Blue Ridge Mountains - view from the deck
Every time I travel into the country, I get excited about how quaint and simple life is when you don’t have things like a cell phone, Internet or extended cable television. There’s something comforting about leaving your real life behind and then, a few days later, coming back smelling like pine and campfire.
Now, I’ve been known to “rough it” – camping in places with no bathrooms or running water or even outhouses. Just you and nature. But if I get a chance to be in nature and not rough it, I will jump at the opportunity. So came about a recent weekend getaway from the rat race of life.
Not roughing it, for me, involves lots of wine and delicious foods. Like locally made sweet-potato butter!
Spooned on cranberry-walnut toast, it is absolutely delicious. Tastes just like sweet-potato pie. This came from the Reynolda Farm Market in W-S. In the photo below, the sweet-potato butter is served on toast, along with spicy sage sausage (also from that little market), organic scrambled eggs from someone’s local farm and fresh berries with cream.
Square meal!
See? Just because you are getting away doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your gourmet snobbery. Each meal we enjoyed was quite gourmet, even when eating pimento cheese dip (that’s a whole post on its own – The South never fails to surprise me with its uses of bacon fat and cheese) or riding a four-wheeler to a picnic spot and then opening a nice bottle of red wine.
One new thing I tried was homemade butter. Why haven’t I been making my own butter for years? It has one ingredient! Cream!!
Finally, I prepared a delicious meal of pecan-crusted halibut with dijon cream sauce; served with couscous and sides of grilled pineapple and an arugula & heirloom tomato salad.
Friends, this kind of cabin living … a girl can get used to. xoxo
Country roads take me home to the place I belong …. take me home, country roads.
Seasoned to Taste 
‘The radio reminds me of my home, far away. Driving down the road, I get a feeling that I should have been home yesterday.’
Ahh, this brings back memories of working summers at a camp in Asheville, singing this song around the campfire. But I digress, I will be returning soon enough. In the meantime, I will live vicariously through your pecan-crusted halibut and spicy sage sausage. Have you been studying recipes for our impending camping trip? If you can pull off even one of these from a tent, I can almost promise you I will not be returning to the big city.
I wonder if my home has appreciated enough to sell and buy a cabin in the woods? I could wake up every day smelling like pine and campfire from the comfort of my couch.
p.s. – Pacific Northwest mountains? Or Blue Ridge mountains?
PNW vs BRM: which one has fewer chiggers?