FEATURED PRODUCT:
FEATURED PRODUCT:
EDITOR’S PICK:
Mooney Farms
Tortuga Rum Cake
Republic of Tea
SEE PAGE 18
SEE PAGE 26
SEE PAGE 32
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VOLUME 86 • NUMBER 6 JUNE 2021 • $7.00
SPECIAL ISSUE INSIDE: SWEETS & TREATS SHOW EXTRA
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A Spicy Sauce with a Side of History BY LORRIE BAUMANN
This is a story about Colorado Green Chili, and you will be glad to know about it because it is a
product with a story that you can buy in a jar. But we are going to start somewhere else because my
daddy was a man who could spin a story about a dump truck and a bird into a 15-minute saga just so he could get to, “It’s a long way to tip a raree.” We’re going to get to Colorado Green Chili by pretty much the same route that dump truck took. You may be grateful that we are not going to be detouring into the whole history of the Santa Fe Railroad, the Fred Harvey Company and the Harvey Girls, even though they are related, because I know you are busy people, and your pa-
tience is limited. Route 66 will not be mentioned again, either. Instead, we are going to start with John Steinbeck. In his 1962 “Travels with Charley,” a story credibly alleged to be more fiction than non, John Steinbeck tells about meeting an aging thespian who mistakes him for a fellow member of the profession. In a roadside campsite somewhere outside Fargo, North Dakota, Steinbeck says he woke up to find that he had an unexpected neighbor, and over coffee and a conveniently stationed bottle of whisky, the actor explained that he’s just drifting from town to town putting on an occasional
that his grandparents switched their farm from onions to mint while his dad and his uncle were fighting in the Pacific campaign during World War II. A few farms in the region were already growing mint, and it was a crop they hoped to be able to make some money with and could farm without help from their sons. “Dad had spent a year
at the University of Washington studying electrical engineering when he got his draft notice and joined the Marines,” Seely said. “He was a radio man in the Marines and worked with a [Navajo] Wind Talker. Once he had the radio shot off his back.... When he came back, he started
Fourteen ciders across the nation were recognized in the 2021 Good Food Awards. Wise Bird Cider, in Lexington, Kentucky, makes two of them. Wise Bird won the award for its Hewe’s Crab and Pommeau. Its Ashmead’s Kernel was named a finalist. Hewe’s Crab is a famous cider variety of apple that’s a cross between an American wild crabapple and a European cultivated variety. It appeared in Virginia in the early 18th century, and cider made from it was a favorite of George Washington. Thomas Jefferson planted Hewe’s Crab apples on his Monticello estate, where the orchard became an important repository for the variety’s genetics after Prohibition destroyed the American cider industry in the 1920s and apples like the Hewe’s Crab that didn’t make good eating off the tree fell into disfavor. Today, though, the Hewe’s Crab Apple is enshrined in the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity Ark of Taste as a treasure worth saving, and Monticello is, among other distinctions, a preserve for the genes of these apples. Wise Bird’s Pommeau is a fortified dessert cider made with Wise
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ther, was a ferry boat captain shuttling customers across the James River between Surry County and Jamestown Island. By the 1920s, Jamestown, the site of the original 1607 settlement by the Virginia Company under a charter from King James I of England, was already a tourist attraction. Over the years, Jamestown had ceased to exist as a community, but late in the 19th century, it became the subject of renewed historical interest, and in 1893, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barney, who owned the land at that time, donated 22.5 acres on Jamestown Island, including the
17th-century tower of the Jamestown Church, to the organization that is now known as Preservation Virginia. In 1926, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. committed himself to the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, about 5.5 miles away, and the area became the Colonial National Monument in 1930. On June 5, 1936, it was redesignated as a national historical park. Jamestown National Historic Site was designated on December 18, 1940. Ferry boat Captain Edwards boosted the popularity of his ferry
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Real Mint Flavor from a Farming Family BY LORRIE BAUMANN
• Novel Food System for a Nation of Desert Dwellers PAGE 6
• Featured Products PAGE 17
• Ready for Adventure PAGES 30 & 31
• Editor’s Picks PAGE 32
• Ad Index PAGE 34
Seely Mint Patties have a depth of flavor that’s unmatched by conventional varieties of the same confection. Hand-made in Oregon with Fair Trade-certified European dark chocolate and heirloom peppermint oil grown on one of the last remaining mint farms in the U.S., they’re the product of a fourth-generation farming family that’s been growing mint in the lower Columbia River basin since the middle of World War II. Mike Seely, today’s farmer, says
Wise Bird Cider Stakes a Claim on Excellence BY LORRIE BAUMANN
Reaching into the Past for Flavor BY LORRIE BAUMANN
When my father was teaching me to drive up the hills and across the one-lane bridges of Shawnee County, Kansas, he used to tell me, “Make sure you’re right, and
then go ahead.” That was his advice for how to get past stop signs, through unmarked intersections and onto busy interstate highways, and it’s worked all these years since then. Sam Edwards’ father used say something similar to him. He’s quoted on the Edwards Smokehouse website this way: “Times change and you’ve got to change with it, but once you know what’s right you adhere to it.” The Sam Edwards who runs the Edwards Smokehouse today is the third generation in a business that got started in 1926 when Samuel Wallace Edwards, Sam’s grandfa-
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