Excerpted from Tasting Ohio: Favorite Recipes from the Buckeye State (Farcountry Press, 2018)

They may be the official state snack food of West Virginia, but you’ll find pepperoni rolls all along Ohio’s southeast and northeast regions. They hit the spot wherever you happen to be.

• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 scant tablespoon active dry yeast (one .25 ounce package)
• 3 -1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 8 to 9 ounces thinly sliced pepperoni

Makes 12 rolls

Place the warm water in a small bowl and sprinkle the yeast over it. Let it sit until dissolved and creamy, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine 3 cups of the flour with the salt.

In a small saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium-low heat. Whisk in the honey and buttermilk and heat just until warm to the touch (do not boil). Remove from heat and beat in the egg.

Add the water and yeast mixture to the flour, along with the buttermilk mixture. Mix on low speed until the dough just comes together. If it’s quite sticky, add the remaining 1/4 cup flour. Mix on low speed for 5 minutes, then remove the dough from the mixer and knead by hand for a minute or so, until the dough is smooth and supple. Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and position racks in the upper and lower thirds. Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and let rest on a lightly floured board for 10 minutes.

Line two baking sheets with parchment. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter.

Take one piece of dough and form into a square roughly 4 to 5 inches across (imperfection is totally acceptable here, and in fact slightly preferable). Shingle 9 slices of pepperoni over the square, leaving a border of about 1/4 inch. Roll up and pinch the seam lightly to seal. Place seam-side-down on the baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, setting 6 rolls per sheet.

Brush the rolls with half of the melted butter and let rise 30 minutes (the rolls will not puff up visibly). Bake until lightly browned, 30 to 40 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking. Immediately brush with the remaining butter. Serve warm or at room temperature.

The post Pepperoni Rolls appeared first on Clutch MOV.

One of my clients, a large retail corporation, occasionally gives me assignments to develop recipes for a mainstream American audience. I love working with the company, but I sometimes feel conflicted about developing recipes for an “Asian steak bowl” or a “Mexican mac n’ cheese.” The steak bowl is Asian because it features rice and a soy sauce marinade. The mac n’ cheese is Mexican because it has corn, cumin, and chili powder.

As a Caucasian mutt, I don’t have one specific cuisine tied into my identity and family tradition, and so I never felt how potent the sting of an outsider swooping down and cherry-picking ingredients and techniques can be. Until it came to pepperoni rolls.

If you’re from the Mid-Ohio Valley, pepperoni rolls likely need no explanation. They simply are, an unquestioned presence as commonplace as Golden Delicious apples and cartons of 2% milk. But let’s pretend you are extolling the virtues of a pepperoni roll to someone who’s never had the pleasure of eating one. “It’s fluffy white bread baked with pepperoni inside. Sometimes sticks, sometimes slices. A few places even use ground pepperoni. Some include cheese. You get them at gas stations, or bakeries, or make your own with Rhodes frozen bread dough. Clearly we need to get you one right now.”

There is nothing not to love about pepperoni rolls, unless you are an avid fan of nutrition, because as wads of cottony white bread stuffed with greasy, salty cured meat, there is nothing beneficial about them in that aspect. The ones I grew up with were from Brownie’s Bakery in Marietta. The Brownie’s pepperoni rolls featured two pencil-thin sticks of pepperoni (the lunchmeat version of a chocolate baton in a pain au chocolat) encased in a cottony roll. One made an ideal snack; two, a satisfying lunch. Brownie’s Bakery is long gone, but Brownie still bakes pepperoni rolls to sell at a few places around town. People would seriously freak out if he stopped.

As a kid in Ohio, I didn’t know pepperoni rolls were so deeply West Virginian. According to Candace Nelson, the Charleston, WV-based author of The West Virginia Pepperoni Roll, they originated with the Italian immigrants who came to the north central part of the state to work as coal miners. Perhaps the first rolls were baked in home kitchens so men could have a filling and portable lunch down in the mines. But it’s Italian-American baker and former miner Giuseppe “Joseph” Argiro who is credited with introducing a commercial version in his Fairmont, WV bakery.

Only after moving away from the Mid-Ohio Valley did I learn the regionality of pepperoni rolls—specifically, I would have liked to eat them, but there were not to be had. You don’t have to go far to land where pepperoni rolls are not a thing. I left it by heading to Columbus, just two hours north, and over the years I kept moving farther.

Only in going away and then returning did I fully grasp the intricacies of the Mid-Ohio Valley identity. It’s more Appalachian than Midwestern, though in many ways it’s simultaneously both things and neither of them. I call it the Appalachian Interzone. My parents, both native Ohioans, moved to Marietta nearly 40 years ago, and many people in town still consider them outsiders. “Bir?” they’ll say when I answer inquiries about my last name. “Hmm, I don’t know any Birs.” While I find this scrutiny amusing, I see its usefulness; it’s a simple attempt to tease out connections, create a community context. “Who are your parents?” is not a big-city question, but a small-town one.

