Category: Rural life

• Watsontown, PA

  “How’d you find Watsontown?” asked one of my 111 high school classmates after Stoic and I ended up there as we drove home from Niagara Falls last month. She, incidentally, is among the handful of us who didn’t stay there after graduation. Well, as a vaudeville comic might say, with great difficulty. I think because […]

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  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  September 15, 2018

  Aging, Comfort food, Compulsive eating, Depression, Depression and anxiety-related food issues, Emotional side of weight loss, Food addiction, Rural life, Taking care of ourselves, Warrior Run High School Class of ’62, Why overweight?

  Academy Street by Mary Costello, High school reunion, obesity, self-image, why overeat

• Fresh, fabulous figs

  We waited longer for figs than for a baby. The latter took just under 3 years; the former, more than 25. And this year, booyah!, we have figs. Figs to eat out of hand, figs to freeze for making preserves and figs to cook. Assuming figs grew in Eden (fig leaves, remember?), why would anyone leave, […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  August 23, 2017

  Cooking from the garden, Fresh herbs, Fruit, Pork chops, Rural life, Seasonal food, Southern food

  cooking from garden, Figs, gardening, healthy eating, onions, Thyme

• Strawberry pie; pork and cabbage salad

  At the tire store yesterday to get a pickup tire patched, I bought this spring’s first local strawberries. (Hey, in our neck of the woods, it can pay to listen to the old men chatting amongst themselves!) They were perfectly ripe and sweet, he obviously picked them before the drenching rains hit, and I had […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  May 16, 2014

  Desserts, Fruit, Pie, Rural life, Salad, Simple foods

  Baking, Cabbage, healthy eating, Pork leftovers, Strawberries

• New year, new me, blah, blah, Brussels sprouts

  Time to get re-revved. I’ve rejoined the YMCA after 6 years away. I can walk on the treadmill, do weight circuits, take water aerobics, spin and zumba classes, swim laps. If only it weren’t so much easier to lie in the recliner, read novels (ooh, like Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior) and eat leftover Christmas candy! Christmas around here really […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  January 21, 2013

  Brussels sprouts, healthy cooking, Holiday eating, Olive oil, Roasting vegetables, Rural life, vegetables

  Back on diet track with veggies, Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior, New Town Bistro, New Year’s

• Best crockpot potatoes ever

  Plug, plug, plug. This is what I do every day. Work at turning eating in a healthy way into a way of life. A lifestyle even. Keep track of my calories. Measure food with scales, cups and spoons. Exercise. Exercise more. Drink quarts and quarts of water. Sleep. On the plus side my flowers look […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  May 31, 2012

  good food, Rural life, Simple foods, Weight loss

  Bacon, cheese, Exercise, Potatoes, Slow cooking

• Baby onions, grown-up onions

  Baby onions have stems no bigger than the stick on a Q-tip. The easiest way to slip them to their 1-inch recommended depth is to use a dibble planter with inches marked on it (like the one made for me by my friend Jerry Keys out of poplar wood). Poke a hole to 1 inch, […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  May 2, 2012

  good food, healthy cooking, Local food, Rural life, Simple foods

  cheese, Galettes, onions, Tarts

• Spring is not for sissies, strawberry crisp

  Somehow we associate baby pastels with springtime, yet when I look outside, I see primary colors: The sky, of course, is Carolina (ick, go NC State!) blue and the baby maple leaves, red before they’re green. The intense yellow of the wild mustard and forage turnips, blanketing Iredell pastures as well as the meadowlark breasts turned to […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  March 21, 2012

  Desserts, Fruit, Rural life, Seasonal food, Simple foods, Spring

  Berries, Colors of spring, Crisp, Strawberries

• Fiona, split pea soup

  “…I think if you have the expectation that you’re going to be happy throughout your life — more to the point, if you have a need to be comfortable all the time — well, among other things, you have the makings of a classic drug addict or alcoholic.” From Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher (Simon […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  November 15, 2011

  good food, healthy cooking, Rural life, Seasonal food, Soup, vegetables, Weight loss

  chard, Dill, Spinach, Split pea soup, why overeat

• Tryout, blowout

  Some people drink when they’re nervous or pump themselves up with drugs. Some people just face their fears (imagine!). I ate malted milk Whoppers until I felt sick. Then I got up this morning and went outside and tried the new mare. She’s a 13-year-old quarterhorse, 16 hands tall and built like a supermodel, which means she’s […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  November 7, 2011

  Exercise, Food courage, Owning horses, Rural life, Why overweight?

  healthy eating, Horseback riding, New Horse, over-eating, Sugar load

• Little House in the Piedmont, fried Oreos and Bambi

  Kind of a Laura Ingalls Wilder weekend with some food adventures thrown in. Paul Bunyan kept working on the huge, old beech that fell near a friend’s deer stand. We cannot afford to heat by propane alone. He also pulled buckets of peppers before Friday night’s scattered frost. While I picked basil to make one […]

  JoAnn Rhodes Grose

  October 24, 2011

  Exercise, good food, healthy cooking, Meat, Rural life, Seasonal food

  basil, Firewood, Fruit cake, Pepper relish, Venison, Walking