Lumbee Fish Market: As Fresh as Being on the Coast

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.] 

Drive to the beach along U.S. Highway 74 and tune in a local radio station. If you do, you might hear an ad for Lumbee Fish Market in Pembroke that is so intriguing that you want to visit. It’s a market with fish that you might not expect in a location about two hours inland from coastal waters.

Native Americans have lived in this region for centuries because streams and artesian wells provided an adequate water supply and fish were abundant in the wetland landscape of swamps, creeks, and pocosins. But do the local Native Americans, known as Lumbee, want only freshwater fish? 

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Time for Persimmon Pudding

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.] 

Cool temperatures mean fall fruits and vegetables. When the summer temperatures drop, one tree becomes more noticeable as its round fruit ripens and takes on an orange-brown hue. Is it time to pick persimmons and make pudding?

Many of us remember days from childhood when we asked if the persimmons could be picked. Impatiently we had to wait until the fruit was ready. Picked too early, persimmons can leave a sharp or bitter taste. As many children learn, being patient and giving persimmons a long period to ripen (sometimes as long as until the first frost occurs) can improve the flavor. The extended time increases the sugars and decreases the acids that cause the bitterness.


Continue reading at the NCFood blog... 

Note: The family recipe of persimmon pudding at the end of the article will be reprinted with permission in Eating Appalachia by Darrin Nordahl that is scheduled for publication in early 2015 by Chicago Review Press.