As I compiled my cookbook, Tasting Ohio: Favorite Recipes from the Buckeye State, I collected recipes from chefs and food producers all over Ohio. Pepperoni rolls initially didn’t seem a good fit, because they are the official state food of West Virginia (I say this literally, not figuratively—the state legislature passed the resolution marking it such in 2013), and Tasting Ohio is an Ohio cookbook. Yet I grew up in Ohio, eating pepperoni rolls. Ohioans up and down the Ohio River Valley did, too. Who was I to deny the Appalachian Interzone a voice in Tasting Ohio?

I gave in. The rolls are in the book. Since no one needs a recipe for the insanely simple Rhodes dough version, I opted to start with homemade dough, and sniffed around for source recipes to compare. That is when I came across a pepperoni roll recipe in Cook’s Country, the less austere sister publication of the Brookline, Massachusetts-based Cook’s Illustrated. 

The Cook’s Country pepperoni rolls had sesame seeds on top, which instantly tipped me off. They could not be the real deal! Never have I seen pepperoni rolls with sesame seeds on top. Who did those Massholes think they were, plucking one of West Virginia’s fine traditions and mucking it up to suit their elitist tastes?

It was my turn to be on the receiving end of Asian Steak Bowl fury. It riled me up enough that I didn’t read the Cook’s Country recipe, or the accompanying short article setting it up, so I can’t go point my finger at them and cry “Columbusing!” That, by the way, is a newish term for appropriating an aspect of one culture and acting as if you discovered it.

West Virginia is rich with folklore, extremely fertile in all aspects of the arts, and home to its own legitimate foodways. Every time something good about West Virginia sneaks into the national consciousness, I want to give the state a fist-bump.

West Virginia, and Appalachia in general, is chronically misunderstood by many people in our country. It’s thought of as white trash, politically backwards, culturally bereft, and appallingly unsophisticated. West Virginia is rich with folklore, extremely fertile in all aspects of the arts, and home to its own legitimate foodways. Every time something good about West Virginia sneaks into the national consciousness, I want to give the state a fist-bump.

But, just as the natural resources of the state has been mined by greedy outside interests for its fossil fuels, so too have its food traditions been mined by superficial foodies who, say, want the cachet of ramps without understanding anything about the cultural meaning the plant has to rural mountain folk. I want pepperoni-loving people everywhere to be embrace pepperoni rolls, but I also want them to understand that they are a salt-of-the-earth delicacy, the street food of the coal mines. To render them foufy with sesame seeds is missing the point.

In my pepperoni rolls for Tasting Ohio, I use the fancy deli pepperoni slices, not the so-so Hormel stuff. Though I once preferred sticks, I am now a convert to slices, because they are better distributed in the roll and thereby leech more of the flavorful, bright orange grease into the bready interior. It’s a déclassé version of brioche, almost. I love brioche.

I add honey and full-fat buttermilk to my dough, and brush the proofing rolls with melted butter. None of those things are standard issue in a typical pepperoni roll, but I feel I can get away with it, because I’m from here. Does it all come down to birthright?

Writer and Vietnamese cooking expert Andrea Nguyen has cannily observed that appropriation is taking, while collaboration is giving. Giving credit, giving context, giving goodwill. Being mindful that a recipe is never just a recipe, and a seemingly innocuous white bread roll stuffed with pizza toppings is never just a roll. Is it okay to fling sesame seeds over them if you don’t have roots in the Mountain State? Is it Columbusing to include them in Tasting Ohio when you’re a fringe element in the Appalachian Interzone? Is it justifiable to look Cook’s Country in the eye and ask, “Who are your parents?”

I can’t give hard and fast answers to any of those questions. What’s more important is to not stop asking them. One thing I can give is a recipe.

Pepperoni Rolls

Excerpted from Tasting Ohio: Favorite Recipes from the Buckeye State (Farcountry Press, 2018)

They may be the official state snack food of West Virginia, but you’ll find pepperoni rolls all along Ohio’s southeast and northeast regions. They hit the spot wherever you happen to be.

• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 scant tablespoon active dry yeast (one .25 ounce package)
• 3 -1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 8 to 9 ounces thinly sliced pepperoni

Makes 12 rolls

Place the warm water in a small bowl and sprinkle the yeast over it. Let it sit until dissolved and creamy, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine 3 cups of the flour with the salt.

