Tag: 2023

In Good Taste

A Bowlful of Comfort

Chilly weather calls for chili cooking!

Story and Photograph by Jasmine Comer

There’s more than one way to skin a potato, even a sweet potato — and there are just as many different ways to make chili. No matter the region, I think we can all agree that it’s the perfect cozy meal for those chilly wintry months. Some insist that chili requires specific ingredients like beans, or ground beef, or chicken, but I beg to differ. For me, the only requirement is the right combination of warm spices to exhilarate your palate — and a recipe tested by time (and your family).

My sweet potato chili has some of your typical seasonings such as chili powder and cumin. But the addition of the fiery cayenne pepper and savory cinnamon along with silky sweet potatoes will make your tastebuds dance the salsa . . . and maybe even sing along. For me a pot of sweet-potato chili on the stove brings me right back to my childhood seat at the family table. I can see my mother stirring the pot at the stove while the rest of us sit around the table listening to my granddad’s jokes followed by his contagious laughter. On these cold evenings, the house is filled with the fragrant scent of exotic spices and boisterous laughter, though I wasn’t always sure of just what was so funny. But it doesn’t even matter. I just enjoyed seeing everyone having a good time while anticipating a sweet-and-sour-and-spicy bowl of momma’s chili, which I have only slightly modified.

And the best news about this recipe? You probably have most of the spices in your pantry already. Have a little fun with it — doctor the flavors to your liking or try different combinations. I, for instance, add tamari or soy sauce to my chili instead of salt. It adds depth of flavor and umami to the dish. Not a fan of red meat? Use ground turkey instead of beef. Or omit the meat altogether and add your favorite beans or some Impossible Burger. Go ahead and play with your food. Whatever you do, just don’t forget to cook with love. That’s exactly what my family does and, inevitably, it means no leftovers. A sign of a delicious meal? When everyone wants a bowl to go.

Sweet Potato Chili

Ingredients

1 pound ground beef

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon each: smoked paprika, black pepper, oregano

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons chili powder

Pinch of cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

15-ounce can fire-roasted tomatoes

15-ounce can corn, drained

1 1/2 cups beef broth

Directions

In a Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot, brown the ground beef over medium heat, using a wooden spoon to break into crumbles. Once the ground beef is browned, remove it from the skillet and set it aside. If using a fatty meat, drain all but 1 tablespoon of oil from the pot.
Add the onion and peppers. Cook until softened, stirring frequently. Add the chopped garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute or so.
Add the remaining spices and stir to combine. Cook for two more minutes, reducing a the heat a little so the spices don’t burn.
Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 2–3 more minutes, or until slightly caramelized.
Stir in the sweet potatoes, fire-roasted tomatoes, corn, beef broth and the cooked ground beef.
Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 25–30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Suggested toppings: sour cream, lime juice, corn chips and cilantro OH

Jasmine Comer is the creator of Lively Meals, a food blog where she shares delicious, everyday recipes. You can find her on Instagram @livelymeals.

Creators of N.C.

Books and Beans

Etaf Rum forges her own path in Rocky Mount

By Wiley Cash

Photographs By Mallory Cash

Rocky Mount-based writer Etaf Rum’s new novel, Evil Eye, is the story of a Palestinian American woman named Yara Murad who’s struggling to reconcile her identities of wife, mother, artist, professor, native Brooklynite and transplanted Southerner. From the outside, it looks like Yara has it all: a husband who supports her work at a local university; two sweet young daughters; a career teaching the art she loves. But as the novel opens, the reader watches Yara careen through her days in a silent, stifling panic, something unspoken and unfulfilled bubbling beneath the surface of her life.

Yara’s angst finds an outlet when she responds to a colleague’s shocking display of bigotry, but she isn’t prepared for the repercussions that follow. Her mother explains that Yara’s struggles are the result of an old family curse and she dismisses Yara’s frustration by saying that she should be happy that her husband has given Yara more freedoms than Yara’s father gave her.

Many writers would lean into the trope of the age-old curse to carry their plots, but Rum never relies on gimmicks or stereotypes, not in her characters, and not in her narrative. Instead, this character-driven novel investigates the ways in which we curse ourselves by settling for jobs and relationships that don’t fulfill us. Evil Eye is a book about the monotony of unfulfilled days (and nights), yet Rum has crafted this finely drawn portrait of domestic life into a page-turner.

“Actually, I felt like my first novel was a real page-turner, but one that I intentionally crafted to be so,” she says. “With Evil Eye, I did not want to write another page-turner. But as a writer you want to keep the story interesting, and you want the readers turning the pages. And I think for me, I had to challenge myself to write a character portrait.”

She is sitting at the counter at Books and Beans, a coffee shop and bookstore she owns with her husband, Brandon, in Rocky Mount. Light streams through the windows, making the white walls appear even brighter, and the terra cotta tile floors richer and more resonant.

“I was really interested in exploring the internal life of this character in an authentic way, and I hoped and I prayed that doing so would lend a readability that is relatable, authentic and helps you get into the story. My intention was that it would be her personality and her character and all the things that we don’t know about her past that would motivate the reader to keep going.”

This reader kept going. I finished the novel in a couple of days.

But reading Evil Eye wasn’t always a comfortable experience. While we are firmly grounded in Yara’s point of view, and privy to her difficult childhood, we also have front row seats to the many anxieties she confronts in her everyday life. These anxieties are manifested in the workplace (in this case, higher education), on social media, in her role as a mother and wife, and in her struggles to pursue her passion as an artist.

“I wanted to write about these issues in the perspective of a character we haven’t seen before, a Palestinian American woman who you don’t really think about, but someone who has these universal anxieties that are so common for everyone, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity,” Rum says.

It was her hope that in seeing themselves in Yara’s story readers might see someone like Yara for the first time.

“Most readers can’t possibly connect with having an arranged marriage, but maybe they can connect with being a young mother or feeling like their dreams are unfulfilled or feeling like they’re living their lives and doing all the right things, only to wake up one day feeling so unsettled, thinking, Wait, is this actually what I want?”

