make biscuits."  Because this was in her handwriting, it had to be her recipe, or one she had gotten from a friend or family member, passed down through generations.

I made the biscuits and they were great! Light, but dense with that doughy sweet flavor only a homemade biscuit can have.  It wasn't greasy like a Bojangles biscuit (not knockin'-love me some Boj), but it was still delectable.  Good enough to eat plain right out of the oven.  And with a little bit of strawberry freezer jam? Good heavens!

I've continued to make them since then about once every other month.  Usually, this occurs when I need Buttermilk for some other recipe.  I'll finish the remanding buttermilk by making biscuits (or pancakes....or both).

So here I am in happy Biscuit Heaven, with the angels, including my Grandma, praising me for carrying on the tradition of making biscuits!

Then, one day, I'm talking to my Mom about "Grandma's Biscuits" and I'm going on and on about them.

She interrupts me and says, "Meredith, your Grandmother never made biscuits."

"But I have her recipe.  You gave it to me! It's in her handwriting!!"

There was a slow pause.

"Oh yeah, I remember.  I think she made them a couple times.  That's a recipe she liked out of my college Home Economic Textbook, so she wrote it down."

Sigh....

I still make the biscuits, and I still think about my Grandmother every time. I've gotten over the fact that they are technically "textbook" biscuits and not some family heirloom.  To me they are still my Grandmother's "angel" biscuits and they always will be.

And with my Mom's homemade James Grape Jelly, nothing on this world is better....

No matter what "side bread" you are used to or wish you had growing up,  learn to make it, cherish it and pass it on to your family so that the tradition of biscuits, yeast rolls, honey rolls, crescent rolls, cornbread, johnny cakes or whatever else can continue on.

"I promise..."

"I promise it won't be 5 months until the next update this time..."  Famous last words, right?  Oh well. 

I'm going to try to get this blog back up and going.  It's main purpose is still for me to record what I think about things I read, but I think if I do that you're still going to get gaps--massive ones.  Some books I've read recently, like "Tender Is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald would probably get a tiny post like this: "Beautifully written, wish I'd never read it."  Other's like Marilyn Robinson's "Home" I'd probably make a bazillion posts about it.  So I probably need to add some diversity, cause I do think about things other than just books.

My husband has inspired me with his blog (seen here).  He's broken it up into daily categories of things he posts.  I probably will not get around to posting every day, however, I will try to do this more frequent. 

A potential schedule could be this (since most months have 4-5 weeks in them):

Week 1:  Something I'm reading
Week 2:  Something about Nature
Week 3:  Something about Food
Week 4:  Something I want to do/have done
Week 5:  Something Random

It's a place to start.

Also, I promise it will be longer than 5 minutes until the next update.

Cheerio!

Been too long, I blame B. Sharp

So I've been reading Vanity Fair for what seems like a decade.  And it's getting to the point where I want to say, "Thackarey, really man, really?"  I mean, it's a good book, even great at parts, but by page 400 of 800 you get it.  The plot is rather boring once you get past the battle and you GET IT!  Becky is a quick witted biotch, Amelia is poor and perfect, Dobbin is the gentle, quiet hero and Rawdon is a dope.  The characters, even Becky, seem one deminsional and while I think his satire of late Georgian/early Victorian english society is hilarious at points, after awhile it become redudant for my tastes.

Poor guy...

I can't help but compare him to Dickens, and every time he does something kind of awesome I think about how Dickens would have done it better.  I didn't have these Dickens > Thackarey thoughts through the first 200 pages of the book.  I actually gave ole Thack props for being Dickens with no filter!  But Dickens with that filter, Dickens is able to crassly comment on Londonites with subtle and intellegent notes.  And 800 pages of Dickens has a flippin' plot---AN INTERESTING ONE AT THAT.

Breathe, it's just a book.

So, on December 15th, I said screw Becky Sharp and cracked open one of my Nonesuch Dickens that my husband got me last year for christmas.  Of course, I opened up the Christmas Books and decided to read the novellas The Chimes and The Cricket.  Both of them were deliciously descriptive.  In the first 2 pages of The Chimes, Dickens describes the wind twirling up the steeple to finally blow the chimes into movement and song---I read 5 times, it was that good.  However, through all this descriptive awesomeness, at the end of the day, the story was a knockoff of A Christmas Carol, where a weird (yet, good) old man sees the lives of those he loves if he had died.  But the descriptions of the goblins, the chimes, of Toby Veck himself were so rich it didn't matter if this was a slight duplication of a better story. 

The Cricket was similar, the story was predictable and small, but poignant and breathtakingly descriptive--how simple to take a cricket on the hearth and create a story about relationships, marriage and love and how the home and the hearth are the centerpeices of our lives.  I can imagine Dickens smoking his pipe on a cold winter night with a dog or cat curled up infront of the fire at his feet and him hear a cricket's chirp and thus the story began.

Neither of these stories were Christmasy--besides the fact that they take place in the week or two after December 25th.  The Chimes were a New Years story. 