In a small saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium-low heat. Whisk in the honey and buttermilk and heat just until warm to the touch (do not boil). Remove from heat and beat in the egg.

Add the water and yeast mixture to the flour, along with the buttermilk mixture. Mix on low speed until the dough just comes together. If it’s quite sticky, add the remaining 1/4 cup flour. Mix on low speed for 5 minutes, then remove the dough from the mixer and knead by hand for a minute or so, until the dough is smooth and supple. Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and position racks in the upper and lower thirds. Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and let rest on a lightly floured board for 10 minutes.

Line two baking sheets with parchment. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter.

Take one piece of dough and form into a square roughly 4 to 5 inches across (imperfection is totally acceptable here, and in fact slightly preferable). Shingle 9 slices of pepperoni over the square, leaving a border of about 1/4 inch. Roll up and pinch the seam lightly to seal. Place seam-side-down on the baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, setting 6 rolls per sheet.

Brush the rolls with half of the melted butter and let rise 30 minutes (the rolls will not puff up visibly). Bake until lightly browned, 30 to 40 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking. Immediately brush with the remaining butter. Serve warm or at room temperature.

The post Who do Pepperoni Rolls belong to? appeared first on Clutch MOV.

Pawpaw Pudding

Serves 6-12

This is an old-fashioned baked pudding, not as creamy as a custard but smooth and rich, with intriguing caramel notes and an undeniable pawpaw kick.

With a food processor, it takes only minutes to blitz that batter together. (Note: minutes blitzing together batter excludes gathering of pawpaws. It’s taken me up to 40 minutes to find and haul home ten pounds. Call it your exercise for the day.)

•         2/3 cup (3.1 ounces ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
•         2/3 to ¾ cup granulated sugar (I prefer a less-sweet pudding)
•         ¼ teaspoon salt
•         ½ teaspoon baking soda
•         1 large egg
•         1 large egg yolk
•         1 cup pawpaw pulp
•         ½ cup buttermilk, preferably not low-fat
•         ¼ cup half-and-half
•         2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
•         3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Heat the oven to 350˚ F and position a rack in the middle. Grease a 9 by 9-inch baking dish, preferably glass or ceramic.

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda to combine.

In a large glass measuring cup or medium bowl, combine the pawpaw, buttermilk, half-and-half, and vanilla bean paste. With the machine running, add the pawpaw-buttermilk mixture through the feed tube. Turn off the machine, scrape down the sides, and add the melted butter with the machine running. Your batter should have the consistency of pancake batter.

Pour the batter into the greased dish. Bake until the center is set but still jiggly (like a pumpkin pie), about 30 to 45 minutes. The sides of the pudding will rise up and brown, while the interior will be flat, shiny, and amber-colored. Let cool to room temperature and serve with crème fraiche or whipped cream. I like this for breakfast with a big dollop of Greek yogurt, but I could say that about most any dessert.

The pudding will keep 2-3 days at room temperature. I suppose you could refrigerate it, but it tastes better at room temperature.

-From The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook by Sara Bir, Copyright 2015 Sara Bir/The Sausagetarian

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Most of the people living in the Mid-Ohio Valley have never tasted a pawpaw. These egg-shaped fruits have a freckled green skin, and look unassuming enough on the outside that they go unnoticed even by avid hikers who frequently tromp through the woods.

But in the early fall, our fertile region is lousy with pawpaws. Blennerhasset Island teems with them, as do the forests that the many newer mixed-use trails in Marietta wind through. Pawpaws take a little work, both to find and to eat, but they are worth it.

Even though I was raised here, my own pawpaw origin story goes back only three years. I first heard of pawpaws while living on the West Coast; various MOV friends told me of odd tree fruits with a banana-mango flavor. “There’s even a pawpaw festival,” they said. As a chef, I was intrigued by the existence of this exotic fruit I’d grown up so close to, but never experienced. Though I was living in a major city with a cosmopolitan food scene and restaurants offering every type of cuisine imaginable, I yearned to get my hands on some of those elusive pawpaws.

Eventually I did, and in the most unintentional manner possible: in September of 2012, while on my daily tromp through the stretch of the North Country Trail that passes by Washington State Community College, I noticed a squashed object with a bright yellow-orange interior smack dab in the middle of my path, and I immediately knew it was a pawpaw. After poking around a bit, I saw more like it on the trees, tasted one, and was instantly hooked.

Pawpaws do have a tropical banana-mango flavor, yes, but they are also unlike anything you have ever tasted in your life. Their flesh is creamy and succulent, their aroma heady and intoxicating. Every year following that initial encounter in the woods, I’ve gathered as many pawpaws as possible and experimented with them in the kitchen. Those experiments led to The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook, a recipe zine I recently published. I wanted to share my passion for pawpaws with others, and in that spirit of community, a bunch of local talent collaborated with me—Bobby Rosenstock of justAjar design press did the covers, Leigh Cox drew pen and ink illustrations, and Nikki Butler did the layout.