In one particularly affecting scene, Yara opens Instagram, poised to post a photo in the hopes of proving that her life is more fulfilling than it actually is, but then she pauses, pondering the ways in which social media is often an aspirational portrayal of the lives we want instead of representative of the lives we’re willing to pursue. For Yara, the question in Evil Eye is whether or not she will ever reach for what she wants and deserves, or will she spend the rest of her life simmering and settling for the life she has?

“Why do we settle for what’s comfortable?” Rum asks. “Because we want to avoid the pain of growth.”

For Etaf Rum, Instagram surprisingly became a place for her to manifest her aspirations. Long before her debut novel, A Woman Is No Man, became a New York Times bestseller and a book club selection by the Today show’s Jenna Bush Hager, Rum was teaching English at Nash Community College. Before each class began, she regularly shared two of her greatest loves with her students: coffee and books.

“I would bring my students coffee and book recommendations,” she says. “And eventually they would ask, ‘What are you reading now?’ And so I created an Instagram account called Books and Beans, and it was like a joke between all of us. That was the year I started writing A Woman Is No Man.”

The Instagram page quickly garnered notice well beyond the walls of the college, and Rum soon found herself as an ambassador of the Book of the Month Club, helping them promote their selections through her Instagram account. Later, when her first novel was published in 2019, it actually included a coffee shop called Books and Beans. Writers call this foreshadowing.

This was around the time a development group was renovating Rocky Mount Mills into an 82-acre campus combining retail, dining and residences. There was a particular part of the campus Rum had her eye on.

“They had a stand-alone old canteen building they wanted to open up as a coffee shop,” she says. “And so a bunch of people went to them and said, ‘Hey, we can open a coffee shop,’ and I was one of them. My husband, Brandon, worked in restaurants his whole life, so I said, ‘All right, you can help me with the business side of things.’”

They pitched their vision to the developers, and Books and Beans was born.

“It was my way of creating space for myself with things that I loved, and it was also my way of saying, ‘Hey, you can do whatever you want to do. There’s nothing out of reach for you. Just believe in it.’ The coffee shop was literally a manifestation of a dream that I’d had on social media, and we turned it into a physical building.”

A few years later, the shock still hasn’t worn off. Rum continually finds herself mesmerized by the fact that a Palestinian American woman born and raised in Brooklyn could create a community foothold in a small Southern town like Rocky Mount.

“Every time I walk past it I remind myself that there are girls like me who think they have no business running a shop. All it takes is believing that you could become part of something, right? If you don’t see that vision for yourself, if you don’t believe in it, then it will never happen.”

Cursed or charmed, coffee or beans, it all comes down to hard work and dreams. OH

Wiley Cash is the executive director of Literary Arts at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the founder of This Is Working, an online community for writers.

2023 Department The Creators of N.C.

Omnivorous Reader

Portrait of a Genius

When art and politics collide

By Stephen E. Smith

At a moment in our cultural/political history when we disagree about almost everything, you’d expect an ambitious pundit to pen a bestseller titled America vs. America: A Definitive Analysis of Our Cantankerousness. Although books aplenty attempt such revelations, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to articulate the forces at work in the here and now, but literary critic Scott Eyman has given us the next best thing to an explanation: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided, an exposé/biography of a man who defined, at least in part, the last century, and who suffered the slings and arrows of an America gone wacky.

Eyman’s latest offering — he’s authored six previous books on the film industry and various movie stars — may strike readers as a story told a trifle too late. After all, Charlie Chaplin is ancient history, a wobbly, bowler-topped, black and white stick figure balanced on a rubbery cane who inexplicably entertained our grandparents with the silent knowledge that authentic comedy has its source in the concealment of anguish. The day-to-day details of Chaplin’s life notwithstanding, there’s insight aplenty in this cautionary tale of an artist whose universal popularity among Americans diminished to the point that he was run out of the country and forced to take up residence in Switzerland for the later years of his life.

Chaplin was born in England and suffered a childhood of poverty and hardship. His alcoholic father abandoned the family, and he and his brother were sent to a workhouse. His mother was committed to a mental institution when he was 14, and Chaplin was forced to find work touring theaters and music halls as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he toured with a company that traveled the United States, where he eventually signed with Keystone Studios. By the age of 20, he was the best-known man in the world.

Chaplin co-founded United Artists and went on to write and produce The Kid, A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush and The Circus. After the introduction of talkies, he released two silent films, City Lights and Modern Times, both film classics, followed by his first sound film, The Great Dictator, which satirized Adolf Hitler. After abandoning his Tramp persona, his later films included Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight and A King in New York. His credits and awards would fill this page, but less-than-knowledgeable readers need only grasp this basic fact: Chaplin was a creative genius who had a profound influence on popular culture and the art of filmmaking.

The focus of Eyman’s biography is Chaplin’s fall from grace. Early in his career, Chaplin was accused in a paternity suit in which he was found guilty, although blood tests proved conclusively that he was not the father (at the time, the state of California didn’t recognize blood tests as evidence); but the scandal was enough to attract the attention of gossip columnists, Hedda Hopper foremost among them, who were always collecting dirt on celebrity targets that would sell newspapers.

More destructive to Chaplin’s reputation was the public curiosity regarding his politics. Although he lived much of his life in the United States — indeed, he made most of his fortune here — he never applied for citizenship, which generated a cloud of suspicion that never quite dissipated. Chaplin claimed to be an anarchist, “not in the bomb-throwing sense,” Eyman writes, “but in his dislike of rules and a preference for as much liberty as the law allowed, and maybe just a bit more.” In truth, he was little interested in politicians and politics, outside the restraints placed on the arts by contemporaries who were politically minded.

Having suffered through a childhood of poverty, he harbored a great concern for the underprivileged, which is evident in all his films. But when he released Modern Times, which thematically explored the unending struggle against authoritarianism, and The Great Dictator, which mocked Adolf Hitler, both films, humorous but essentially didactic in intent, further thrust Chaplin into the political arena. Prior to our involvement in World War II, he publicly advocated an alliance with the Soviet Union, and members of the press and the public were scandalized by his marriage when he was 54, to 18-year-old Oona O’Neill, the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill.

