Experience the art of old-time retro cooking in a 1940s East Asheville log cabin.
You’ll think you’re in granny’s kitchen as you tie on a vintage feed-sack apron and bake up pies, biscuits, our garden veggies, and more using retro kitchen gadgets, mixers, bowls, and a 1928 Home Comfort wood cookstove. Recipes are heirloom, and ingredients are seasonal, local, and organic when possible. All classes hands-on and include recipes and take-home food or in-class feast. Beginning and experienced cooks welcome. Cost includes materials fee. Class size limited to 8.
Vegetarian substitutions available for all classes.
1900-1920 Appalachian Pioneer Hearth Cooking
Saturday, January 30, 10:00-1:00 $45
Folks here in our Asheville mountains lived a pioneer lifestyle well into the 20th century. Today, we'll cook traditional fare in the fireplace with locally grown meats, grain and produce. No special equipment necessary to reproduce this meal other than a cast iron dutch oven with feet and a recessed lid.
Today's meal starts off with salt-roasted heirloom potatoes and warm cider toddy, followed by a string-roasted cider glazed pork loin, little white marrow-fat beans cooked in a flask in the embers, griddled cornmeal cakes with Flying Cloud Farm sorghum syrup, winter greens, and for dessert, a gingerbread pear upside down cake baked in the coals in a cast iron dutch oven.
1920's Mama Cooks with Spirits on a 1928 Wood Cookstove
Wednesday, February 17, 6:00-9:00 $45
Mama knew everything, especially about cooking. So says her daughter, Beth, in her hilarious book "How Mama Could Cook". A rowdy, feminist, rebellious figure of a woman, Mama met Prohibition head on by dousing everything she made with some form of liquor. Tonight we'll pay a tribute to this woman who could put on a tasty spread for any occasion by cooking some of her favorites on our 1920's wood cook stove.
We'll start off with little Swiss cheese caraway twirls and raspberry cordial-laced sparkling wine, then we'll move on to a perky ginger carrot soup with a drop of cognac, goober-stuffed champagne glazed chicken (don't laugh, you'll like it! This dish was part of a dinner Mama reluctantly prepared for her husband's tee-toatling spinster sisters. The meal was so full of spirits, it about blew the roof off the house.) Seasonal salad and flaming apple brandy bananas finish up this fun feast.
1930's Home Comfort.thrifty home-cooked meals that'll warm your innards.
Saturday, February 27, 10:00-1:00 $45
As hard hit as our country was in the 1930's, mountain farmers of that era will tell you life wasn't that different for them since they already lived a self-sufficient lifestyle and were able to raise enough food to feed their families. For the rest of us, this was a decade of struggle and ingenuity. Just about everyone had a kitchen garden to cook from and since there was so little work, someone was at home to tend to it and get dinner on the table. Food was never better in America than it was in the 30's. Made from scratch, from fresh ingredients, simply prepared. Cookbooks from the 30's are a delight, not only for the wonderful recipes, but also for the terrific illustrations contributed by otherwise unemployed artists.
The rural electrification project of the 1930's didn't get homes electrified in the areas surrounding Asheville until the 1950's, so we'll be using our 1928 Home Comfort cook stove to prepare our dinner today. We'll be dining on chicken & root vegetable pot pie with a riz biscuit crust, orange Harvard beets and seared winter greens and for dessert, vanilla bean banana pudding with home made vanilla wafers.
New!!! The "I don't cook" series of classes for beginning or lapsed cooks.
I hear this all the time, I don't cook, and I can never quite believe it. In fact, I find it shocking! So I'm just going to do what little I can to encourage everyone who wants to, to get in the kitchen and whip out some healthy, easy, seasonal, and mostly relatively quick slow foods that will tickle your innards. Future classes will include I don't make soups and stews, I don't bake, I don't prepare fresh seasonal vegetables, I don't throw dinner parties, the possibilities are endless! We'll also learn knife skills, ingredients, kitchen equipment, seasoning know-how, and what kinds of foods pair well with others.
To Register for classes, call (828) 298-2270 or email: swellcookin@hotmail.com
To receive notice of future classes ... contact us by email at swellcookin@hotmail.com (We never give out your email or address to anyone!)
Gift Certificates Available!!!
Ask us about private group classes for friends, family, or co-workers. We can accommodate from 6 to 15 per group.
Other Cooking Classes in the Asheville Area
I'm just one of many offering cooking classes in the Asheville area, be sure to check out the following terrific classes as well (I know they're terrific because I've taken classes with all these folks):
Swannanoa School of Culinary Arts
this summer right in your own back yard at Warren Wilson
Cooking Classes and more all year at John
C. Campbell Folk School
Slow Food Asheville, monthly
events you won't want to miss, check the events link
Italian Cooking Classes with Wally
Maria Mazzucco Wyatt
Thai Cooking Classes in your home
or hers Kade Espy
Stecoah Valley Cultural
Arts Center in Robbinsville NC
Vegetarian, Raw foods
with Lenore Baum
Barbara Swell has written eight historic cookbooks including Log Cabin Cooking, The Lost Art of Pie Making, and The First American Cookie Lady. See Native Ground (click on Kitchen & Home) She teaches cooking classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Swannanoa School of Culinary Arts, and elsewhere, and is on the Slow Food Asheville Board. An overenthusiastic organic gardener, you'll most often find her rooting in the dirt.
Barbara Swell
Directions: Log Cabin Cooking & Music is located at 111 Bell Road, just off off New Haw Creek Road in the Haw Creek section of East Asheville. From Highway 240 in Asheville, take exit #7. From 240 going East, turn left at the light. From 240 going West, turn right at the light. Now you're on Tunnel Road going east. At the very first light, turn left and then take a sudden right on New Haw Creek Road. Go about 1 ˝ miles. On your right you’ll see a baseball field. Turn right at the beginning of the ball field on Bell Road. Pass Evergreen Charter School on your left. You’ll see a new development on your right, (Ozark Springs Road) and then our big garden on the right. At the end of the garden, you’ll see two big black mailboxes that say 111 and 109. Turn right there. As you come up the driveway, the cabin will be on your left. You can park either in front of in back of the cabin.
For more information, call (828) 298-2270 or (828) 299-7031
email:
swellcookin@hotmail.com
Log Cabin Cooking & Music
111 Bell Road
Asheville NC 28805
Office: (828) 299-7031
Fax: (828) 298-5607
