Pretty Southern

Month: March 2013

  • BBQ: A Real Southern Comfort

    Some people turn to chocolate and ice cream when they need culinary comfort.  Others may go for a bowl of creamy soup.  But for Southerners, comfort food has a whole different meaning. It’s warm, smoky, tangy goodness with a side of gooey, cheesy delight. There is very little that a plate of barbecue and mac and cheese won’t fix. For Brett Wolfe, bbq edmonton is more than a dish.  It is a way to share Southern hospitality and provide a setting where families can spend quality time together.

    Wolfe, a Virginia Tech alumnus and Marion, Va., native, owns Log Cabin BBQ in Blacksburg. He and his wife Jill bought the establishment in August of 2010 after they moved back to the area from Raleigh.  Log Cabin is home to Blacksburg’s best barbecue pork, as voted by the Collegiate Times’ “Best in Blacksburg” survey in 2011. The menu also includes barbecue chicken, ribs, salads and sandwiches, and mouth-watering sides like mac and cheese, baked beans, mashed potatoes, fried okra and more. Log Cabin offers catering and takeout services, which are popular on tailgate and wedding menus. Barbecue is an ideal addition to any menu.

    A finger food catering company in Sydney is the perfect solution for any party or event. Whether celebrating a special moment with family, bringing together friends and colleagues, or creating an unforgettable night out, finger food sets the tone. From seasonal produce to mouth-watering desserts and tarts, finger food catering companies have all the ingredients to make your celebration an unparalleled success. Whatever type of gathering you’re planning, whether it be intimate or grandiose in scale, Lunch in a Box finger food caterers have something for everyone. Plus, with delivery services that can arrive quickly within hours of ordering no matter what time it is or where you are located in Sydney, Lunch in a Box finger food catering provides a hassle free way of feeding guests fast.

    Roasting meat…yum!

    What sets Log Cabin apart is that all food is smoked, cooked, and prepared in-house. The scent of North Carolina-style barbecue is deliciously pungent the instant you walk through the door. Although the barbecue is cooked Carolina-style, Log Cabin offers sauces to please all tastes: Lexington vinegar, sweet and smoky Eastern, South Carolina mustard, and even an Alabama white sauce. I’m an Eastern girl myself, but I can’t wait to try the Alabama sauce next time I visit Log Cabin. I’ve never had white sauce before!

    Coupled with its fantastic food is a relaxed, small-town atmosphere where students can go for comfort food and locals can enjoy a tasty Sunday lunch. Log Cabin draws in loyal customers and Tuesday regulars from other local businesses.  As I stood in line during my first visit, the gentleman in front of me said it’s the “best barbecue in town, and the whole area,” and that’s what keeps him — and hundreds of other customers — coming back.

    Brett & Jill Wolfe smiling outside Log Cabin BBQ

    When Wolfe is not running the daily operations at the restaurant, he and Jill are involved in the community.  As avid animal lovers, the Wolfes devote time and fundraising efforts to the Humane Society of Montgomery County.  During the month of March, Log Cabin hosts a food and donation drive that benefits the Humane Society.  The money raised goes toward cancer research in companion animals, a cause the Wolfes joined after losing their beloved dog to cancer.  They also spend time volunteering at the Montgomery County Christmas Store during the holidays. Right now Log Cabin is undergoing some revamping, and soon Wolfe will introduce new menu items.  Maybe next time I eat at Log Cabin, I will order my Pick-a-Plate special with fried chicken instead of pork.

    Or maybe I will give the chicken and waffles Sunday Special a try when that is launched.  No matter what I order, I know I will get the full Southern Comfort experience.  As a student away from home, sometimes all I need is a plate of barbecue soaked in smoky Eastern sauce, a cheesy pile of mac and cheese and a tall glass of sweet tea.

    For more information about Log Cabin Barbecue, check out their website. While y’all are at it, like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

    [author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://prettysouthern.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/KR-headsot.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Kate Robertson is a junior at Virginia Tech, studying communication and English. Although she currently resides in the Philadelphia suburbs, Kate calls Atlanta home. After graduation, Kate hopes to return to Atlanta and work in corporate public relations. In her free time, Kate enjoys playing guitar and hand bells, reading, watching football and basketball, and sharing her love of the South through writing in any form.[/author_info] [/author]

  • Love Never Fails

    This is the last of five posts in the series “Five Things About Love (that are hard to understand)” by Miles McClellan. If you like his writing as much as we do, his first novel “Vigil of the Ageless” is now available for purchase on Amazon. For now, we leave you with lovely words from a true Southern writer.

    Today’s is my final entry, and so I will leave you with what I find harder to grasp about love than anything else. I am very grateful to those of you who have been reading along, and if you’re new to my corner of the internet, I hope to have your audience again in the future. When life deals us a bad hand, when our relationships fail, and when all hope we had for happiness with someone we love is snuffed out, far too frequently we find it easier to blame the other person, or worse, to blame love itself, than to blame anything else.