Because of his support of Russia, Chaplin was accused of being a communist sympathizer, and the FBI opened an investigation, all of which fed into the Red Scare and McCarthyism of the early 1950s. Chaplin fell into such disfavor with the public that he was denied re-entry to the U.S. after leaving for the London premiere of his film Limelight.

Eyman’s book is a “social, political and cultural history of the crucial period in the life of a seminal twentieth-century figure — the original independent filmmaker who gradually fell into moral combat with his adopted country precisely because of the beliefs that form the core of his personality and films.”

Certainly, the activities of the press — particularly the gossip columnists who fed on Chaplin’s foibles; and the FBI, which launched a long, out-of-control investigation of Chaplin’s life — will give the thoughtful reader pause. FBI files on Chaplin ran to over 1,900 pages, mostly hearsay procured from dubious sources, material that was fed to friendly reporters who used the misinformation to besmirch Chaplin’s character and promote themselves.

Are there definitive elements in Chaplin’s life that precisely parallel the political/cultural moment in which we find ourselves? Probably not. As usual, Mark Twain is credited with having said it best: “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” and readers, regardless of their politics, are likely to find themselves singing along with whatever sad tune history is humming at the moment. OH

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. He is the recipient of the Poetry Northwest Young Poet’s Prize, the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for poetry and four North Carolina Press Awards.

2023 Department Omnivorous Reader

O.Henry Ending

I Watched Aliens from Another Planet Clean My Kitchen

A grandmother comes to her sensory senses

By Marianne Gingher

When Greensboro’s Friendly Center opened in 1957, I was 10 years old and my favorite store there was Woolworth’s. The heart of the store was the candy counter — a child’s dream — where you could buy orange jelly slices, little boxes of Goobers, Nik-L-Nips, candy corn, licorice whips, Sugar Daddies and chocolate-covered peanuts by the scoop. Brimming with the aromas of sizzling hotdogs twirling on skewers, popcorn, fountains of orange and lemon-flavored drinks bubbling down the sides of their glass containers, the store smelled nearly as delicious as the Greensboro Fairgrounds. There were other enticements: single-play records for 99 cents, gag gifts like Whoopie cushions and, in the back of the store fluttered blue and green parakeets in cages. Near the candy counter, I hovered over copies of The Weekly World News and National Enquirer with such memorable headlines as “Baby Born With Tattoo of Elvis” and “I Watched Aliens from Another Planet Clean My Kitchen.” After a trip to Woolworth’s, my imagination was stoked, my senses on overload.

Fast forward six decades. In the interval I became a writer, and I think now, in a weird way, Woolworth’s played a role in that. Remembering that famous five-and-dime’s delights got me thinking a lot about where kids today derive that sort of simple sensory pleasure and inspiration. My grandchildren, two wild boys ages 2 and 5, spent the summer with me while their family transitioned from Arizona back to North Carolina. My ransacked house bore no resemblance to its former self. I stepped on a piece of broccoli in my bathroom one night during their stay. I found the sprayer that attaches to the garden hose in the hall upstairs. They broke one of my kitchen chairs, flooded the upstairs bathroom and turned the AC thermostat to 50 degrees. It felt like I was living on a different planet. But I rose to physical challenges I never thought possible, danced to poopie songs, took them to every park and museum in Guilford County and witnessed delight on their little sunbeam faces as the carousel at Country Park revved up. I was exhausted but determined to hang on to the tilt-a-whirl of them until they headed off to the mothership.

Midway through their stay, when the 5 -year-old said he was bored, weary of the usual entertainments, I wished Woolworth’s still existed. But then a brainstorm hit.

“How would you like to help me wash the kitchen floor?” I asked. Nobody had ever given him such a fantastic opportunity.

His eyes widened. “Oh, yes!”

“Me, too!” hollered little brother.

Nothing glamorous or high-tech about that job, but both boys were thrilled with the adventure of it (and the spray bottle that came with the assignment). They’d discovered joy in a simple, sensory (and productive!) activity, far from the razzle-dazzle of commercial amusements. I stood on the threshold of the kitchen, watching them beaver away in their goofy way. It was happening before my very eyes: Two aliens from another planet were cleaning my kitchen! OH

Marianne Gingher is an Earthbound writer living in Greensboro.

2023 Department O.Henry Ending

Life’s Funny

You’re a Green One

A visit with a homegrown Grinch

By Maria Johnson

In the interest of avocado-tinted transparency, I confess that I love everything about the Grinch, especially the 1966 animated version of his redemption story, a masterpiece of visuals, narration and music.

I love how the Grinch gets a “wonderful, awful idea” to steal Christmas, causing the tuft of green fur on his head to part and unfurl with his smile.

How he saws off a tree branch and ties it to the head of his dog, Max, to make him a reindeer.

How he scissor-cuts material for his Santa suit, leaving jagged holes in the shape of a hat and jacket.

How he slyly nabs candy canes from the grips of sleeping children.

How he deceives little Cindy Lou Who, who is no more than 2, with a promise of taking her Christmas tree back to his workshop to mend a light: “I’ll fix it up there, and I’ll bring it back here.”

How his heart grows three sizes that day, breaking the frame around it with a sproing!

How, when he returns to Whoville with trumpet blaring, the circle of Whos swings open like a gate.

And, naturally, how he — “he himself, the Grinch” — carves the roast beast.

So you can imagine the thrill I felt upon learning that McLaurin Farms, on the northern edge of Greensboro, would be offering pics and visits with the Grinch at its Christmas Festival starting later this month.

Keep in mind that McLaurin Farms is the same operation that funnels tens of thousands of people through its bloodcurdling Woods of Terror haunted attraction around Halloween.

But in the last dozen years or so, the farm, which is run by Eddie McLaurin and his wife, Peggy, has grown into a year-round destination. They’ve added warmer-and-fuzzier draws such as a kid-friendly Pumpkin Patch, Trunk-or-Treat, an Easter Egg Hunt, the tulip-centric Blooms & Butterflies, a Summer Fun Festival and a farm market featuring ice cream and milkshakes.