I’m sharing one of my favorite recipes from The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook. If you hustle, you, too, can gather enough pawpaws to make this old-fashioned pawpaw pudding. Pawpaws are a little challenging to work with in the kitchen, and I address those challenges in my book, plus offer tips for foraging, storing, and prepping, along with 12 original recipes and a list of resources. The Pocket Pawpaw Cookcook (you can order it here) is intended to inspire you, whether it means spending more time in wild spaces, reconnecting with forgotten foodways, or improvising in the kitchen.

Pawpaw Pudding

Serves 6-12

This is an old-fashioned baked pudding, not as creamy as a custard but smooth and rich, with intriguing caramel notes and an undeniable pawpaw kick.

With a food processor, it takes only minutes to blitz that batter together. (Note: minutes blitzing together batter excludes gathering of pawpaws. It’s taken me up to 40 minutes to find and haul home ten pounds. Call it your exercise for the day.)

• 2/3 cup (3.1 ounces ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2/3 to ¾ cup granulated sugar (I prefer a less-sweet pudding)
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 cup pawpaw pulp
• ½ cup buttermilk, preferably not low-fat
• ¼ cup half-and-half
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Heat the oven to 350˚ F and position a rack in the middle. Grease a 9 by 9-inch baking dish, preferably glass or ceramic.

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda to combine.

In a large glass measuring cup or medium bowl, combine the pawpaw, buttermilk, half-and-half, and vanilla bean paste. With the machine running, add the pawpaw-buttermilk mixture through the feed tube. Turn off the machine, scrape down the sides, and add the melted butter with the machine running. Your batter should have the consistency of pancake batter.

Pour the batter into the greased dish. Bake until the center is set but still jiggly (like a pumpkin pie), about 30 to 45 minutes. The sides of the pudding will rise up and brown, while the interior will be flat, shiny, and amber-colored. Let cool to room temperature and serve with crème fraiche or whipped cream. I like this for breakfast with a big dollop of Greek yogurt, but I could say that about most any dessert.

The pudding will keep 2-3 days at room temperature. I suppose you could refrigerate it, but it tastes better at room temperature.

-From The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook by Sara Bir, Copyright 2015 Sara Bir/The Sausagetatian

A Marietta native and a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Sara Bir is the food editor for Paste Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Best Food Writing 2014, Saveur, Lucky Peach, The Oregonian, and other publications. Her website is www.sausagetarian.com.

The post Make Time to Discover Pawpaws appeared first on Clutch MOV.

“I can’t justify meeting up this month,” I’ve thought a few times. “I’ve got way too much work to do.” But then I listen to my gut, make the time, and gladly set off to spend some time with my two fellow solopreneurs. They’ve also become my dear friends.

For the past year, I’ve met up on a monthly basis with graphic designer Nikki Butler and floral designer Caroline Eells Waller  of Passiflora Studio to discuss our careers. As a self-employed food writer, editor, and chef-educator, I’ve found it’s vital to create a network of like-minded professionals in my industry so I can keep abreast of what’s happening in my industry and get nitty-gritty advice about stumbling blocks. Though I’m an active member of a number of online writers’ groups and participate in several monthly Google Video Hangouts with other food writers, I especially value my time with Nikki and Caroline. The energy and positivity of our face-to-face meetings helps push me through those sluggish periods when my motivation is low and my focus is flagging.

And doesn’t that happen to all of us, no matter whether we’re working for large corporations or one-woman shows? Small, casual professional groups don’t just benefit people who work from home; they offer inspiration, useful feedback, and helpful perspectives that you may not find through other channels. And oddly enough, investing the time to make them happen helps keep your work-life balance in check.

Nikki once referred to the concept as “building your own board.” If your regular channels of professional development (perhaps staff meetings, conferences, in-house trainings) just aren’t cutting it the way you’d like, maybe it’s time to build your own board.

Here’s how we do it: once a month, we meet in the afternoon for a few hours for open-ended conversation. Sometimes we’re at a restaurant, sometimes it’s at one of our houses. Beforehand, we share our “homework:–a short list of challenges, goals, and accomplishments. It helps us each organize our thoughts ahead of time, so we can bring a few priority items to the meeting.

