introductions

Peasant. It’s a mean word, something from which one escapes in fairy tales. But sometimes the narrative reverses and the cooped-up and bored princess escapes to the forests to play peasant. Those stories captivated me: the brown eggs to be gathered, the lovely turnips to be prepared (no matter that I would have died of starvation rather than actually gag one down at that age), and of course, hard, back-breaking labor. Really – I was enraptured. Later, it gets less romantic … crop failure and winter starvation, twenty percent mortality in childbirth, women as chattel. I know, I know – nobody wants to be a peasant and nor should I.

Except that there is really no getting past the food: cassaulet, osso buco, coq au vin and ribollita. I’m willing to pay to eat like a peasant, and so too, are many Americans. I notice though that we like to eat like peasants in other countries. Coq au vin sounds lovelier than chicken pot pie, and there is something so worldly about learning to let bi bim bap slip off your tongue. Nonetheless, I suspect that the food of America’s farm houses and log cabins might surprise us or at least may surprise those of us who do not live on an American farm. There are few things I’d rather eat than my grandmother’s fried dough and butter beans or her perfectly flaky buttermilk biscuits with milk gravy. This is magical food that we’ve drained of its magic simply because it ours - somehow boring and bland, provincial and unsophisticated. Yet anyone who has happily gobbled down the foodstuffs of the county fair: elephant ears, sugared fried bread, barbecue pork, buttered corn-on-the-cob and candied apples has appreciated something about rural, American cooking. I’m hoping I can unearth a few more reasons to love this food.

By peasant, I am referencing non-privileged families with access to land. Access to arable land may also mean access to cellars of winter-stored apples and canned tomatoes, fresh eggs from legitimately free-range chickens, salt pork from pastured hogs and home-produced country hams, blackberry syrups and cultured butter, sweet parsnips left past the frost and jars of black walnuts and dried morel mushrooms. Rather than the food of poverty, this is food of a quality largely inaccessible to urbanites of any social class. Without romanticizing too greatly, I would argue that peasant, rather than connoting poverty (as we have come to use it), means also – someone who lives and eats largely outside of the monetary system.

Here’s where I admit that I am not an American peasant (despite many years of wishing it true). I do not live outside of the monetary system, and I have no access to land. I am simply a devoted fan who believes that there should be more fans. This blog is about rural, landed, American cookery written for the non-rural and non-landed. Thus, this is not a blog about inexpensive food. Finding pastured leaf lard and real country ham, when you are not raising and curing it yourself, is neither a simple nor inexpensive undertaking. However, I cannot hope to understand the food of America’s peasantry without being scrupulous that the ingredients match, not only in name, but also in substance. This is going to be a story of sourcing as much as a story of cooking. Your should know that I am not an expert. I’m not an anthropologist with years of field work in Appalachia nor am I a skilled Southern cook with generations of kitchen geniuses in my family line. My only credential is that I like the food. I’d like to learn more and share the story.