So I was a little surprised and a lot delighted to see the farm touting the presence of the Grinch at the yuletide event.

Yes, Virginia, the plus-size guy in red fur will be there, too — ho-ho-ho-ing, posing for pics and listening to endless lists — along with the uber-grouch, who will occupy his own little niche complete with a store selling Grinch-obilia.

That’s pure green genius in my book — in terms of both fun and finance.

Witness the enduring popularity of the character, who first appeared in a written story published by Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, in 1957.

The ’66 animated TV classic that won my heart was narrated by Boris Karloff.

In 2000, Jim Carrey portrayed him in a live-action movie.

In a 2018 animated movie, Benedict Cumberbatch voiced a Grinch with smoother edges, appropriate to his world of Minion-like characters.

A touring stage production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, which debuted on Broadway in 2006, will run at Greensboro’s Tanger Center November 21–26.

And at McLaurin Farms, our homegrown Grinch, 29-year-old Nate Hudson, says the Green King of Mean outdraws Santa, maybe because Santa is more common at shopping centers, parades and the like.

“You would think it would just be kids,” Hudson says, reflecting on his fans. “But I have adults who come just to meet my Grinch. They’ll come dressed in their Grinch gear, and they’ll say I’ve been waiting the whole year to meet you.”

Hudson, who graduated from Southeast Guilford High School and snared a theater degree at Indiana Wesleyan University, gets it.

At age 8, he started memorizing dialogue from Jim Carrey’s Grinch, which his mom watched every Christmas season after it was released. About the same time, Hudson joined the family passion for spooky, dressing up as a scary clown for the haunted houses they put on. His dad was an extra in one of the Hellraiser movies.

After college, Hudson did a turn with a repertory company in Michigan and spent autumns working at haunted houses, refining his clown character.

He brought Rellik, which is “killer” spelled backward, to Woods of Terror about eight years ago. Two years later, the folks at McLaurin Farms asked him to help with the Christmas Festival.

“I said, ‘I’m not a fan of kids, and I’m not a fan of Christmas,” says Hudson. “They said, ‘Perfect! You’re the Grinch!’”

Hudson loved the idea. Bullied as a child, he identified with Carrey’s version of the Grinch, who is raised in Whoville and teased for being different until he finds love and acceptance one magical Christmas.

Likewise, Hudson says, he found a safe harbor among theater people and haunted house actors. He enjoys the same grace inside the McLaurin tribe at Christmastime, when he plays the Grinch with crackly-voiced snark.

People who ogle and smile at him are likely to be greeted with a terse, “What?!”

Ask him if he’s seen Santa, and he’ll shamelessly hack a line from the movie Elf: “You mean the fat guy dressed in red who smells like beef and cheese?”

If Olaf the snowman, a roving character from the movie Frozen wanders by and embraces him, Hudson will probably start singing “Let me go, let me go . . . ” a riff on the hit song “Let It Go” from the same movie.

The only time he breaks character — or actually adheres to character — is during the last show before Christmas. At that point, Hudson says, the Grinch becomes his better self, which is what people find irresistible about the character: the hope he offers.

“He has a story,” Hudson continues. “He was misunderstood. Everything was not all rainbows and sunshine with the Grinch. I think that’s where people sympathize with him. Toward the end, he grows his heart. He’s more human than Santa.”

It’s an evergreen thought. OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Email her at ohenrymaria@gmail.com.

2023 Department Life's Funny

Tea Leaf Astrologer

Scorpio

(October 23 – November 21)

Everyone knows that the greatest revenge story never told is currently playing on a loop inside the dark and secretive mind of a Scorpio sun child. Relax. While the mischievous glint in your eyes does raise some suspicion, they’ll never know what you’re really thinking. On Monday, November 13, a new moon in your sign will offer a fresh perspective. Are you ready for a plot twist? You just might surprise yourself.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

You’re going to taste that more than once.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Splurge on the fancy cheese.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Clear the cobwebs.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Your eyes give you away.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Two words: buffet etiquette.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

You’re clenching your teeth again.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Leave your shoes by the door.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Dress for the part you want.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Try chewing between bites.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Make space for a new houseplant.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Ever tried kickboxing? OH

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

2023 Department Tea Leaf Astrologer

Sazerac November 2023

Unsolicited Advice

A little something on the side? Don’t mind if we do. But this year as you’re planning the Thanksgiving feast, can we all agree to keep the canned cranberry sauce where it belongs? In the can — or better yet, on the grocery store shelf — where it can stay until we’re hiding from the end of the world, in a bunker, and it’s your absolute last resort. Like, even after you’ve eaten the can of Spam that your cat won’t touch. Leave it on the shelf and try one of these unique dishes found at popsugar.com instead:

You can’t spell “sausage stuffing” without “sage,” but you can stuff something other than your turkey. Like your slow cooker. Frankly, it’s a much safer process with a big bonus: The two cups of onion will give your breath a “savory” aroma that will have your relatives happily keeping their distance.
Meatlovers, meet your veggies. Think Brussels sprouts are disgusting? Think again. Pan-fry bacon and use its fatty grease in place of olive oil for roasting sprouts, squash and fresh cranberries. Lastly, sprinkle said veggies with bacon bits and walnuts and they becomes a delicious, salty treat.
In a world where cauliflower can be anything — we’re talking pizza and even a Chick-Fil-A sandwich — why not make it a Thanksgiving side? Just add white cheddar. And bacon.
We saved the best for last. We’ll take a heapin’ helping of sweet potato casserole with butter-pecan crumble topping. Does that mean we can’t have just a sliver of sweet potato pie and a wee bit of pecan pie? Nope, there’s still room for dessert if you skimp on the cranberry sauce. Find more interesting ideas here: popsugar.com/food/unique-thanksgiving-side-dishes-32388172