How did our meetings start? Nikki approached both me and Caroline; the process was fairly organic. But it can be tough to suss out like-minded people to get your own group going. Here’s some suggestions:

• Start by thinking of people who are already part of a larger group you belong to, such as a service organization, sports team, yoga class, or social circle.
• Online groups like Meetup.com and Craigslist don’t really have the traction that larger cities do, so I’ve not found them to be helpful. But an old-fashioned flyer on a public bulletin board might just do the trick.
• When asking people to participate, don’t make it a big commitment. Say something like, “I have an idea I’d like to try, and I was wondering if you’d be interested, too. Shall we meet once and see how it goes?”
• While it helps to all have similar professional backgrounds, it’s actually quite useful if you’re not all from the same industry. Since the payment models of writing (my industry), graphic design (Nikki’s) and floral design (Caroline’s) are all so different, we can swap opinions and experiences and all come away with new to think of things.
• Naming your group might seem cheesy, but it makes the whole concept feel more fully-formed and legitimate. Ours is called SPARK.
• If you don’t feel the chemistry happening after a few meetings, there’s nothing wrong with calling it quits. This is a loosely structured meetup, not a lifelong commitment.

Here are the questions we each consider prior to our monthly meetings:

• My biggest accomplishment since we last met was…
• Something I didn’t get done that I’d wanted to was…
• The biggest frustration I encountered was…
• A recent development or idea I’m excited about is…
• Something I’d like feedback or advice about is…
• Here’s the most important short-term goal I want to accomplish…
• Here’s how that will help me achieve a long-term goal..

Because of Nikki and Caroline’s feedback and encouragement, I launched my website a year ago. I’ve stepped away from unproductive client relationships and built upon the thriving ones. Even if I were to accept a full-time position with a company some day, I’d still find out meetings relevant. You can’t expect your employer to provide all of the tools you’ll need for your career success. It never hurts to load the deck–so you might as well do it with people you admire and enjoy spending time with. We’ve developed a trust and positive vibe that keeps me energized on the 29-odd days of the month when we’re not hashing out our bright futures.

The post Find Career Inspiration in Friendship appeared first on Clutch MOV.

We went there on a whim. I’d been to Marietta’s Children’s Toy & Doll Museum before, when I was a kid myself. This was in the 1980s on a Girl Scout field trip, and even then I’d found it a bit creepy and bush-league, full of fading playthings arranged without much flow or reason. The centerpiece was “The Talking Dollhouse”, a boxy Victorian-style doll house with a looped recording describing the scene in each room. As a dollhouse-obsessed little girl, even I couldn’t get behind the Talking Dollhouse.

Back then the Toy & Doll museum was in a basement, but it eventually expanded and moved into a restored Queen Anne house in the charming tourist draw of Harmar Village, where it nicely compliments the brick streets, antique stores, and scant car traffic. There’s also Whipple’s Whimsical Toys at the foot of the Harmar Bridge. It’s a really neat shop full of vintage-style toys in two retrofitted train cars, and my daughter Frances likes to go there and manhandle all of the tin wind-up gizmos and wooden pop guns.

But the store was closed, so we needed a plan B to occupy the humid summer Saturday. We had exactly six dollars cash, and that was what it would cost for both of us to visit the nearby Toy & Doll museum. So we did it.

This place really is a labor of love. The toys were all donated by local residents and it’s run by volunteer docents, and therefore only open on weekends from 1-4pm between May and October. According to the brochure, the museum provides “a glimpse into the past of what entertained and educated children in the late 19th and early 20th centuries”.

This tavern scene looks like real life, but it’s actually a dollhouse replica.

There are two rooms full of dollhouses, a room of transportation-themed toys, a few rooms of dolls, and a small library of price guides and history books. Most of the toys on display there are quite antique, but I saw—and photographed—a lot of items I was quite familiar with. The Talking Dollhouse now speaks by a CD in a small boom box, technology that itself almost seems museum-worthy.

A vintage Suzy Homemaker Oven. It could actually bake things!

The room Frances and I enjoyed the most was the playroom, where kids could go crazy playing with actual toys—very helpful for pent-up kid release after looking at all of the items behind glass. There was a 1968 Skipper doll in there, a sturdy wooden dollhouse, a bunch of Matchbox cars, and a Teddy Ruxpin with a cassette tape in its back, but no batteries. Half of the stuff in the playroom could have fetched pretty decent prices on eBay.

We’d just watched Toy Story II the night before, and the idea of playing with toys versus preserving them was very fresh in my mind (the plot of Toy Story II involves Woody getting abducted by an evil nerd toy collector, who plans to sell his very rare and now-complete set of Woody’s Roundup dolls to a museum in Japan for a very tidy sum).

In the Toy & Doll Museum’s display cases, I saw a few toys I remembered from JCPenney toy catalogs when I was young. They looked aged and strange collected together, so different from the days when fresh toys in brightly colored boxes held such allure and promise.

