By Tonia Moxley
The Roanoke (Va.) Times
June 15, 2008
BLACKSBURG — Goldenseal. Jewelweed. Motherwort. Dandelion.
The names of healing plants call across continents and through the millenniums, up and down the spine of the Appalachian mountains, echoing even today along the paths of a terraced hillside off Jennelle Road in Blacksburg where herbalist Lauren Cooper helps keep the [...]

This just in from the The (Va.) Daily Press in Tidewater:
In the beginning, there was ham.
The very first English settlers in Virginia — the original Jamestown colonists — brought pigs with them when they crossed the Atlantic. The first wave in 1607 brought three, historians tell us.
In short order, that trio of oinkers increased to [...]

Syrup or gravy?
That question confounded retired Roanoke Times photographer Gene Dalton recently when he stopped at the Cavalier Inn in Hillsville and ordered buckwheat pancakes (See biscuitpower’s buckwheat cakes recipe) for breakfast.
As he has all his life, the Southwest Virginia native ordered syrup for his pancakes. But as he paid the clerk on his way [...]

“Sugar and shape are the only difference between biscuits and scones,” posits famed New York Times food writer Molly O’Neill.
In her 1998 piece “Jam Session,” she explores the connection between the American south’s long marriage to light, airy biscuits and Scotland’s fondness for the sweet tea cakes called scones.
Both are leavened with baking powder [...]

After months of researching home sausage grinders and good sausage recipes — not to mention watching the “To Stuff a Sausage” episode of Julia Child’s The French Chef — I had the luck to be invited to a home sausage making party hosted by Brett and Johanna Nichols of Five Penny Farm, an organic vegetable [...]