Just One Thing

Lawrence Feir, a Greensboro sculptor and cancer survivor, once sketched trees in Wesley Long’s Healing Garden while waiting for a ride home after chemo and radiation treatment. “Those doodles eventually evolved into the Tree of Hope sculpture,” says the Canadian-born artist, who got his start “painting jean jackets in a Long Island neighborhood, emblazoned with ’60s rock ’n’ roll stars like the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan.” Disillusioned with life in crowded New York, “I moved to North Carolina, went to art school and discovered photography.” Feir, pronounced fayr, says a lucky break at the Greensboro airport landed him a job jetting the world shooting photos for aerospace pub Airways International until September 11, 2001. “Flying and photography would never be the same for me,” he says. After Dr. Bill Bowman, a general surgeon for 30 years and a Cone Health VP, died unexpectedly in 2021, family and friends donated money for a memorial, and Feir, who had reinvented himself as a contemporary artist working in welded steel, kinetic, abstract and figurative sculpture, was tapped to create it. A silver silhouette of a tree came to mind, Feir says, that would reflect the garden’s lush green vegetation with an almost moss-like border in the morning, turn silver as the day progressed and then take on a warm, crepuscular glow as dusk descended. Fabricated from stainless steel with a welding tool “that uses jets of hot plasma to cut through metal like butter,” the 12-foot-high tree sprouted and grew in Feir’s Greensboro studio over several weeks. Feir hopes its wind-swept branches inspire feelings of comfort and serenity in others dealing with cancer while serving as a shimmering tribute to Dr. Bowman and others who “supported me through a very difficult time,” he says. “They saved my life.”

Window to the Past

Photograph © Carol W. Martin/Greensboro History Museum Collection

Don’t miss this year’s Greensboro Honors: Veterans Day Parade, beginning on the corner of Elm and Lindsay, and kicking off at noon on November 11.

Sage Gardener

For decades, Betty, my sister, and I have scouted out persimmon trees just before Thanksgiving. After carefully removing the fruit’s orangey, pulpy mass from the ground and separating out the leaves, twigs and dirt, we cook up some persimmon pudding for the big holiday feast. I’ve always used my late mother’s recipe, distinguished by sweet potatoes, corn meal, pecans and nutmeg with no other spices. I wondered aloud to Betty whether she uses the same recipe.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said.

“What?”

“I don’t care one way or another about persimmon pudding,” she said. “It’s momma’s hard sauce that I like.” Brandy, sugar and butter. What’s not to like, but Zella Bailey’s son sure does love persimmons and persimmon pudding.

A corruption of the Algonquin word “putchamin,” persimmons charmed Spanish Conquistador Hernando de Soto, who liked them better than red plums. English Colonial Governor Captain John Smith declared them “one of the most palatable fruits of this land” — when ripe — observing how they can “draw a man’s mouth awrie with much torment” when eaten too soon.

The Oxford Companion to Food observes from an ocean away that it is “a fruit which used to be valued . . . but is now little eaten,” eclipsed, they say, by the big, fat Asian-engineered persimmons ubiquitous in grocery stores nowadays. Right.

In Seasoned in the South: Recipes from Crook’s Corner and from Home, celebrated Chapel Hill chef Bill Smith says his favorite recipe passed down to him by Bill Neal, Crook’s founder, is persimmon pudding (no sweet taters and no cornmeal, but good nonetheless). Pick your own persimmons, he insists, and sprinkle in some nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon.

In the plant sex department, persimmon trees are diocesius (from the Greek two [di-] and house [oikos]), meaning it takes two trees, a male and a female, to tango and make persimmons. I have proof of this in my yard, where a lonely female tree flourishes, but longs for a stately male companion. The wood from persimmon trees, by the way, is hard and closely grained and used for golf-club heads, billiard cues and once upon a time for preparatory school paddles.

In sweetness, the fruit is only exceeded by the date in sugar content. They are “as eagerly sought out by possums and other wild creatures as human beings,” says The Oxford Companion, showing they do know a little something or another.

Finally, as the onset of winter blisters the landscape with dying leaves and sets our roads on fire with a kaleidoscope of colors, let’s hear it for the persimmon tree, which goes out in a blaze of yellow-to-orange-to-purplish-bronze glory. “Nothing evokes the warm, lazy feeling of a fall afternoon in the Southern countryside,” writes an anonymous horticulturist on the J.C. Raulston Arboretum’s website, “like the sight of two or three persimmon trees lounging against a split-rail fence, their devilishly delicious fruit hanging just out of reach.” — David Claude Bailey

2023 Department Sazerac

Simple Life

A Cure for the Summer Blues

And a homecoming for a flat-coated retriever

By Jim Dodson

As I write this, I’ve just returned from East Hampton, New York, where I sat on the porch of a beautiful old house that belongs to my friends, Rees Jones, the famous golf architect, and his wife, Susan. The sun had just come up and the first birds were chirping. Susan’s gardens were lush from recent rains. It was the day after Labor Day and the summer crowds were finally winding their way home.

I’d be lying if I said I was sad to see this particular summer go. It was a real doozy back home in Carolina, the hottest and driest summer I can recall, which explains why I spent many days watering my wilted gardens, which seemed prepared to give up the ghost.

But I’m already in a November state of mind.

November, you see, is one of my two favorite months, when I pause to take inventory of the year, count my blessings and thank the Lord for unexpected gifts.

This year I’m starting early with a dog named Blue. He was the one great thing about summer’s end — besides summer’s end.

Up till the moment my wife, Wendy, found him, I was feeling intense lingering grief over the loss of my beloved dog Mulligan at the end of August last year.

Mully, as I called her, was 17 and had been my faithful traveling pal since the October day in 2005 when I found her running wild and free on the shoulder of a busy highway near the South Carolina line, a filthy, joyful, black pup that raced into my arms as if she knew I was there to save her — though I’m convinced it was the other way around. Whichever it was, we found each other and shared an uncommonly powerful bond to the very end.

One of the saddest moments of my life was watching her soulful brown eyes close for the last time as she lay at my feet in the garden she helped me build. Or it felt like it at the time.

Grief is such untidy business. It squeezes your heart at unexpected moments. Every time I saw a dog that looked like Mully — a flat-coated retriever and border collie mix — I found myself almost aching with returning sadness.

