The sweeter, saucier side of sustainable foods
Long before there was a “green” movement, Western North Carolina farmers toiled to produce quality foods for the table. And before the push for buying local, artisans were already creating their own unique recipes of homemade goods.
From toffee to Asian sauces, local foods are more than just a trend, they’ve become a lifestyle. SEE ALSO: Local food guide
Recipes for success
In the beginning, Barbara Joyce didn’t intend for her tasty toffee concoctions to become a local food staple in Waynesville. She originally worked from home and bagged them up as corporate gifts.
When requests kept pouring in for more toffee, Joyce saw the potential of a booming business. Armed with a secret recipe, she didn’t have to do much to market the melt-in-your-mouth morsels – they practically sold themselves. And so Steeplechase Toffee was born.
It took a while for her team to perfect the old recipe she started with, tweaking and changing it until it was the perfect blend of buttery toffee, chocolate and nuts she sells today.
“The mail men used to be so glad when we were experimenting because sometimes it would taste good but look terrible so we would load them up with pounds of candy,” Joyce said with a laugh. “But we don’t make those mistakes anymore.”
Barbara creates her toffee in a kitchen connected to the store and will often stay late into the night cranking out loads of candy, especially in the winter months when business peaks. Around Christmas, Joyce will ship out approximately 4,000 pounds of toffee across the nation and sometimes to Europe.
Many companies have attempted to buy Joyce’s recipe but she refuses every time. She prefers keeping her business local and small and keeping preservatives far away from her kitchen, believing her recipe is better than anything manufactured.
“You get lots more flavor. You can actually taste the butter. You can taste the nuts. Everything is fresh,” she said.
Although Janet Green, owner of Lu’s Specialties Foods LLC’s product is quite different from Joyce’s, they share the same opinion of the importance of keeping their homemade products just that – homemade.
Much like Joyce, Green finds joy and satisfaction in the creations that come out of her kitchen. Green’s line of specialty goods include perfectly blended sauces such as sesame oil and ponzo sauce, the only one of its kind sold in Haywood County.
“My sauce has good, quality ingredients and it is flavorful,” she said.
Green is well known around the Waynesville area for her previous business, Sake Sushi, a local favorite that was located in the K-Mart plaza. She closed the doors in 2010 after 15 years of business, but knew she could still cater to her loyal local clientele in a new way.
During her time as proprietor of Sake Sushi, Green said she worked by trial and error to make what she, and many of her customers, consider the best Asian sauces around. With Lu’s Specialties Foods, Green can now give her customers a chance to make the same delicious sushi that came out of the restaurant they loved.
At an open house in April, Green conducted a blind taste test with customers, having them choose their favorite sauce between two brand names and her own.
“They always picked mine, every time without fail,” she said. “My customers have been with me a long time and they know my taste.”
Walking with Green around town, it is clear her patrons are excited about her new endeavor. Anyone can enter her shop in the Smoky Mountain Development Center and leave with all the ingredients needed to make sushi, the same sushi she sold to them at Sake Sushi.
Sushi rice, panko, tempura flour and wasabi powder are among some of the ingredients she sells as well as bamboo mats for rolling sushi and chop sticks.
With previous experience as a personal chef, Green also hopes to begin booking in-home demonstrations to teach people how to cook with her sauces. She plans to expand her business by teaching how to cook Thai food such as curry, stir fries and egg rolls.
From the ground up
Spring and summer bring an influx of customers for most local food suppliers, especially local farms. Many farmers rely on grower’s festivals and farmer’s markets to get their products out to the general public, and there are certainly many farms and goods from which to choose.
Donna Few, general manager of the Blue Ridge Farmers Co-op in Glenville, is dedicated to not only sharing her own homegrown products, but many others as well. The co-op features products from several towns across Jackson, Macon and Swain counties such as fresh goat cheese, trout, vegetables, baked goods, pottery, plants, seeds and honey, just to name a few.
“We sell everything that we can possibly get locally,” Few said.
She also helps run the Cashiers Tailgate Market, which opens May 28 and runs each Saturday into the fall. What’s best about buying locally, either for residents of WNC or tourists, is that many market food items are so fresh they have usually come straight from the garden that day.
Although products from the co-op and tailgate market are catered toward local buyers, Few said tourists are “the fluff” in the business, since word of mouth is a powerful tool. Once someone tries something unique, delicious and homegrown, they continue to buy and tell others about their experience.
“We’re here to bring local people local food, but the icing on the cake is the tourists,” she said.
— By DeeAnna Haney
