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Archive for the ‘Lowcountry S.C./Charleston’ Category

11.14

2008

Water to fire

Oysters Folly

It was a bright morning on Sunday, and the low tide was higher than usual, with plenty of wind and chop in the Folly River. We slid the john boat in at the landing, and cruised along the backside of Folly Beach where sailboats are moored here and there. It was our first time out this fall for oystering, and I’d already invited friends to come by later, so we’d fill two milk crates. The absolute low had just passed, and the tide was already returning.  In that cloudless morning we walked the bank, using our hammers to knock the empty shells, the smaller oysters from the clusters.  Besides the sound of  tapping the white shells, it was a quiet scene. In the wind and sunshine, I’d stop sometimes to watch the water. A marsh hen chattered, and Peter Frank said he could feel water in his boot, another pair sliced by shells. He didn’t care much, pulled out the small bottle of hot sauce he brings on oyster days, and pried open a couple of oysters to eat right there on the pluff mud bank.

backyard oyster roast prep

That night we had a little roast, lit a fire in the pit in the backyard.  Around the picnic table, in the steam rise, eight of us pried open and ate the tenderest mud-salt oysters.  And then we sat talking,  like we do, just watching the flames.

 – November 2008, Sandy Lang

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Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, Oysters

10.31

2008

French experiment underway…

Mistral barsoupe, Mistral

Our fast Paris trip gave Peter Frank and I the idea to do a French eat-around at home.  I’ll write more once we get to all of the Charleston-area places we know… some we haven’t been to in a while. So far, we’ve gone out for the U.S. South-meets-French menu at the Fat Hen on John’s Island (duck confit and butter beans), and from the rarely-talked about Mistral, where we had a good and simple lunch last week of bread, good butter, and soupe de poisson Provencale (hard to believe it’s been open since 1986… a couple of images, above).  Next up, Coco’s, La Fourchette, G&M… where else?

 – October 2008, Sandy Lang

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Food, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston

09.26

2008

Fishing the Inlet

oyster sign, An

We just spent a couple days and nights along the road just inside the creeks of Murrells Inlet, SC where no less than 30 seafood restaurants are set in with houses and a few other businesses like hair salons, boat yards and bait shops.  The air smells like pluff mud and salt, and at night, of hushpuppies frying.  For me, memories are locked into that scenery, that air.  I grew up a few miles up the coast, and on prom night we’d all go out for seafood first in Murrells Inlet, already wearing our tuxedos, gowns and corsages.  In college we’d drive down to the boat landing and sit on car hoods, watching the marsh and moonlight.  (Is that what we were doing?)

It was good to get back, always is.  A curiosity and attraction of the Inlet is the longtime restaurants.  In a world where so much changes, it’s a comfort to see there’s still a Lee’s Inlet Kitchen (in the same family since 1948), and that the best bar is owned by a Vereen, one of the oldest families in Murrells Inlet.  That bar (also a restaurant) is Russell’s, and Russell Vereen is a fellow Socastee High graduate, a guy with a thousand stories.  No, more than that, and always changing.  He likes to buy up old signs from the Inlet, or save them from certain trash… pointed at one on the wall of the barn behind his restaurant that had been cracked into several pieces by a runaway car.  Russell salvaged that “Welcome to Murrells Inlet S.C. Seafood Capital” sign – put the planks back together – and says he often finds people sitting in the rocking chairs below the wall of signs, getting their picture taken.

We met Sean English and Denny Springs over at Harrelson’s Seafood, a fresh fish counter where they also have a kitchen and are trying to be the very best at making a fried grouper sandwich.  With every order they cut a nice-sized hunk of fresh grouper and fry it just right.  And if you order the fish tacos with tuna, the big, meaty chunks of fresh tuna are blackened on the outside and still perfectly pink inside.  Denny’s another Socastee grad and his grandfather’s wife, An Mathis Springs, is one of the most amazing women in Murrells Inlet.  Born in Vietnam, she came to Murrells Inlet in the early 1970s and starting catching and selling minnows for bait, walking on the mud flats with minnow traps on her back.  She later turned to catching blue crabs, and still, at 70 years old, she goes out several times a week to set and pull up her traps, then makes fat crab cakes and delicate crab egg rolls to sell.