Even our aging and sweet old pit bull, Gracie, whom I call Piggie for the way she snorts when eating and sleeping, seemed to keenly feel Mully’s absence, despite the fact that pits are not known for displaying much emotion.

One day last fall, I happened to open an app to Red Dog Rescue and there was a black-and-white female puppy looking for a forever home. I was sure Mully was sending her to us. So, on a lark, I filled out the paperwork and supplied proper references. A week or so later, we drove to a farm down in Asheboro to pick her up.

We named her Winnie — either after Winnie-the-Pooh or my late friend Winnie Palmer, Arnold’s wonderful wife — I’m still not sure which.

It wasn’t long before I started calling her Wild Winnie. She is an exceptionally smart and insanely joyful mix of Labrador retriever, English springer spaniel plus something her DNA results termed as “Super Mutt.” She is every bit that and more.

In truth, however, I wasn’t sure life in an old suburban city neighborhood would be sufficient for our beautiful Super Mutt’s needs.

But I was wrong. Winnie quickly attached herself to Gracie the Bull and my wife, Wendy, who took her to training classes and soon had her performing an impressive repertoire of obedient commands. Wendy also began taking Winnie to Country Park’s BarkPark, where she fell in with a band of rough-and-tumble regulars named Roger, Jack and Ellie, who run, wrestle and chase each other until they drop from exhaustion.

Winnie, in short, has been a joy. Without fail, she jumps into my lap every morning to give me a soppy lick of gratitude for finding her.

But she’s clearly one of the girls. Wendy is her sun and moon. I’m just Wild Winnie’s fun playmate.

I was OK with that until the end of August, when the first anniversary of losing Mully approached.

My intuitive wife seemed to divine that my normal “summer blues” were worse than ever this year. One afternoon as we shared a cool drink beneath the shade trees, she handed me her iPhone and said, smiling, “So what do you think?”

It was a photo of a beautiful black flat-coated retriever that looked exactly like Mully.

“He’s over in Tennessee, a rescued young male who belonged to a lady who had to give him up. They say he’s sweet as can be, loves other dogs and even cats. They’re taking a load of rescued dogs to New England and will be passing through western Virginia this Friday evening. If you’re interested. I’ve already cleared our references.”

For several seconds I said nothing, just stared at the photo.

“You need your dog,” my wise wife quietly said.

So we drove to western Virginia and picked him up. On the two-hour drive home, he climbed up front placed his head in my lap and fell asleep.

We named him Blue, my forever cure for the summer blues. After a bath, he was so black he was blue. My daughter, Maggie, suggested the name.

Blue follows me everywhere, lies at my feet and already answers to his name. Piggie and Winnie adore him. Ditto Boo Radley, the cat.

On the evening I arrived home from New York, Blue was the first one to greet me at the door, hopping up to give me a lick on the chin.

It was good to be home.

For both of us. OH

Jim Dodson is the founding editor of O.Henry.

2023 Department Simple Life

Chaos Theory

Cold Turkey

A first-time Thanksgiving cook’s frozen failure

By Cassie Bustamante

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always a big family affair. Dad’s dad had six siblings and they’d all be there with their kids, who also had kids. My older brother, Dana, and I were the eldest of our generation, and we had to sit at the dreaded kids table, where we made sure none of our little cousins shoved peas up their noses.

During high school, Dana and I graduated from the kids table, but it was a decade later when I hosted my first Thanksgiving in New Orleans that I finally felt like an adult.

Because Chris works in retail management and will be schlepping it to the mall on Black Friday, dreams of the classic Thanksgiving return “home” — to either my or his parents — are dashed. Dana, who lives in Los Angeles, decides to visit our little family so he can spend time with his 1-year-old nephew, Sawyer.

While I am sure Mom and Dad will miss seeing their first grandchild, they’re glad we’re spending the holiday together. And I know we will miss them — and Mom’s pecan rolls. One thing I won’t miss? Having to stare at one of Dad’s favorite sides on the table: the jiggling, can-shaped, gelatinous cranberry sauce, ribs still visible.

Since I am the chef de cuisine, I delight in crafting my own menu: a cooked-to-nut-brown-perfection turkey, creamy mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg, haricot vert spiked with lemon and garlic, glazed maple carrots, a simple salad — always a great palate cleanser between bites — and pillowy, golden rolls. And no canned cranberry sauce. For dessert, rich, silky pumpkin cheesecake.

We hit the grocery store the weekend before, like every other bayou shopper and purchase a sensibly small bird in advance, which goes into the freezer for safekeeping.

The day before Turkey Day, Chris plays on the floor with Sawyer while I follow the steps of a Food Network pumpkin cheesecake recipe. I pop it in oven to bake and lick the spatula.

“Do we even need anything else?” I ask no one in particular. “Can’t we just sit around the table with cheesecake? I mean, that’s what the Golden Girls always do.” Lost in the delight of the batter and the excitement of my big brother arriving that evening, I take my eye off the ball. The ball being the ice-bound Butterball.

The morning of Thanksgiving, I wake from a dead sleep at 6 a.m., fully aware of what I’ve done — or, more accurately, not done. “Oh, no!” I yell. “We forgot to take the turkey out of the freezer!”

I rush to the kitchen in my pajamas as Chris groggily drags behind me. I yank the bird from the freezer, slamming it on the counter with a rock-solid thud and look exasperatedly at him. “Now what? Thanksgiving is ruined!!!”

“Let’s just give it a water bath,” Chris answers calmly, adept at handling my (over)reactions. “Fill the sink and we’ll put it in there and just keep changing the water. It will thaw more quickly that way.”

Fill, drain, repeat — every 15 minutes. After the first hour, the turkey is frighteningly firm. When the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade begins to roll, I can just about poke a finger into it. I imagine my parents, the smell of turkey wafting through their home, while, down in New Orleans, their daughter spends the day giving a turkey a bath.

But Chris and Dana assure me they’ll be happy to eat whenever the turkey is ready. “I hope you like a big meal for breakfast then, because it’s looking like tomorrow morning,” I lament.