Frances is nearly five years old, and while she loves toys, she’s still little enough to have a grand old time sorting through a bucket of acorns. My mom saved a lot of my old toys, and now Frances plays with them contentedly, though most of them—choke-able Fisher-Price Little People and soft, squeaky Woodsies finder puppets—could easily make sense displayed alongside the artifacts in the Toy & Doll Museum. So many things there provoked a sense of both familiarity and discomfort in me, a product of the early 1980s.

Frances considers some of the creepy dolls in the library.

I’m old enough that a lot of people I talk to don’t have a reference point for that era of pop culture. But I’m glad we went. It’s once of Marietta’s hidden little gems, a window into the past that made me consider the future. Which of Frances’s new toys will she treasure when she’s older? Which ones will seem crazy and pathetic? Objects have lives, just like us. Frances and I left after an hour or so, to resume our own lives, each of us with a slightly altered perspective on the value of old stuff.

The post Pop Culture Nostalgia appeared first on Clutch MOV.

Fresh sweet corn is the ne plus ultra of summer produce. Tomatoes bruise and squish more easily, but it is the deceptively delicate sweet corn that demands special treatment.

My husband and I just returned from a trip to Portland, Oregon, and while gnawing on sorry specimens of truck farm sweet corn at several dinners there, I discovered anew the tragic West Coast void of corn literacy. The folks out there just don’t get it. Probably even Alice Waters doesn’t truly get sweet corn. Here in the Mid-Ohio Valley, where Midwest bleeds into Appalachia, we really get it. Is there a more perfect food? It’s a vegetable and starch in one handy package, with tons of fiber to boot. Those tiny rows of plump kernels, each bursting with pure corn flavor, are so satisfying to crunch into. Some people work across the cob as they munch (“typewriter keys,” my mom calls it); some people nibble in a spiral fashion. I go willy-nilly, perhaps because I get overexcited.

Whether you live with one toe in the Muskingum or the Pacific, here’s a handy crash course in sweet corn literacy.

• DO make an entire meal of sweet corn. Even my meat-loving father understands that sweet corn is the centerpiece of dinner, and anything else is just auxiliary.
• DO aim to buy sweet corn the day you plan to prepare and serve it.
• DON’T buy sweet corn that was not harvested in the very recent past. Corn is a living thing, and every minute it spends separated from the stalk it grew on, its precious sugars convert to starches; tender, juicy corn becomes more akin to cow feed the longer it spends in transit.
• DON’T buy sweet corn from the grocery store. Ever.
• DO buy sweet corn from people you trust: farmers. Podunk farm stands are ideal. Ask when their corn was picked and they’ll tell you right up front. The answer you really want is “oh, a few hours ago.” I get my sweet corn at Witten Farm Market—they have many locations.  My dad used to think Wagner’s out in Lowell was better, though he was disappointed with the first specimens he had from them this year. Dad’s been known to drive half an hour out of the way in search of the freshest sweet corn.
• DON’T remove the husk from the corn until you prepare it. The husk makes a protective shield around the corn, and once you remove it, the conversion of sugars to starches accelerates, resulting in corn that’s not as sweet or plump.
• DO try eating sweet corn naked (the corn, not you.) Good corn needs no butter. No salt, no pepper, no nothin’. I happily eat my corn unadorned. Grab three ears of corn, a pile of green beans, and a stack of ripe tomato slices, and you have the ideal summer meal.
• DO prepare sweet corn as follows, if you have a grill. This method keeps the kitchen from getting too hot and utilizes the corn husk as a nature-made disposable steaming device. It also facilitates some light caramelization on scattered corn kernels, but not enough to overpower the pure character of the corn itself.

Dad’s Grilled Sweet Corn

1. Count on 3 ears per person; you can always cut the kernels off of leftover ears and freeze them for later, during those 10.75 dreary, sweet-corn-less months of the year.
2. Go outside; have a big bucket nearby. Strip the very outer husks off of the corn, but keep most of the inner husks on there. Then pull off as much of the outer tassel of silk as you can. Soak the corn in water for at least half an hour,  preferably up to two hours (that’s what the bucket is for).
3. Light the grill. Aim for medium heat. If you have a big mess of corn, you’ll fill the entire grill, in which case the heat should be somewhat higher. Arrange the corn on the grill and close the lid. Every now and then, pop over to the grill to turn the corn. After half an hour or so, peek in one of the ears (be careful of steam!) If you are my dad, there’s probably something unrelated to corn that you need to argue with my mom about, so do this now.
4. Wear clean work gloves for the next step, if possible: remove the husks and silk from the cooked ears of corn (your compost pile will be so happy!) The corn will be very hot, and the gloves allow maximum protection with maximum mobility. Put the ears of corn in some kind of covered container for serving. Call the family to the table, and make sure you provide salt, pepper, butter, and whatever else for those who choose to pollute their corn as they eat it. Also have an empty plate or platter on the table where people can set the stripped cobs of corn as they finish. It is very important to continue offering your guests ears of corn, just as a good server or bartender notices a drink a few sips away from emptying. Don’t let anyone leave the table until they have consumed at least two ears of corn. Probably there’s a peach or berry pie or cobbler for dessert, but you can always tell yourself that your third ear of corn is dessert.