We also hung out with Gaston “Buddy” Locklear, an old friend who used to paint designs on Perfection surfboards for Village Surf Shoppe, which is still open, a legend in Garden City.  He now paints on canvas and wood, is one of the most prolific artists I’ve ever seen… sometimes covering his finished paintings in a coat of epoxy, just like with surfboards. He’s part of this very cool co-op gallery in Murrells Inlet called the Ebb & Flow. And that day, he showed us a just-finished painting of the marsh island in Murrells Inlet where Drunken Jack’s restaurant has been letting goats roam since the mid-1980s… to keep the brush down for better inlet views.

Buddy at the Ebb & Flow Inlet Crab House

With so many restaurants in Murrells Inlet (and some of them changing names and owners practically with the seasons), there’s certainly some mediocre food being served.  But if you want a perfectly fried softshell crab (and a nice Bloody Mary too) there’s the tiny pink-roofed restaurant on the north end, the Inlet Crab House & Raw Bar.  I’ve been there in winter too, for the oyster roasts and beer… just right with its wooden tables and booths, worn concrete floor and framed pictures of old fishing trips.

More about Murrells Inlet soon…

 – September 2008, Sandy Lang

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Art, Craft, Food, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, Oysters, People

09.12

2008

Runaway driveway supper

courtney-table

No ladies-only brunch with pink punch this time.  We wanted pork.  The occasion was to celebrate with soon-to-be-parents Courtney and Carter, and a traditional baby shower was not in the cards.  (Speaking of cards, or anything print, Courtney is an excellent graphic designer, founded Gunter Design Co.)

Amy Pastre, another Charleston-based graphic designer and a partner with Courtney in Sideshow Press, hand-lettered and sewed the invitations. We decided to host the dinner at Amy’s house, and had originally thought we’d just round up our own tables.  But by the week of the event, when we’d had positive RSVPs from 20 people(!), we called a rental company for tables and chairs.  And the day of, we decided to set everything up in the driveway instead of in Amy and David’s dining room.

courtney table2courtney plate

This was the scene… a couple of sets of Amy’s plates and our mixed silver and glasses, and the yards of fabric I got years ago to use for curtains but never have (that ended up as our tablecloth).  Amy wrote out name cards on birch bark I’d peeled in Maine.  She roasted a pork loin with pancetta, and I soaked black-eyed peas and made a cold salad with olive oil, scallions and tomatoes. (It would be a sultry weather night.) Amy tossed a green salad with roasted artichokes.  She steamed corn on the cob.  I baked a banana cake (the one with buttermilk and mashed bananas from “Southern Cakes”), and Peter Frank raided the liquor cabinet at the last minute and cooked up a rum hard sauce to pour over the cake. Guests brought beer and wine.

Somehow, thankfully, everything seemed to come together on that late-summer Charleston night. Rain threatened but never fell, the lanterns stayed lit, and we made toasts long past dinner to Courtney, Carter and the baby-to-be.

What a warm welcome, a great start.

– September 2008, Sandy Lang

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Food, Home & garden, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston

07.31

2008

Hot talk of summer

The drought continues this summer in South Carolina, particularly in the upstate counties. For the July issue of Charleston Magazine, I wrote a feature piece about the squeeze on the state’s drinking water sources. Other parts of the country are doing more to use water efficiently, and some of the issues other states started dealing with years ago – including interstate water wars – are now coming to South Carolina. The hope is that some of the accumulated wisdom is coming, too – along with efficiency measures and good old low-tech solutions, like rain barrels.  For example, surfer and biololgist Mike Arendt collects thousands of gallons of rainwater each year from his James Island rooftop. Below is an excerpt from the longer feature, including the part about what Mike’s been doing with his rainwater catch.

Drought feature

Quenching the thirst

Water is a fleeting subject in Charleston. One that comes and goes, and mostly goes… while we carelessly wash our hands and fill our tubs and pools, water our zinnias. That is, unless there’s a recurring drought. (Like now.) Or there’s a slowing of the economy and people are watching all expenses more closely, even water bills. (Like now.) Or an interstate “water war” is launched. (Yes, that’s happening now, too.)

