AROLE MARSH

Just after I moved to Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina in 2012, a nearby Beaufort market created a special program where you could go online and order fresh, organic meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits, butter, milk, honey, nuts, and so much more, which they sourced from farms and orchards within 100 miles.  As you may know, the sandy Lowcountry soil is great for growing, and a sort of outdoor “open house” of SILO’s samples convinced me that this would be a fun and fresh approach to cooking to go with my sunny new kitchen!  Naturally, a cookbook would follow!

                        

So, this cookbook is truly running commentary of my experience over a summer, rambles on the Lowcountry life, recipes of all kinds, and more.  For some reason I felt like I had returned to some roots that I didn’t even recall I had:  My grandmother Spence who kept chickens in her back yard and let me help gather eggs…my grandmother Mama Byrd who got many of her soul-cooking foodstuffs from farms on the north side of Atlanta…my mother-in-law, Emma, who came to America when she was four, and who could cook Hungarian and Iowan and all in-between–and it all be scrumptious.

 

I loved getting in my “silo” mode with an actual apron and always choosing the wooden spoon to stir with!  I’d cook in mid-morning when the eastern light would spew through the Spanish moss into my kitchen windows and etch a sort of lace across my countertops.  Some happy harpsichord music…a cup of hot apple cider…and it was a happy kind of culinary therapy.