"Food is culture. Food is shorthand for who you are." How-to's, reviews, recipes, musings, memories, inspiration and original food photography from the heart of Appalachia.
'Fat cat' has never been truer
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
West Virginia legislators scarf Tudor's biscuits and Krispy Kreme doughnuts and crumple the menu calorie bill with the wrapper. Urp!
One of my guilty pleasures -- the Hero Burger -- is gone from the market. A Hero Burger is two hamburger patties on a six-inch hero sandwich bun, topped with grilled salami and ham, cheese, mayo, lettuce and tomato and grilled onions if you wish. Late this summer I noticed that the Dairy Mart in my town became a Mountaineer Mart. Throughout the fall more Dairy Marts and All Star Expresses in my area became Circle K convenience stores. The Hero Hut sandwich stations in them closed. Finally this week I noticed that the standalone Hero Hut restaurant in Sabraton has also shuttered. Chico Enterprises sold 26 stores to Circle K and at least one to Mountaineer Mart. From now on, I will only get Hero Hut's signature sandwich, my guilty pleasure -- a Hero Burger -- if I make it myself and then it doesn't taste quite the same. Hero Huts have been around since my childhood, if not before. I'm sad to see them go.
Photo by Cynthia McCloud The new Hershey's Air Delights aerated milk chocolate bar is honey-combed with thousands of tiny pockets where air bubbles used to be. I can't figure out why they made such a thing. Is it to make you feel like you're eating a full-size chocolate bar but actually consuming less? I don't know. I do know what it's like to eat: It's soft, spongy to the bite. If I bit into it unaware that it's supposed to be like that, I would assume the chocolate had gone bad. It doesn't taste bad. It's just different. I prefer a creamier chocolate on the tongue than this chewy one. There are supposed to be Air Delight Kisses too but I haven't seen those.
Sixty-five years ago, a volunteer fire department in the county where I live in West Virginia started holding a fundraising festival celebrating the area's agriculture -- a large part of which was the buckwheat that was harvested and milled into flour. Buckwheat is no longer the "insurance crop" farmers planted back then; a handful of farmers plant it now and a lot of the flour that is milled every fall for the festival starts out as buckwheat that's trucked in from a neighboring state. But a staple of the Preston County Buckwheat Festival remains: buckwheat cakes and fresh-ground whole-hog sausage dinners. Buckwheat cakes are pancakes (but don't call them that here -- the most my fellow Prestonians have ever let me get away with is "griddle cakes"). Buckwheat flour is flour but it's not from a grain; it's actually a fruit, from the rhubarb family. Doesn't taste like it though. At festival time there are lots of fund-raising dinners (plus peo...
Comments