“The question of water and its availability and use is really with us now, front and center,” says Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s attorney general. He’s the same man whose office has cracked down on Internet predators, on animal fighting. And lately, the state’s chief criminal prosecutor has gone to bat as an advocate for the state’s fresh water sources, for its rivers. Last year, when his office got word of North Carolina’s plans to allow tens of millions of gallons to be withdrawn each day from the Catawba River before it flows across the state line into South Carolina, McMaster petitioned for the issue to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, and that process is now underway. “It was a disaster in the making,” McMaster says. “We don’t yet have the water problems like they have out West, and we don’t want them.” …

–
Catching the rain.

A fisheries biologist and surfer in his early 30s, Mike Arendt had noticed rain barrels and cisterns in even the most remote surf spots in places like Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. He wondered what was possible here, did some research, and hired Ben Hilke and Hilke Development to help design and install a rainwater catch system at his 1990s-built house on James Island.

That was last year. And ever since, it’s been pretty cool to be at Mike’s house after a rain. That’s when he walks around and checks on the amount of rainwater in the twelve 55-gallon drums that he had installed in the elevated crawl space under his house. The rain that hits the roof of his 1,700-square-foot, marsh front home – he says he can catch 1,000 gallons in an inch of rainfall – washes into gutters that lead to filtered drains, where a simple pipe system carries it to the storage drums, or to the 360-gallon cistern hidden under the steps of his back porch. Then, when Mike wants to water his tomato plants, add water to his swimming pool, or do any other landscape watering, he simply flips the switch on a small pump and turns on any of four outdoor spigots.

His savings? Arendt’s paid water use has dropped 50% since 2006. To be fair, there are other factors to consider – an occasional roommate has left, and he’s started to be more conscientious about his indoor water use in the same timeframe. Still, he credits much of the savings to catching and reusing raindrops, instead of turning on the municipal tap to water his plants.

– July 2008, Sandy Lang

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Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, Wild animals and places

06.06

2008

Hilton Head makes Home&Abroad

H&A woman

No, this is not an illustration of me with my notebook… it’s a graphic from Home&Abroad, an online travel planner. I worked on a research and writing project for the company this spring that has just been published on their site. In the travel pages about Hilton Head Island, SC, I wrote about the Native American and Civil War history of the region, of Gullah culture and art, and of dolphins and other wildlife to be seen in the saltwater creeks.

Thank you to Michael and Clarissa at H&A for the assignment.

H&A logo

– Sandy Lang, June 2008


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In print/published, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, Travel

05.21

2008

Bees’ life

Robert Biggerstaff, 72, looks in complete ease in his wide-billed cap as he leans against his garage wall and points out a cedar bee box a few yards away. A few honeybees buzz in and out, stopping at a plastic jar attached to the box. “See how that looks like a chicken feeder?… we fill that with Dixie Crystals and water to feed the bees while the hive gets going.”

We’ve been talking for awhile this morning at the center of his sideyard beekeeping and honey making operation, under the oak trees that edge a tidal creek off the Stono River on Johns Island, SC. I ask Mr. Biggerstaff if he has an apprentice, someone that he’s teaching these tricks of the trade. “No. I’m afraid beekeeping has become an old man’s game,” he says, particularly in recent decades as smaller farms have disappeared, and as mites, beetles and other pests have disrupted hives in the U.S., making beekeeping ever more challenging. In the 1960s, Mr. Biggerstaff recalls losing maybe 5% of his hives in a year, but these days a 50% annual loss is more common. He’s constantly having to manage for that reality – to bring in new queens, establish new hives. Then he tells me that while his home-based bee operation isn’t officially open for tours, as a former teacher he does enjoy making school presentations from time to time. “Children, when they see bees and learn about them, they get very excited,” he says.

And although he doesn’t put it in words, you get the feeling that he’s hoping that some young people will find the passion for beekeeping like he did, in spite of the challenges. “For years coaching was my life. Now it’s bees.”

R. Biggerstaff

I’m working on a story about Mr. Biggerstaff and his 40-year honey “hobby.” The former high school football coach tends 100-150 hives in 15 or so locations on the Sea Islands south of Charleston, and he and his wife, Jane, sell jars and squeeze bottles of the honey through produce vendors in Charleston and Mount Pleasant, and on Johns and Edisto islands.