But to get back to Vanity Fair and Thackarey.  I guess part of me is blah with this book purely because I've read tons of 800 paged books before (does that sound snobby?)--it's not the length, it's the tireless satire, the characture characters, and the lack of anything really exciting plot-wise.
I've read Anna Karenina--and even then, when you're on page 600 and you feel like you will never finish, still, whatever is happening on the page, whatever description or minor character you are reading about, it still entraps you into a world that is so rich and beautiful. 

I don't know.   Maybe I'll have a different opinion when I finish, I'll get back to you then on final thoughts of Vanity Fair and try not to bash it and find some merit within it.

---k, I finished. 

Anticlimatic and predictable, but I enjoy the fact that Thackarey holds on to the "theatre" theme throughout his narration to the end---so for the last 5 months of my life I read or "saw" a super long satirical play.  Yay me.

Maybe I should have read this when I had tons of time to dedicate it, rather than in short spurts.  However, I believe that's how Thackarey's contemporary readers read it, in periodical spurts.  They must have had much more patience.
On to Hemmingway and "The Sun Also Rises".  I promise it won't be 5 months until the next update this time...

Heading West By Doris Betts

I'm not quite sure what I think about this one.  Well written, insightful and vivid, it was a good novel---but I don't know if I liked it or not.  Does that make sense?  It's like, Wuthering Heights is a good--no, GREAT novel---but damn, if I can't stand the thing.  I had a lot of issues with this novel, but the annoying thing is I think Doris Betts wants me, us, the reader to have issues with it.  The whole Robin Hood vibe at the beginning, the bad boy--when I first started reading, I thought, 'ok wait,is this going to be a stockholm syndrome thing?'  Is Dwight supposed to be sexy or something?  Then, I had to get over my own romance novel reading and realize, ok this is not a cheap $1.99 convience store book--though at times it reads almost as quickly as those books.  (What? Yes, I know how fast they read.)  I'm all for a horribly predictable, fast reading, crappy romance.  The last one of those types of books that I read--which was about 5 years ago---had the whole "pirate" thing and was about a woman being "kidnapped" by a sexy pirate and ooh la la.

But, alas, Dwight is not a sexy pirate.  And the judge is definately not a young, hard-bodied deck hand.  In the crappy romance novel about pirates, that I read (A Pirate's Love if anyone is interested...) the abuctee ends up in the 'final abduction' of marriage.--just to get a little feminist up in here.  Anyway, let's get away from pirates, shall we?

I guess my main issue was with Nancy. I understand she wanted to escape from family and duty.  I get the sadness that the "spinster sister" is often forced to deal with, the frustration of being the one who "doesn't have a life so she purely lives for others."  The one that is FORCED into being a Martha and never gets a chance to be Mary.   I get that.

But holy moly, chick, you use a kidnapping as your "escape"?   I kept wondering why she bargained with her kinapper.  Yay, the west!  NO! No yay!! You are kidnapped--he has a weapon--he might kill you, torture you, etc.  I don't know.  It was just hard for me to read about Nancy at times, seemingly going along with the kidnapping as if it might "mean" something more to her.

Once they do get out west it totally seems like a blur.  That whole episode with J. Waldo--I was mad.  I was mad at the damn kid, I was mad at the damn dude, the damn horses, and, most of all, dammit I was mad at Nancy.  I guess I've never been kidnapped (too bad, I guess?!?) I have no idea the psychological torture that one might be going through.  I guess you don't really realize how demeted Nancy has become until Chan "rescues" her. (Very Angela Carter's "Bloody Chamber"-esque if you ask me.) Then it's clear that Nancy is freaked-- (can we say: finally?)  I think Nancy's journey through the Grand Canyon was maybe one of my favorite parts of the book, if only for it's harsh, hard descriptions.  Emotion, besides paranoia, is absent.  It's as if the Canyon itself, it's depth and vacancy, fills the book to where it's only survival, it becomes only about Nancy's quest to make it to the other side--to escape.  In fact, after it was all over, I was exhausted myself.

Also, why doesn't she want to tell anyone that Dwight fell off the cliff?  Why is that a mystery?  Does she think people will think she's a killer?  Self-defense, kiddo!

But then Hunt Thatcher shows up, and while I'm happy that Nancy is able to find a companion and her "happy ending,"  I'm just not sure what his purpose is.  Is it a reward that she (and we) gets for going through such horror.  I mean, anyone who goes through a kidnapping or any type of trauma totally deserves a happy ending.  But is that realistic?

I wonder if after it's all over, if when Hunt comes to visit Nancy for Thanksgiving, if the happy ending will really happen.

 I dont know, maybe I'm too hard on it.  I read a lot of Victorian fiction and and I get mad if someone doesn't end up married or everyone dies in the end--why should this be different??

Maybe I should just shut up and read Vanity Fair (the next one to tackle).  Or maybe that's just my problem, I do read a lot (too many) Vic lit and not a lot of contemporary 20th century stuff, so maybe my view is scewed.

Maybe becuase to me the Blue Ridge Parkway IS west (having grown up in NC) Maybe I need to expand my horizons.  I just hope I don't have to get kidnapped for it to happen.

