Great Smoky Wonders…
Row upon row of misty ridges, wispy feathers of cloud drifting skywards from dense forests of spruce and fir – these are the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, home to black bears, mockingbirds, brook trout and limestone caves.
Nestled in the hollows and hills you’ll find a warm, welcoming people, with a culinary treasury stretching back generations. Here, every flour-dusted recipe box contains a family recipe for Hummingbird Cake – its sweet combination of fruits and frosting just perfect for the long, hot afternoons of a Southern summer.
No Tennessean family gathering is complete without fried chicken, a bubbling dish of creamy Macaroni & Cheese and delicious, soft Cornbread cooked in an iron skillet. But then there’s barbecue – Tennessee BBQ…
All-you-can-eat, fall-off-the-bone barbecued ribs. . . .need we say more? Tennessee BBQ is defined by pork – especially pork ribs and pulled pork, ‘dry-rubbed’ with a mix of spices & herbs according to treasured family recipes and smoked, or ‘wet’ – generously basted with rich tomato-based sauces during smoking and served with plenty of sauce on the side. In a word – delicious!
Not to be outdone by neighbouring Kentucky’s world-famous bourbon, Tennessee has a storied history of whiskey production, of which Jack Daniels is the most famous brand worldwide. While both are distilled from corn mash and aged in barrels of charred oak, Tennessee whiskey is distinguished from Bourbon by the process of filtering or steeping the distillate with maple charcoal prior to aging – and woe betide the ignorant philistine who refers to Tennessee whiskey by the name of ‘bourbon’ in the presence of a native of Tennessee!
__________________________________________________________________
Tennessee trivia: Secret city of the ‘Manhattan Project’
Tucked deep into the eastern mountains of Tennessee, some 25 miles west of Knoxville, is the city of Oak Ridge. Today a bustling metropolis of military research facilities and museums, Oak Ridge was once a secret city of 75,000 that was not to be found on any map of the day.
Chosen by US Army engineers in 1942 as the site for the main production facilities of the Top Secret ‘Manhattan Project’ – the US-led effort to produce an atomic weapon – Oak Ridge materialized almost overnight, from a remote farming valley in 1942 to a city of 75,000 in 1945. All the while the existence of the city was not even acknowledged, with only a very select few government and military personnel knowing the ultimate purpose of this massive undertaking.
The Manhattan Project was so secret in fact, that the tens of thousands of construction workers, scientific and military personnel who lived and worked behind the fences & checkpoints of the Oak Ridge complex knew their landlord only as “Management Services, Inc” and did not discover what it was they were working on until the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