– Sandy Lang, May 2008

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Home & garden, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, People, Wild animals and places

03.01

2008

Bowens night: same as it ever was

Bowens1Bowens2

Okay, this shellfish report is closer to home. We went out to Bowens Island last week, for some oysters just down the causeway. Even though fire burned the main building last year, Bowens Island looks about the same… graffitti, steaming pots, white plastic chairs, and plywood tables with holes in the center for dropping shells. It would be a trick for flames to take away that kind of cinderblock-built magic. Owner Robert Barber says he’ll rebuild with green practices, possibly with LEED certification. “I wouldn’t have put in air conditioning anyway. We almost always have a great breeze.”

We ordered trays of steamed oysters, the ones that Robert’s crew get from oyster beds nearby… some within view. These are clusters of mostly small oysters, known for a good mud/earth taste, along with the brine. I prefer them. Towels and oyster knives are provided. Robert suggested a plate of fried shrimp, so we got one of those too. And we drank a couple beers, even though the four people next to us said they’d wait to go back to Folly Beach for beer, where the cans are kept colder.

Bowens3R.Barber

– Sandy Lang, March 2008.  Images by Peter Frank Edwards.

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Food, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, Oysters

01.20

2008

One man, many hammocks… and stories

 

hammock2

This is an excerpt of a piece I just published about Marvin Grant, who I first met several years ago at the Pawleys Island Hammock Shops. He’s one of two hammock makers there for daily demonstrations. And while he guides the rope in a knitting-like technique, he gets to talking.

Raised in New York City, Marvin Grant says he first became interested in working with twine and rope when he served in the military in Charleston, South Carolina. There on the coast, the lanky soldier met a man who taught him the intricate craft of making and repairing cast nets. And later, a cousin from Plantersville (near Georgetown, S.C.) showed him what she knew about hammock-making. She’d been knitting the knot-free Pawleys Island hammocks for decades. “Making hammocks is definitely much easier than tying up a cast nest,” Marvin says. “There’s about 2,400 feet of twine in a cast net… it takes a long, long time. With hammocks, you’re working with just 800-1,400 feet.”

To watch and hear Marvin’s stories while he works, visitors become captivated. He describes what he’s doing, and when someone asks, he’ll tell stories about the hammock he made for his own yard in Georgetown, the one with nine colors of rope. The artisan’s favorite guests in the Weaver’s Shed are children. Whenever Marvin has scrap rope – shorter pieces that would usually be thrown away – he keeps them. And when he meets a child who looks interested, he’ll take a few feet of rope and show him or her how to make a hammock end-piece. “I take my time and show them exactly what to do,” he says. “Most tell me straight up that they won’t be able to do it… then about five minutes later, they’ve made it. And they can’t believe that they did.”

He says he always suggests to children that they use the crocheted rope as a souvenir of their trip to Pawleys Island by decorating it with seashells, beads or sharks teeth… or by attaching bells to create a wind chime. “I want them to have something you can’t buy in any store.”

– Sandy Lang, Jan. 2008

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Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, People

01.03

2008

Ringing in McClellanville

T.W. Graham’s

We spent the post-Christmas week in a 120-year-old house on Jeremy Creek in McClellanville, S.C. watching shrimp boats go by, the guys crabbing and oystering. T.W. Graham’s, the old general store there that’s been a restaurant for years now, is where Pete steams and fries up oysters collected from his oyster beds in Bulls Bay. “Very light breading,” he tells me, is the secret of his frying. You can still taste the salty-sweetness of the oysters.

On New Years Eve, a neighbor in the village invited us to an oyster roast – so, of course, we packed our knives, gloves and beer, showed up early and ate well. Then it was to T.W. Graham’s for the “customer appreciation” party with tables of food, an honor bar, and music by Joey Carter (guitarist with 69 songs in one book and at least a hundred more in another three-ring binder he keeps on bar stools near the mic… lots of James Taylor), and by Captain Froggy (a country-blues guitar player/singer and 30-year shrimper who also does home repair, wallpapering). Others in the audience took the microphone for a song or two, including a young blonde woman who belted out a powerful “Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz.” Then just before midnight, the 30 or so of us left walked or pedaled down to the cypress chapel and took turns pulling the rope to ring the bell in the yard. Nice weight to that church bell, gave a hearty clang under the old oak trees. Here’s to a Happy 2008.

– Sandy Lang, January 2008

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Lowcountry S.C./Charleston

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