The Marietta Sweet Corn Festival happens July 18-19 at Muskingum Park in downtown Marietta. Play corn hole, view antique engines, cheer on the kids in the corn eating contest, and buy ears of roasted sweet corn from Witten Farm. For details, visit www.mariettasweetcorn.com.

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Surely you’ve driven past the lush gardens on Hart Street behind Food 4 Less in Marietta.  Have you ever wondered what the storybehind that place is? Are the plots behind the black netting reserved for an elite group of fanatical Master Gardeners?

Nope. They are available to anyone, for free, as long as they are willing to commit their time and attention to making something grow.

That big garden on Hart Street is only one of the six sites that the nonprofit food-rescue organization Washington County Harvest of Hope has established throughout the county. Those community gardens are not just about growing food, however. They create shared spaces in low-income neighborhoods where people of all backgrounds can gather, socialize, and learn. Their bond? A love of growing things.

With two dozen plots, the Hart Street garden is the most visible and active of the community gardens. Other sites include gardens in Belpre and New Matamoras. And making a comeback this year are the Harmar community gardens.  After a battle with invasive Bermuda grass put a damper on things a few years ago, Garden Coordinator Cindy Brown solved that problem when she and a crew of employees from Lowe’s volunteered their time and improvised a series of elevated beds using pallets and inexpensive materials. The waist-level beds protect the growing soil from the Bermuda grass, but more importantly, they create gardens that are easily accessed by older or injured gardeners who can’t kneel, squat, or bend very easily.

Students from the nearby Harmar Elementary School planted seeds in several of the beds. Through grants and donations of both money and materials, Harvest of Hope provides gardeners with not only a plot, but seeds and seedlings.

Currently gardeners are encouraged donate a portion of the produce they raise to Washington County Harvest of Hope. This produce finds its way to the community in several ways. Harvests of Hope’s volunteer truck drivers deliver the majority of the donated produce to food pantries and community meal programs. And in the summer and early fall, weather permitting, there’s a mini-market at the Hart Street garden every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon. Aimed at residents of the garden’s immediate low-income neighborhood but open to everyone, the market offers a selection of the garden’s bounty. Tomatoes, bell peppers, and eggplants are the most common items available. Last year’s damp weather and tomato blight limited the Mini-Market’s offerings, but Brown and the gardeners are optimistic about this year.

Some gardeners prefer to distribute their produce themselves. Gardener Dick Le Barre, who tends one of the Hart Street garden’s most productive plots, takes a significant amount of his produce to directly to shut-in residents at the Jaycee Estates, housing for low-income seniors and disabled people. This creates an uplifting face-to-face interaction that can brighten the day of someone whose poor health makes leaving their apartment difficult, making the visit far more meaningful than a prosaic handoff of vegetables.

You can learn more about the Harvest Hope community gardens by visiting their website or liking their Facebook page. Or, even better, stop by one of the sites and see for yourself! Gardeners are often happy to discuss what’s happening in their plots. Because the power of the community gardens isn’t about the plants, the beauty they create, or the food they produce. It’s about the people who come together there.

The post Harvesting Hope: Washington County’s Community Gardens appeared first on Clutch MOV.

A burger is a burger, unless it’s the House of Wines burger, which is in a class of its own. The patty has a juicy interior, with an outer crust boasting just the right amount of sear. A generous smear of tangy roasted garlic and rosemary aioli totally negates the need for ketchup, and maybe even mustard. I get physical cravings for the thing, and I’m not the only one. It’s developed a regional cult following of savvy burger-lovers who know the real deal when they see it.

My husband and I have lived in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Portland, Oregon—all cities hopping with lively, fancy-pants hamburger joints. The House of Wines burger easily stands shoulder-to-shoulder with offerings from any urban market with a respected burger scene. And at $9, it’s a steal in the city or the country.

I asked Sally Oliver, House of Wine’s owner and general manager, what makes their burger a world-class burger. It’s not specifically the beef; House of Wines does serve locally raised meat on occasion, but not in the burger. They do use a grind that’s 80 percent lean to 20 percent fat, a ratio widely acknowledged by most burger-lovers as a sweet spot.

