Something Organic
An evolving friendship and shared passion for locally sourced food and imaginative cooking bonds a pair of talented moms and their daughters
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By Elizabeth Norfleet-Sugg • Photographs by Tim Sayer
rganic: an often-used word that one would associate with Ashley Van Camp, a homegrown girl whose “Eat Local” stamp has helped cultivate a grass-roots enjoyment and expectation in the Sandhills area of an everyday sharing of one’s garden, market shopping, and then later in the day, spontaneously cooked, aromatically delicious food. Another equally satisfying meaning of organic doesn’t necessarily relate to food. Sometimes projects and connections with people spawn something “organic” just because the essence and reasons for coming together presented themselves . . . nothing forced, just right for the times. That’s what happened with Ashley and me last August, and it is spawning a fun wave of creativity in this new year. Our daughters, Chase and Evie, are the same age; so Ashley and I met when our now high school freshmen were at Learning Tree Preschool many moons ago. Always looking for someone to road-trip to food events with when I spy one, I recruited Ashley to go with me to one of Ashley Christensen’s (Poole’s Diner/ James Beard Best Chef Southeast 2014 award winner) Stir-the-Pot fundraisers in the Triangle just before school started, hoping our daughters and the two of us could reconnect, and we did. Armed with two side dishes that this style of fundraiser requires from attendees while the chef provides the entrée (beer and wine is donated), the four of us had a great night at the Raleigh Contemporary Art Museum, and the evening’s till went to Southern Foodways Alliance.
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In October Ashley recruited me to help her at the TerraVita Food & Drink Festival in Chapel Hill, a jaw-dropping gathering of top North Carolina chefs, brewers, distillers, food artisans, cookbook authors at the top of their game sharing their delectable, locally sourced offerings of the day. After serving people third and fourth helpings of her pine cone-smoked heritage pork mini-tacos topped with a shredded okra slaw that vegetarians could also chow down on, making Ashten’s table ever-so-popular, I asked Ashley if she was writing her recipes down, and she confessed that doing just that is very hard for her. Hard for her, easy for me. So that is the natural progression of things in 2015, the great meshing that happens when friends help friends, a reminder that sometimes the best of ourselves becomes brighter when talents are shared. I have been mostly a home mom these last years, and have missed dabbling in books, writing and recipe development, so this outgrowth is perfect for my rusty new beginning. Next up on the recipe recording front is a cooking class program Ashley has been invited to do for Hoke County schools; she had been hesitant to accept because of the recipe thing, but I told her about an outreach that Wake Forest University had asked me to be a part of in the teaching kitchen of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, so she is now saying “yes” to Hoke. Then in early fall, the two of us will be doing our version of a Stir-the-Pot fundraiser in the Sandhills, called Stone Soup, held at Rubicon Farm in West End. While Ashley is preparing the evening’s entrée, I will scratch down her method and amounts.
February 2015P�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills