Tennessee Treasures by Ruth Paget

Tennessee Treasures by Ruth Paget 

Tennessee is world famous for its music (mountain music from East Tennessee, Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, and Memphis for Beale Street Blues), its barbecue, and its Tennessee whisky, but after reading Tennessee Hometown Cookbook by Sheila Simmons and Kent Whitaker, you can see that Tennessee’s rich cuisine deserves better recognition as well. 

The following appetizers and sides make resourceful use of Tennessee’s produce: 

-cowpea caviar – made with green, yellow, and red peppers; onions; tomatoes; and parsley 

-ham and cheese ball made with mushrooms and green onions 

-lime and cilantro creamy coleslaw 

-fried green tomatoes with onions and honey Dijon sauce 

A calorie-rich lunch for snowed-in mountain days follows: 

-sweet beer bread 

-smoked sausage lentil soup 

Tennessee whisky is the star of the following dishes: 

-George Dinkel Tennessee whisky pork chops 

-Jack Black barbecued ribs 

-Jack Daniels country-style beef ribs 

-Jack Daniels salmon 

Wine lovers might like the following cake: 

-muscadine wine coffee cake 

Tennessee Hometown Cookbook by Sheila Simmons and Kent Whitaker wraps up with a monthly listing of music and food festivals, which have oral storytellers, beauty pageants, carnivals, food contests, and children’s games. The cookbook packs a lot of information into 256 pages, making it a good purchase for a home cookbook collection. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Chattanooga, Tennessee Battlefield Trip by Ruth Paget

Chattanooga, Tennessee National Battlefield Trip by Ruth Paget 

One of the most interesting trips I have taken from Atlanta, Georgia is north to Chattanooga, Tennessee (1 ½ hours north barring traffic jams). My husband Laurent and I set out early for Chickamauga, Georgia and Chattanooga, Georgia battlefields one sweltering hot summer. 

The Confederacy won the battle at Chickamauga first, but put the Union in position on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee to win the battle that set up the Atlanta Campaign to gain the railroad artery of the South. At the Battlefield Parkway exit in Georgia, we exited and drove through the Chickamauga Battlefield. The Chickamauga National Battlefield Park is about ¼ mile along Battlefield Parkway to the left, but we kept on driving to Fort Oglethorpe named after the founder of the Georgia colony. 

At Fort Oglethorpe, we turned right towards the north and drove about 9 miles into Chattanooga. When the Confederates won Chickamauga in September of 1863, they thought they had routed the Union. However, in November 1863, the Union began battle again and prevailed. 

The visitor center in Chattanooga notes that there are three different battle sites by Lookout Mountain above and around Chattanooga: 

-Battle of Orchard Knob 

-Battle of Lookout Mountain 

-Battle of Missionary Ridge 

The Lookout Mountain Battlefield sits above the Tennessee River, which meanders around the South. It is 652 miles long. The River starts at Knoxville, Tennessee and flows south and west through northern Alabama and parts of northern Mississippi. The Tennessee River empties at Paducah, Kentucky into the Ohio River just a few miles upstream from the Mississippi River. Obviously, in addition to the railroad, the Tennessee River could also move men, weapons, and supplies to both Confederate and Union forces. 

The visitor center exhibit at Chattanooga, Tennessee notes that both sides tried to starve each other during these battles, but the Union was in a worse situation in their mountain location. 

According to www.battlefields.org , the Union had the following to eat: 

-4 cakes of hard bread 

-a quarter pound of pork 

Those were the rations for 3 days 

Even with those rations, the Union won the Battle of Chattanooga and took control of the city, railroad, and the Tennessee River at Chattanooga and began their advance from mountainous Tennessee to hilly Atlanta, Georgia. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia Trip by Ruth Paget

Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia Trip by Ruth Paget 

In 1979, my Pennington grandma began to nag my mother that I had been to communist China and fancy French and British Montreal, Canada during my freshman year of high school without visiting her in Pennington Gap, Virginia. 

“I know Ruth would like to visit aristocratic England, but tell her Pennington Gap is like Scotland where the royals are educated,” she might have said to my mother. 

In any case, my mother drove from Detroit, Michigan down to Pennington Gap, Virginia and then out to Robbins Chapel (another surname from my family tree) where the Pennington cousins were staying for the summer. 

Robbins Chapel, Virginia is about one mile away from Kentucky and three miles away from Tennessee. Pennington Gap leads to all points west. 

Pennington Gap was different from Kentucky and Tennessee according to my grandmother: 

“We’re midway up the Appalachians. We’re ridge runners not hillbillies like those people in Tennessee and Kentucky. Hillbillies got rich making moonshine and running it up to New York during the Prohibition. They still hide their ill-gotten gains.” 

“The Penningtons are church. Your Pennington ancestor, Isaac Penington, was the father-in-law of William Penn. Our family started as Quakers, but we’re Baptist now.” 

My petite grandma could be daunting, so I did not ask if the Penningtons got rich being overseers in coal mines in Virginia. 

After the welcome lecture, my cousins and I were allowed to play games and amuse ourselves. 

In the mornings, we would walk down to the general store, which had a pool table in the back room. We played all morning and drank Dr. Pepper soda while being Vegas. We would walk up the hill to our various relatives’ houses for lunch. Then, we would play several rounds of croquet on the hillside for physical exercise. In the late afternoon, we would play rummy with the aunts while waiting for the male relatives to get back from golf.  At night, we would play kick-the-can, a version of hide and seek where you kick a can up and hide in a fixed spot when the can hits the ground.

Besides games, my Aunt J. taught me how to can blackberries to make the blackberry gravy (jam) that I loved to eat for breakfast on biscuits. That alone was worth the trip to Pennington Gap. She also took me to the family graveyard to help me do genealogical work. She had also done this and was helping me fill in the gaps on the family tree I had been working on. 

Sometimes we would go to Kingsport, Tennessee to visit the stockbroker. I loved watching the ticker tape spit out of the ticker tape machine. 

Other times we would go to Kentucky for lunch. Kentucky looked like Pennington Gap, but had more Pentecostal Churches. “The Pentecostals handle rattlesnakes without fear, because they are holy,” Aunt J. told me. 

I thought Appalachia was more dangerous than Detroit and was glad to be with my family. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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