And there’s no special tricks to how they form the patty. Sally even showed me: it’s a big wad of meat, not too densely packed, not too loosely packed. “Then is it how you cook it?” I pressed Sally.

Gracious as always, she replied, “On the flattop.” So the patty is griddled. Nothing earth-shattering about that. They toast the brioche bun and heat up the savory wine-braised onions on the flattop, too.

Here’s my theory. The House of Wines burger puts a diner in burger nirvana because it offers a balance of all burger components: the bun does not dwarf the patty; the braised onions compliment the beef without overpowering it; the aioli is packed enough with flavor it does not need to be piled on in excess to cut through the burger juices. The burger comes with a moderate scoop of rich and tasty potato salad. Why? Because fries have no business being around this burger.

Also, I think chef Matt Lancaster cooks those burgers with love, and he trains his staff to, as well. It adds the je ne sais pas factor that’s more important than braised onions or aioli.

HOW Burger: Complete

HOW Burger: Bitten

It’s worth noting my husband Joe loathes braised onions, and when we go to House of Wines and he orders the burger—which is every time we go to House of Wines, so enchanted is he—he heaps the braised onions on my plate. This is an ideal situation, in my opinion. Joe keeps meaning to branch out of his burger rut, but he can’t bring himself to. It’s worth it; despite the glory of the House of Wines burger, their other offerings offer pleasures, too (particularly the specials, where Chef Matt can exercise his creativity and enjoyment of seasonal ingredients).

House of Wines, 4339 State Route 60, Marietta, 740.373.0996, www.houseofwines.com

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What happens to the food no one buys at the grocery store? The lopsided apples or the day-old breads? The answer is not a fun one. Most of the time, it goes straight to the trash.

Meanwhile, in 2012, 14% of Washington County Residents faced food insecurity.

Washington County Harvest of Hope strives to connect wholesome food with those who need it the most. This faith-based, non-profit organization began in 2005 with volunteers going out in their own vehicles to collect food from donor businesses like Kroger, Giant Eagle, Broughton’s Foods, and Food 4 Less. We now have our own refrigerated truck and well over fifty volunteers who deliver food to dozens of food pantries, free community meals, and government agencies that serve those in need in the Mid-Ohio Valley.

Wherever someone rises up to address the growing issue of hunger and food insecurity in Washington County, Harvest of Hope tries to be there. And that’s what I love about working with this organization. As Harvest of Hope’s administrative assistant and chef-in-residence, I’ve met people taking grass-roots action to lift up lives: running pantries on shoestring budgets, cooking meals available to anyone who needs a welcoming table, or growing produce and delivering to shut-ins.

This series of articles will shine a light on the important work these volunteers do. We’re starting with Harvest of Hope itself, because it acts as a conduit for far-flung agencies and non-profits, both large and small.

Every year, Americans throw away an estimated 90 billion pounds of food. Meanwhile, those facing hunger and food insecurity is on the rise.

So when Harvest of Hope collects damaged or blemished but otherwise wholesome and nutritious food from local stores and farms, it’s saved from the landfill and delivered to those who need it most.

But we can’t do it without money. Harvest of Hope runs lean and mean. We have no formal office. I’m the only paid employee. Our dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers keep us going, but we need to cover the gas and maintenance for the truck and for the Community Gardens.

Our fundraisers are vital. Our biggest one is coming up: the Harvest of Hope Yard Sale & Bake Sale. It’s a fun time—hello, bake sale?!—and contributing couldn’t be easier.

• Donate gently used clothing, furniture, books, or household goods to sell. Got a lot of stuff? Call us to arrange a pickup!
• Shop at the sale. I’m a big fan of vintage nicknacks (what my mom would call “junk”), so I was in my bliss at last year’s sale, but I also managed to leave with a big stack of useful cookbooks and a new bookshelf.
• Volunteer to staff the Yard Sale or Bake Sale.
• Bake your favorite treats and bring them in! We’re looking for made-from-scratch treats and special desserts you don’t see often in Marietta. You’ll be able to find gluten-free and vegan items as well. We believe it’s better to have one lovingly-made cookie rather than three mass-produced ones. So our Bake Sale is about an abundance of quality, not quantity. If you like the way that sounds, you won’t want to miss it.

Come for the Bake Sale and stay for the Yard Sale. Or vice-versa! Whatever the case, mark Friday, May 9 and Saturday, May 10 on your calendar. Come find us at the Tractor Supply Co. building in the Frontier Shopping Center in Marietta.

To learn more about volunteering or arranging a pickup, just visit our website. And look for us on Facebook, where we’ll be posting updates regularly, with photos of neato Yard Sale finds and exquisite desserts. Despite the fun tone–and this will be fun–hunger is serious business. Together, we can work to end it.

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