Category: Low Country Living

I love coffee!

And I am missing the coffee I purchased on a regular basis in Maine. This small business in Lincolnville, Maine, just north of Camden, roasts and blends its own coffee.

I have enjoyed a latte many times while sitting on the porch pictured below–sometimes with a guest visiting or with a local friend.

So yesterday, I ordered some. I love Dark Harbor and, especially, Roma espresso, which is a special blend made by Green Tree.

https://www.greentreecoffee.com

Ordering proved to be really easy online, but along the way, owner John called me and we had a nice chat. He wished me to be well in my new home in South Carolina and said he’d mail my coffee first thing Monday.

So now I’ll be hanging out looking for my coffee package!

I LOVE raspberries. In Maine I had a big bed of raspberry plants and froze LOTS for winter eating.

Here, one can buy raspberries fresh pretty much all year long. And I like to combine them with the blueberries and blackberries that also seem to be available all year long–with a drizzle of maple syrup–as a dessert at night, when I eat a lighter meal. (Pricey, but better for you than sweets like a fake ice cream.)

The berries come in little plastic containers–and the blueberries and blackberries do just fine stored in the refrigerator in those containers. But NOT the raspberries. I’ve discovered if I put them on a bed of paper towels and just loosely cover them with one of my “One World, Zero Waste” fabric sheets–NOT more plastic–they last without melting or molding for many days. In the plastic container, the raspberries start to go bad in one day or less.

I’ve blogged about these fabric tops and replacements for paper towels before now, and I continue to use them heavily. I use the sheets to top dishes in the microwave too and then into the wash they go. Mine were a very welcome gift from my DIL Corinne.

I especially like the string-drawn tops–the big ones will also cover a rectangular dish.

Here they are in use in my refrigerator–with one laid over the raspberries and the small one over a bowl:

I’ve had mine for nearly a year now, and they are going strong.

To the left of the milk you can see a quart jar of organic “olio nuevo” just harvested a few weeks ago at Organic Roots–a small farm in California. I bought a gallon and took quarts to each son. New oil like this comes with all the “bits” that will settle to the bottom of a vat in 5 or 6 weeks. And it comes with the most amazing fresh smell and taste, especially when warm. New olive oil only has a short shelf life–about 6 months.

So that leads me to this plate of food, which contains a “salad” of warm blanched and roughly chopped collard leaves–with a bit of this olive oil, the carrot part that was in the container with the raw onion I wanted and which I grated, and a bit of the raw onion–salt and herbs. It was and is delicious. I included some of this salad in three scrambled eggs last night: delicious!

The rest is no surprise to you blog readers: grilled lamb chops and sweet peppers and some of the Carolina Gold Rice. (I couldn’t find any organic Carolina Gold Rice at Whole Foods so will call Anson Mills again tomorrow.) Grilled sweet peppers are so much sweeter than they are roasted in the oven or the Air Fryer.

My little diffuser is happily diffusing this morning–loaded with Young Living lavender and lemon essential oils today. Then I’m going to switch to the green tree oils, like pine, cedar, and some of the firs and balsams. And I’ll soon also order some vanilla essential oil. I have peppermint on hand as I use it to keep bugs away in the summer. Who knew that pine and grapefruit would smell delicious, not me.

It’s overcast today, with gentle rain predicted! So I’m going upstairs to sew on the project that obsessed me for some days now.

South Carolina is rice country.

Yes, there is corn here too (think grits, for instance, and the fabulous dish called “shrimp and grits”), but corn has been more of a staple. At one time–and for some still now in this region–rice is also a staple. Many would choose rice at a holiday meal over dressing of any kind.

There is a heritage variety of rice here that almost got lost in time: Carolina Gold Rice.

I first bought this “supermarket” version, only to find it isn’t the “real deal.”

It isn’t organic, but it made a very nice rice with a nutty flavor, as you can see. It does have a different taste than the white rice I’ve always eaten.

So now I’m on the hunt for the “real deal,” the heritage rice that is grown by Glen Roberts of Anson Mills. I have a call into the retail number of that company to see if I can buy some, but so far, they have neither answered their phone or called me back.

So when is the rice harvest anyway? Ah, early fall, so I will keep trying. And I’ll check Whole Foods for Carolina Gold Rice that is organic and must be refrigerated or frozen.

I found a really good article by Ari Weinzweig on the history of this heritage rice, linked below, which concludes with a recipe. This rice does not cook like other rice types cook, so recipes have to be adjusted.

Roberts of Anson Mills actually mills his heritage rice on Tuesday and ships the rice frozen or cold-packed, in order to preserve the inner sprout that provides more nutrients than other kinds of rice. Additionally, the rice is hulled only partially, which is said to mimic how it was processed back in the day and which adds to its unique flavor.

Here’s a quote about when this rice came to America:

“The original Carolina Gold rice is believed to have come to the Carolinas in roughly 1685 arriving from Madagascar in the form of a bushel brought back by Dr. Henry Woodward of Charles Town. From that single sack the rice grew to cover the land of hundreds of commercial plantations stretching down from the Cape Fear River basin of North Carolina all the way to the northern end of Florida.  The bulk of the production though stayed in South Carolina, where by 1691 it was so well established that the state legislature allowed for planters to pay their taxes in rice. Rice was originally milled as it was elsewhere in the world, with wooden mallets. (More about this technique in a minute). The first water-powered rice mill was built in 1787.”

The article traces the history of this rice up to the point where it more or less disappeared in this region.

“For most of the 20^th century Carolina Gold was nothing more than a trademark owned by a large rice company that didn’t even grow Carolina Gold rice but liked the name.  But now . . . wow. . . the stuff that Glenn is growing and milling for Anson Mills is something spectacular, head and shoulders above what we were getting, which, again, was already really good.  All of which has absolutely nothing in common with the supermarket “Carolina Gold” rice, which has even less in common with the real article than cultivated wild rice has with really wild, wild rice.” 

But what makes Roberts’ rice so different: “For opener’s Glenn’s rice is grown organically, and he’s insistent that raising rice without sprays isn’t just the right thing to do for environmental reasons but also because it has huge positive impact on the flavor of the rice.  Beyond that he’s making sure the rice is fully ripened in the field before being brought in. As it does with any other produce proper field ripening is a huge factor in getting full flavor development into our food. (Because it’s very difficult to feel or see the difference with grains I think this issue hasn’t gotten much attention.  But as it does with the Anson Mills grits, the field ripening radically enhances the flavor.) Additionally, the newly harvest rice is stored frozen in the husk until we order it, at which point Glenn mills it with a small rice mill brought over from Japan…especially designed for Glenn, in order to emulate the 19^th century hand-pounding which, at that time, was the way that slaves husked the rice and broke off most of the bran to prepare it for cooking in the kitchen.” 

https://www.zingermansroadhouse.com/2019/11/carolina-gold-rice/

So, I’m now now on the hunt for some version of “the real deal” and not the supermarket version I bought.

I’ll let you know…

Meanwhile, I still love the sprouted brown rice that I have on hand–though all I have to do is to walk by the bag of rice to put on several pounds–so rice, for me, is a treat, not an every day or even often treat. Here’s one version.

Sprouted brown rice has more nutrients available to the human body, according to the Weston A. Price Foundation nutritional materials.