To my surprise, our diligence pays off. Hours later, around 4 p.m., our bird is oven-ready and, because it’s small, cooks quickly. The four of us finally gather around the table. I pour us each — except for the baby, of course — a large glass of pinot grigio. “Cheers,” I say. “I’m grateful for so much — your visit, for one, Dana — but mostly that we’re eating at 7:30 p.m., a very respectable mealtime.

I look around the table at our little crew. With Dana and Chris across from me, and Sawyer in his high chair beside me, it’s a far cry from those big family gatherings of my youth. But, even with my frozen faux-pas — maybe especially because of it — I know that we’re creating new memories.

After putting Sawyer to bed, Dana, Chris and I gather ’round one more time for a 10 p.m. cheesecake session. I don’t care how stuffed I still am. Sweatpants were made for this.

“Mmmmm . . . ,” we all groan contentedly.

Since then, I’ve not once forgotten to thaw the turkey. Of course, that’s probably because I no longer eat — or cook — it. Too traumatic. But pumpkin cheesecake? There’s always room for that. OH

Cassie Bustamante is editor of O.Henry magazine.

2023 Chaos Theory Department

Agent Of Change

How real estate ace Melissa Greer has made a space her own

By Maria Johnson • Photographs by Amy Freeman

Going by the listing alone, real estate agent Melissa Greer was “meh” about the two-bedroom brick cottage that was built in 1941 and painted white.

But she loved the street, a short, curved and somewhat hidden passage in Greensboro’s venerable Sunset Hills — nothing like the busy cut-through where she lived, just around the corner.

“I like to be a little off the radar,” says Greer, who was house shopping for herself in 2004.

Touring the place for the first time, she took her mother, a brother and a sister. That made four real estate agents in all.

Greer’s mom, the late Johnnye Greer Hunter, a well-respected local broker, had raised a passel of property-savvy children, with four of her five kids making the business their life’s work.

On that summer day, Greer, her mom, her sister, Johnnye Letterman, and her brother, Waban Carter, parked at the curb in front of the cottage, careful not to block the driveway, a real estate no-no. They stuck to the brick walkway leading up to the dark green front door. No slogging through the grass like amateurs.

Greer remembers liking the blue slate on the stoop, the replacement windows and the heavy, metal plaque of house numbers bolted into the wall by the front door.

The place was cozy, classy, solid.

The family walked in and commenced their counterclockwise tour: formal living room stretched across the front, formal dining room buttressing one end. Just behind the dining room, a small square kitchen with a step-down sun porch and a painted wooden deck beyond.

Back inside, next to the kitchen, lay a den with its own full bath, which was a little unusual but could be changed, her family pointed out.

They stuck their heads into the primary bedroom, a second full bath on the hall — this one with a funky fish design laid into the tile floor — and a second bedroom.

What did Greer, the baby of the family, think of the home?

She turned to her pack.

They liked it.

Greer paid asking price.

“I’ll negotiate for other people,” she says. “Not so much for myself.”

She wanted to be a teacher, hence the degree in English education from UNC-Chapel Hill.

But English-teaching jobs were as scarce as properly diagrammed sentences when she graduated, so she kept her job at Peppi’s Pizza Den in Chapel Hill, where she often waited on then-UNC basketball star Michael Jordan.

Greer’s next job was serving at an upscale seafood restaurant in Hilton Head, S.C. Her nocturnal life caught the attention of her mother, who suggested that Greer return to Greensboro to work in her real estate business.

“It was a strong recommendation,” Greer says, laughing at the memory.

Johnnye Greer Hunter was a force, personally and professionally.

As a young woman, Hunter dressed windows at the S.H. Kress & Co. five-and-dime store in downtown Greensboro. She was a hostess at The Lotus, one of the city’s first Chinese restaurants. She managed a local doctor’s office. She copped a real estate license in 1968.

Greer remembers learning to read by quizzing her mom with questions from a real estate textbook.

In the days before computerized listings, Hunter enlisted her children to help with removing and replacing pages in her loose-leaf listing book.

Later, when they could drive, the kids delivered paperwork and keys. They pulled and planted for-sale signs.

Hunter worked for a local agency for several years before joining two other women to form their own company, The Property Shop.

“She was one of the first women to become a leader in the real estate industry. Prior to that, most of the leaders were men,” Greer says. “I think the ’70s was a decade when that started to change.”

In 1978, Hunter branched out again, starting Johnnye Greer Hunter & Associates with her daughter, Johnnye Letterman.

Post-plate slinging, Greer’s first job with the family firm was answering phones and writing advertisements for homes.

She made minimum wage. She asked her mom for a commission-only sales job.

“I didn’t think it could be a whole lot worse,” Greer says. “It was.”

After six months, Greer had not sold a single house.

“You don’t like this, do you?” her mother asked.

“No, ma’am,” Greer answered.

Her mother diagnosed the problem and the cure: Greer had a bad attitude. She had 30 days to shape up. If she didn’t, her mom would help her find another job.

On her mother’s advice, Greer hung a mirror on her office wall. When she talked to clients, she checked the mirror to make sure she was smiling.

People can hear a smile in your voice, her mother assured her.

Thirty days passed. Greer had sold four or five homes, nearly a million dollars’ worth of real estate.

“It changed my life,” Greer says, pausing to remember the full impact of the moment. “It was enough for me to get a Honda Accord with a moon roof. She was making me drive a Pontiac Sunbird.”

It’s hard to overstate just how good Greer is at her job.

Among the 50,000-plus agents working in the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices network across the country, she has been No. 1, in terms of transactions, for the last two calendar years.

In 2022, she sold 192 homes, either as the listing agent or buyer’s agent. That averages out to more than three homes a week. Lately, the rate has been closer to five homes a week. In July, she closed the books on 19 homes.

“It was a really good month,” she says, cautious of being too content.

There are several reasons Greer kills it at work.

She learned the business from her mom and older siblings.

She puts in 12-hour days.

She employs a small support staff and hires marketing specialists.

She knows Greensboro thoroughly.

She’s also a natural empath, who finds it easy to slip into other people’s skin and understand what makes them happy. It’s a valuable skill for sales people, whether they’re pushing pizzas, prawns, palaces or patio homes.

