Bringing Home the Bacon

Exploring my new home base of Hampton Roads I make a wonderful discovery! A small Suffolk establishment, widely known to locals, called Bennett’s Creek Farm Market. As native as peanuts, pigs, and pines, this grocery store is an authentic, down home kind of place.

As part of my Tidewater cultural immersion I have been seeking out the local cuisine. Bennett’s serves it all up in a South of the James smorgasbord; with great items such as Hula Girl BBQ Sauce from Virginia Beach and Reggie’s Banana Pudding Sauce “It’s all about the Pudding!” distributed from Chesapeake.

On my first shopping foray I purchase fresh local pork chops, sausage, and bacon. Later that evening I pan grill the pork chops and serve them with bourbon sauce. Bliss! The next morning we go hog wild, so to speak, and cook up a slab of bacon, spicy sausage, brown farm eggs, and thick slices of whole wheat toast with comb filled honey (from Bennett’s as well). The bacon boldly steals the show.

I romantically envision the bacon being locally cured in a small cone roofed wooden smokehouse, although it is probably processed in a cinderblock building on a concrete pad. Chewy, salty, and delicious, it is as far removed from standard bacon as today’s catch of fresh fish is from a can of tuna. I am ruined or ‘ruint’. I immediately start planning a brunch, envisioning a table laden with this astonishing bacon, spicy sausage, cheese grits, ham biscuits, creamy eggs; you get the idea.

I imagine the menu description if this feast was served up at Emeril’s in New Orleans. “Thick rustic hand cut slabs of hickory smoked Suffolk, Virginia bacon, served with two, large free range chicken eggs, and sweet potato biscuits with wildflower honey.” Eat your heart out Paula Dean, there’s a new girl in town.


All of the recent cold weather gave me a great excuse to stay home and cook. The Library has hundreds of great cookbooks to page through and fantasize over. Some good titles for local recipes are the Best of the Best from Virginia Cookbook: Selected Recipes from Virginia’s Favorite Cookbooks I & II and Cooking the Southern African Way: Culturally Authentic Foods Including Low-fat and Vegetarian Ways. I have also ordered myself a copy of the popular Toast of Tidewater by the Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach for additional inspiration.

Recently, I happened across a charming book entitled Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The romantic, impractical, often eccentric, ultimately brilliant making of a food revolution by Thomas McNamee. This is the fascinating story of how the fresh, seasonal, local food movement in America was initiated in the late sixties by Alice Waters, a young, free spirit from Berkeley, California. Her restaurant, Chez Panisse, continues to be rated as one of the very best in the country.

A new book about food in America, Food Rules by Michael Pollan, has been receiving a great deal of attention in the media. Pollan urges us to eat healthy, wholesome food by using simple homilies to eloquently illustrate his points. “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it came out of a plant, don’t.” His earlier book, In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto, is distilled into a simple but powerful directive: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This triplet became a mantra in my household last year (our recent foray into fresh bacon not withstanding).

There are some great local crops for the health conscious eater. I am a recent convert of fresh collards and turnip greens, old fashioned boiled and Asian sautéed; you can’t go wrong either way. My husband has proudly mastered roasting fresh peanuts to perfection in the oven, and a just cracked oyster, served with a dollop of freshly ground horseradish sauce, is my personal idea of perfection.

So let us raise a glass together to our wonderful local cuisine. Here’s looking at you Smithfield. Maybe I’ll even try the souse next time at Bennett’s.


Southern-Style Collard Greens
2 hickory-smoked bacon slices, finely chopped
2 medium-size sweet onions, finely chopped
¼ lb. smoked ham, chopped
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 (32-oz) containers chicken broth
3 (1-lb) packages fresh collard greens, washed and trimmed
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper

Cook bacon in a 10-qt. stockpot over medium heat 10 to 12 minutes or until almost crisp. Add onion, sauté 8 minutes, add ham and garlic, and sauté 1 minute. Stir in broth and remaining ingredients. Cook 2 hours or to desired degree of tenderness.
(Southern Living November 2009)

Betsy Fowler