    Within our hearts, love is the most powerful force in play, after all. I don’t need to tell any of you how many countless laments exist, how many odes to our broken hearts and memes to pathetic, hopeless thoughts you can find with a few keystrokes on the web.

    “No-one cares unless you’re pretty or dead.” That’s one that I saw a few weeks ago. The internet is replete with such sorry pretenders to intelligent thought. As with many of you, I’m used to it. I’m used to hearing about how love is such an awful, damnable lie, and I say without reserve: If that’s the way you choose to see the world, then I’m afraid the only lie is the one you have been telling yourself.

    And why?

    A very wise saying I’ve heard many times of late goes like this…

    “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

    To me, this has always been meant to remind us that we are capable of turning away the loves of our lives before we’ve even gotten to know them… just because we have other ideas about what is right for us than love does. It means sometimes we accept, even cling to, the love of a scoundrel or a harlot because we sincerely do not believe we are better off without them. This quote’s interpretation of love presents all the hope and danger of love in one flawless summation. It’s perfect, frankly.

    To come back to my own metaphor, that of the road: If where we are on the road of love represents how much of it we’ve come to understand, I think we have a tendency to reach for people who are nearest our own leg of the journey.

    After all, that’s the right idea, isn’t it?

    If love is a road, and commitment is what we want, then sharing the journey of love side by side must be the point we’re all trying to reach. It follows that we would naturally want someone who is somewhere very near us in our understanding, very near to us on the road, so why reach for someone far away at all? Why not just start with someone who is already right next to us? Why bother with a love that is in a different place than our own?

    This is the enigma of love that most of us get ensnared in, for better or worse. This is the very struggle about which we get so spiteful and bitter when we fail. We don’t recognize the more challenging prospects as the more valuable, and so we turn them away because we want love to be easy. We only want it for its comforts. We want it to give us just what we want, and we don’t want to wait for it. Most of us are in such different places that, even when the dearest of loves calls out from the horizon, if reaching that person seems too difficult or burdensome, we actually start to think it’s not worth the trouble.

    We forget that all the trials of love, so much trouble… it may well be the most worthwhile pursuit we’ll ever experience. So what if you have a long way to go?

    Are you in love, or aren’t you?

    If you are inexperienced in love, it’s true that those who are wiser to its ways, who are much farther down the road, can intimidate you so much that you can hardly even acknowledge an attraction to them. You may fail to even see the merit of someone who could make you happier than anyone you’ll ever meet again. If you’ve been around, and you’ve confronted your demons, those who haven’t… those who are behind you on the road lose their appeal, and you may not ever notice the immeasurable, perfect beauty of a silver-lined soul who needs just one, singular measure of patience: Yours.

    Ask yourself: If you caught a glimpse of that person’s promise, just a hint of their true worth, in either case… would you not take a chance on them?

    When two bodies meet face to face in life, when two hearts begin to fall for one another, this is the predicament they will likely face… together in life, yet so far distant in love. It is finding our way together, truly together, that is so incredibly tricky, yet more immensely rewarding than any other feeling within our fleeting, miniscule lifetimes.

    For in order to reach one another, one will have to sprint ahead, push oneself. The other will have to stop in place, holding oneself back. It will put a strain upon both. Both your hearts must want the other dearly. They must long for one another. Charging down the road takes stamina, and a great deal of bravery. Waiting in place takes patience, and a lot of faith. Then, even with overwhelming desire, all of it still takes time. It can take years.

    Yet, as long as you so crave and are strengthened by one another, as is love’s way with us… after what amount of patience, after how long, is it ever not “worth it”?

    Are you in love? Or aren’t you?

    Think about it. For even if you don’t come together…

    Even then…

    The one who did the running learned so very much along the way. Thanks to the chance he or she took, neither of you will ever be the same, and maybe one day, when neither of you expects it… you’ll catch up to one another anyway.

    Now, if you could see love that way, would you still say it was love that failed you?

    Love never fails. We do. We fail.

    We fail to do the good work that love asks of us. We fail to make the effort. We fail to rise to its challenge. We fail to recognize it when it’s right in front of us. We allow ourselves to expect too much of one another, to force one another’s hands, to demand the wrong things at the wrong times for the wrong reasons. We fail to endure, to come together on the roads of life and love. Be it easily or roughly, for good reasons or for bad… we let one another down.

    In the end, we make up our own minds, and love has no say or sway in it at all. Relationships end. Not because love has failed us, but because we just don’t quite want to keep the love we’ve been given.

    We will suit ourselves, I suppose. We can always choose to do better.

    As for me… I’m going to keep moving. Life has shown me that love is a road ever worth the journey. I hope I’ve been able to share that as sincerely as I feel it.

    “And love will protect
    Love always hopes
    And love still believes
    When you don’t.

    Love is the arms that are holding you
    Love never fails you.”

    -Brandon Heath

    Editor’s Note: artwork by Phillip Blume Photography

    MilesMiles McClellan is the author behind the psychology, philosophy, and fiction blog How to Throw a Book. Already a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Grady College, he is a student of all things psychological and recently published his first book Vigil of the Ageless.