It doesn’t hurt that she’s an easy talker with a self-effacing sense of humor and an ability to quickly find common ground with strangers.

“That ‘U’ in conduct is coming in handy,” she says, recalling her report cards from Page High School. A so-so student, she had a lot of friends and did mostly as she was told, she says, dipping into the forbidden only if she was sure she could get away with it.

Her mother sat on her shoulder.

She still does.

“Everything I do, I want her to be proud,” Greer says. “That’s why I don’t have a tattoo, even though I’ve always kinda wanted one. She would never think that was a good idea.”

Her mom had a few maxims about real estate:

Selling homes is a service, not just a sales job, because people’s homes are their havens.

Location, location, location.

If there’s something you don’t like about a home, you can change it, but you can’t change the address (see above).

Greer’s cottage nailed the location part, being in a sought-after neighborhood just a jog from downtown, UNCG, Friendly Center and other city pulse points.

As for changes, Greer shaped the home to her liking, step by step.

She painted walls and refinished hardwoods.

She brought down the wall between the kitchen and den.

She sealed off the full bath’s access to the den and opened it to the primary bedroom on the other side.

She pulled off the old deck and replaced it with a sleek platform of composite planks fenced by black railings.

She expanded and updated the kitchen, swallowing up the sun porch to create an even greater great room, an airy teal, white and gold space where Greer and her beloved rescue dog, Macy — named for R&B singer Macy Gray — spend most of their down time.

“That’s her favorite pillow,” Greer says, pointing to the furry, white cushion in the corner of her sectional sofa. “A friend of mine took her picture sitting on that pillow and posted it, and the real Macy Gray ‘liked’ it.”

What’s Greer’s favorite Macy Gray song?

The answer is quick: “I Try.”

About eight years ago, Greer switched the lighting in the dining room, taking down the crystal chandelier that had once belonged to her mother and replacing it with a bowl-shaped fixture with gold ribs.

It was the first change she had made to the house without asking her family’s opinion.

Her sibs came to visit.

Ugh, they said in different words. Maybe because they thought the new fixture was a tad industrial. Maybe because it was not their mother’s.

Whatever the reason, Greer doubted her decision.

But she let the fixture hang.

“Now, they love it,” she says with a smile anyone could hear over the phone.

The podcast episode is called “Stranger Things in Real Estate.”

Greer is sitting at her kitchen island, kibitzing with her friend and marketing guru, Dave Wilson of Tigermoth Creative in Greensboro.

They started the podcast, Melissa Unscripted, back in 2019 to keep Greer current on social media. Already she maintained a presence on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, now known as X.

“I feel a real responsibility to stay relevant,” says Greer, who nonetheless bristles at the pressure on businesspeople to create and sustain an online brand. “I miss the days when you could do your own thing and disappear. Now that you have to do so much marketing, it’s hard to do that.”

After a cheerful introduction, Wilson asks for examples of weirdness that Greer has witnessed in more than 30 years of selling real estate.

She starts slowly. Once, she showed a home with a bedroom that contained nothing but two mannequins, both wearing clothes. Strange.

What else? Wilson nudges.

Well, once she listed a house with two large crucifixes hanging on the wall, on either side of the bed, in the primary bedroom. A mirrored disco ball hung from the ceiling.

“I said, ‘You gotta pick one. We have to pick a theme,’” she remembers with a laugh.

Wilson prods again: Have you ever walked in on anyone?

“Yes,” Greer says. “I’ve walked in on couples, I’ve walked in on kids skipping school and smoking not-cigarettes. I’ve walked in on people taking naps.”

Haunted houses? Wilson inquires.

Oh, sure, Greer says.

“There’s a website that one of my clients told me about called diedinhouse.com,” she continues. “I’ve actually paid to search things because people want to know.”

Wilson, the marketing man, embraces the curveball with arch humor: “So if we get anything out of this podcast that’s helpful for people buying, it’s diedinhouse.com.”

Greer agrees by continuing full speed ahead. She’s afraid to look up her own house, she tells Wilson, but she used the fee-based service to check her childhood home because she already knew someone had died in there.

“My brother, when I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed, he’d hide under my bed,” she says. “And when my mother told me good night and the lights went out, he’d boost the mattress up and say, ‘Ooooou,’ — like a ghost — ‘is that you, George?’ That was the guy’s name. And I’d start screaming.”

The best thing about Greer’s primary bedroom?

Well, no one has died in there. It’s brand new, the latest improvement.

“It’s like a treehouse,” she says, walking into the high-ceilinged suite.

To create the restful perch, which looks into a curtain of green, she ballooned the old bedroom beyond the walk-out basement.

The lofted addition — which covers an outdoor living area below — allowed for the addition of a luxurious bathroom and substantial closet.

“I’ve never had a walk-in closet, so this is cool to me,” she says, beaming as she shows off the space.

It’s hard to believe that a woman who sells million-dollar homes regularly is tickled by such an amenity, but she insists her happiness is genuine.

“I grew up in a small house,” she says. “I always shared a room.”

The new suite, she says, makes the home’s vibe and size — now a little shy of 2,000 square feet — consistent with other upgrades.

The new view allows her to appreciate one of them. The room overlooks a “pandemic pool” with a stony waterfall that gushes skin-friendly salt water.

“It’s like swimming in a water feature,” says Greer, who likes to float with family and friends. “I call it a cocktail pool.”

She overhauled the yard after the pool was installed in 2021. John Newman Garden Design in Winston-Salem, which also built the waterfall, painted the slope with a Japanese-inspired palette of stone, pine, maple, yucca and barbered, bonsai-style azalea, along with a custom Stonehenge-like bench.

“I like the zen feel of it,” says Greer.

Gradually, she says, she has grown to feel more at home in her cottage — and in her own skin.

“There’s a part of me that’s trying to please other people, always. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away, and that’s a good trait to have in a Realtor, but you develop a certain confidence in yourself so you can create what you want and know that’s a beautiful thing.” OH

2023 Feature Story of a House