Nancy Leson's back from babysitting her eight-week old grand nephew in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. But it wasn't all power tools and free weights for Nancy and neph. She also found time to food shop and pack down some Carolina BBQ. First, the shopping.
Nance says the NC supermarket she visited had no bulk items or Asian or Latin products aisles. But it did have something we've never seen around here: A live herbs section where you can clip your own.
In the baking section, whole shelves full of the Southern biscuit gold standard, White Lily flour. Which for some reson triggered a TSA baggage search at her departure gate.
Nancy and I are always in search of the best biscuits and she's going to do a home biscuit bake-off comparing batch for batch with her imported White Lily and Bob's Red Mill pastry flour. Keep watching this space.
It was in Winston-Salem that Leson drank her first Cheerwine – not wine at all but a soft drink popular all through the Carolinas, West Viginia and points south, produced by the Peeler family for more than 100 years.
"It tasted just like the Frank's Black Cherry Wishniakof my Philly youth," she says. If you'd like to try The Soda-fied Pride of North Carolina you can find some right around here at WinCo stores.
Nance says it's the perfect companion to NC barbecue she had at Bib's Downtown.
"Barbecue is the third rail of North Carolina politics." – John Shelton Reed, co-Authopr of Holy Smoke, the Big Book of NC Barbecue
