Cookbook-writing caterer extraordinaire Debbi Covington dishes about food.
Fresh from the Farmers' Market
Tuesday, 21 June 2011 13:37
Beaufort County is blessed with an abundance of delicious produce! There’s nothing tastier than a fresh-picked tomato from St. Helena Island or a juicy ripe South Carolina peach. How lucky we are to have a great place to shop where we can purchase this locally-grown bounty! I’m talking about our wonderful farmers’ markets. The markets – open Wednesdays in downtown Beaufort, Friday afternoons at Habersham, Saturday mornings in Pork Royal, Thursday afternoons in downtown Bluffton, and Friday mornings at Honey Horn on Hilton Head – are great places to shop for the freshest fruits, vegetables, home-baked breads and plants.
Nothing says “sunshine” like a lemon! The lemon is a symbol of tart refreshment; its color and fragrance lift our spirits before we even taste it. Lemons, like salt, bring out the flavors of other ingredients and make everything taste fresher and brighter. They work wonders in savory dishes and truly shine in desserts. Just a squeeze of juice, a paper-thin slice, or a curl of zest adds a piquant zing, a tart edge and a lovely aroma. Lemon tastes good with almost everything! It marries well with all sorts of herbs and spices, berries and other fruits, spirits and liqueurs, and even edible flowers. There are three types of lemon: common, rough and sweet.
You don’t have to live in the South to practice the tradition of Southern hospitality. It’s true that much of the South has grown and changed, but a warm welcome is a Southern tradition that remains. True Southern hostesses are always prepared with sweet tea and a “little something to eat” to offer their guests. This week’s menu highlights some old Southern favorites with updated twists. The meal begins with Fried Chicken Breasts with Honey-Pecan Sauce.
The words fresh and light perfectly describe the kind of innovative, delicious food that so many of us want to cook and eat today. We like peak-of-the season ingredients prepared in simple ways that best enhance their flavors. Not so long ago, if friends said they were cooking and eating fresh and light food, we would automatically assume they were on a diet. I suspect that the majority of people do so for one simple reason – low-fat, high-quality foods, imaginatively prepared, taste great!
Honey is honey. It's just that simple. A bottle of pure honey contains a natural sweet substance, produced by honey bees, from nectar of plants or secretions of living parts of plants. Honey is made by bees in one of the world's most efficient facilities, the beehive. The 60,000 or so bees in a beehive may collectively travel as much as 55,000 miles and visit more than two million flowers to gather enough nectar to make just one pound of honey! Honey has been found to have medicinal qualities. Local honey is well known to assist in allergy relief and is a rich source of antioxidants.