Like I said, I dont know about this one?  I'd love some thoughts and commentary.  Am I stupid?  Do I not know what I'm talking about?  Would I have been happier if Dwight had been a sexy pirate to begin with?  Would I have liked it more if it had had some depressing ending where Nancy dies, or goes back to the mundane 'take care of Mama and Becks' world and leaves her chance of love lost in the west?

I dunno.  So I'm going to just read Thackeray.

The Great Gatsby

I found it appropriate to read this on the day everyone was waiting to see how the Big Apple and Long Island would fair against the forces of Irene--looks like they did ok. All while reading this I kept thinking, is this an episode of Mad Men?  No, it can't be--this is the 1920s not the 1960s!  However, I can't help but think Matthew Weiner had Gatsby (and Buchanan) in mind when creating Don Draper.  The affairs, the passion, the lack of passion, the necessity to claim a different life than your own to "make" it--the cigarettes, drinking and parties?  I even pictured Joan when envisioning Myrtle Wilson. Maybe it's all because I'm depressed MM will not be around this fall.  Or maybe it's because the inherent sense of loneliness and longing that I feel in the characters of MM is the same in the characters of GG. Maybe the society that the characters in MM hold is a desperate attempt to keep the feelings and "gaiety" of a pre-WW2 world.  But WW1 has already happened in Gatsby, the crumbling of the past into a "modern" and then "post modern" existence has happening. So, not quite sure if that whole "gaiety" thing was forreal or not.  Carraway describes the partygoers at Gatsby's shindigs via their futures:  one drowns, another commits suicide, one strangles his wife.  The 20th century upper class is grasping for something that's not there--they have to make themselves interesting, like Gatsby does, or they look on in disgust (and desire) as the Buchanans do--New money vs. Old, West vs. East. It's all there.   Nick Carraway was a boring dude, in my opinion, but that's because he's normal, because he doesn't feel the need to create an exuberant existence for himself.  He is, as us, the reader, caught up in the drama of these other peoples' extraordinary lives.  It becomes a fog of indulgence until the reality of the world crashes down upon those involved and poor Nick is left to try to put some sort of meaning into why it all happens.  Poor sap loses his girl in the process.

I'd like to know more about Fitzgerald.  I asked Matt about this when I started reading--he didn't know much but did say Fitzgerald had a very tempestuous marriage to Zelda (his wife, not the Nintendo princess) who apparently "went crazy" (Matt's words).  I wonder if the various love-lives of this novel all point to various aspects of F.S. and Z's love.  I'm sure someone's written about this.

Also, just randomly, I'd like to know more about this East vs. West business.  I mean, I get it, but being from the South, I've always considered myself from the East Coast--however, that is not this East.  This concept of the "East" is the same geographic area as the "North" --but depending on where you are from I assume you see the are north of the Potomac River in a different light.    I love Nick's (Fitzgerald's) comments in the last few paragraphs about the Dutch coming over and discovering the area that is now Long Island and New York--the opportunity they saw there, and the opportunity the characters of this book still saw in that slither of land--how, in a way, those in the West like Nick and Daisy and Gatsby, they go there to hopefully find that opportunity.  They wish to be those Dutch immigrants coming across the Atlantic, finding a new home.  But they fail because New York has already been conquered and what's left is for it, the Big Apple, to do the conquering.

So what's next?  Next, I read (appropriately) "Heading West" by Doris Betts.

FTLadies: Final Thoughts

So I finished Fair and Tender Ladies and, if it wasn't noticable in the previous post, I highly recommend it.  Here's a few final thoughts:

As Ivy grows and ages you become more and more entrapped in her successes and mistakes.  I know I am happy to have plans to spend Labor day weekend in the mountains--I need them after reading this novel.  Silvaney continues to be a force in this story even in her absence, even in her death as we discover happened years and years ago despite the continued letters written to her.  She is still a ever present reality for Ivy--that connection to her childhood.  What a beautiful scene when Ivy writes to her daughter that she knew Silvaney was dead and that no, she's not crazy to have written to her dead sister all these years.  It was the writing that mattered, not the letter itself, not the reading of it--but the process of writing her innermost thoughts to her best friend.  Silvaney becomes an outlet for Ivy to have a journal or a diary without even the understanding of what it means to write down ones thoughts purely for the theraputic necessity of writing.  When Ivy burns the letters (of course now I can't find the passage to reference, but it happened, I swear!) and watches them spark and flame into the mountain air, she lets go of her childhood and her past life and is able to finally be content with being Ivy--something we all need to learn to do, find that comfort in our own skin.  She does the same when she unscrews the mason jar full of lightenbugs caught by her surrogate grandchildren and watches them crawl out of the jar and then fly away (pg. 273).  Guh, Lee, your descriptions are right on!

Also, her last name after she is married becomes "Fox". So yeah, add that to the whole "nature" "wildness" thing mentioned previously.

Up next:  Great Gatsby.  The required High School reading that I plum forgot.