Simmering Stew Brings a Community Together

[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.] 

The center of small town is not always a town hall, courthouse, or church. Sometimes it’s a pot of bubbling stew as it is each fall in Mount Gilead, a community of slightly more than 1,000 residents in Montgomery County. Although the community is small, just about everyone knows about the Brunswick stew served when Brown’s Hardware has its open house.

A tasty pot of Brunswick stew
creates a lot of interest.

Incorporated in 1899, Mount Gilead boasts a downtown historic district listed in the National Register of Historic Places.  The heart of historic downtown is a hardware store that has been open continuously for more than 100 years, and the floor creaks like it is even older. Known now as Brown’s Hardware, the business presents itself as an “old timey general store and mercantile,” and it is.

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Sweet Potatoes: Providing Fresh Food for the Needy

[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.] 

North Carolina produces about half of all the sweet potatoes grown in the United States, and it has consistently ranked as the top producing state for more than 30 years. More than half of the state’s sweet potatoes are grown in only three counties – Sampson, Nash, and Johnston. These counties in eastern N.C. are prime growing locations with their rich, fertile soil and their hot, moist climate.

Sweet potatoes can be delivered
by  unusual means.

Although the typical movement from farm to table involves a grocery store or chain, sometimes a food bank and its network of volunteers spring into action to provide sweet potatoes to families in need. Sweet potatoes are an excellent choice of fresh nutrition for these families that need to stretch their food budgets with healthy produce and supplement foods provided in other programs.

Continue reading at the NCFood blog ...