Welcome to the Georgia Mountains Foodways Alliance (GMFA)
We are a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to the celebration, promotion and
preservation of the authentic food culture of the GeorgiaMountains. We are an organization of farmers,
producers, vintners, inquisitive eaters, good cooks, culinary historians,
chefs, food journalists, restaurateurs, culinary tourists, artisans and
manufacturers.
Our alliance encompasses a
field to table spectrum from agriculture to fine dining, with emphasis on all
the specialty foods, farm markets, diners and hands-on restaurants in between
that are so dear to the hearts of southerners who love fresh and local food.
The Georgia Mountains Foodways Alliance is
dedicated to the development and promotion of the local food culture and small
businesses from field to table. The Alliance identifies and nurtures Georgia's
varied community culinary heritages through education, networking, public
relations, regional cooperation and the sponsoring and promotion of local food and local wine events.
Serve
as a conduit for communities, towns, businesses, residents and visitors
in pursuit of authentic dining experiences that enhance the
understanding of local cultural heritages of the NorthGeorgiaMountains
Seek out and promote information and events related to
these experiences
Encourage private and public support for
educational and promotional activities which benefit local communities by
creating vibrant culinary tourism
Encourage, at all times, the use of local
ingredients and products, the preservation of local food culture identity
and the search for excellence in culinary pursuits.
Encourage the use of sustainable, organic and environmentally
practices
Wild Foods Foragers June 13, 2009
Wild Foods Foraging Hike and Dinner
with Herbalist Patricia Kyritsi Howell
and Chef David Darugh:
Summer Hike and Dinner: June 18 – 20, 2010
Autumn Hike and Dinner: September 10-12, 2010
Ever feast on the tender asparagus flavored stalks of Solomon’s seal? The exalted and elusive morel mushroom? Succulent coiled fronds of the woodland fern? If not, come experience the gourmet elements of wild foods in the Georgia Mountains. Our events are devoted to all things wild and local to remind your senses why the traditional wild ingredients of Appalachian cuisine are now the hallmark of culinary innovation in restaurants across the country.
Join us this summer and autumn and learn to recognize, cook and savor many wild ingredients. Your guides are noted herbalist, Patricia Kyritsi Howell (author of Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians,and David Darugh, chef at the award-winning Beechwood Inn.
Your adventure starts with a leisurely hike Friday morning. Along the trail you’ll see, taste and smell many wild edibles while you forage ingredients for dishes you’ll enjoy throughout the weekend.
In the late afternoon we’ll go back to the Beechwood Inn for a cooking demonstration using wild foods to create appetizers specially chosen to compliment local wines. The proof is in the wildness you’ll taste as you relax on the Inn’s comfortable front porch and enjoy the fruits of your labors. We’ll sample several wild foods appetizers and local wines as evening descends over the mountains.
Saturday morning you’ll visit the award-winning “Simply Home Grown” market in Clayton where you may buy some of the season’s freshest produce from local farmers.
Each event culminates Saturday night with a unique multi-course dinner that showcases gourmet possibilities of combining local wild edibles with RabunCounty farm produce. Recommended selections from the Beechwood Inn’s extensive wine list will be available to purchase.
Each event costs $155.00 per person; $130.00 for guests of the Beechwood Inn (plus applicable taxes and gratuity.) Further details about the weekend will be sent after we receive your registration. A la carte pricing may be available for those who don’t wish to attend the entire weekend, contact us for details. Special lodging rates at the Beechwood Inn for Wild Foods participants.
Cost of each Wild Foods Event includes:
Friday morning guided foraging hike
Friday afternoon cooking demonstration
Appetizers and wine tasting late Friday afternoon
Visit to the local growers market Saturday morning (optional)
Complimentary glass of wine before dinner on Saturday
Multi-course wild foods dinner Saturday night
A set of our recipes featuring wild ingredients
Hikers, please note: You must be able to walk 2-3 miles at a moderate pace without difficulty.
Joie Power of Hayesville, NC attended our wild foods dinner in June 2009 and e-mailed to say, "I've been to wild foods dinners before but nothing like this; this is the first one where I didn't feel like a grazing herbivore or one of the last surviving humans in some post-apocalyptic throw-back saga. Elegant and delicious!"
Northeast Georgia Local Food Guide
The Northeast Georgia edition of the Local Food Guide is available now. Look for it at regional tourist destinations and Chambers of Commerce or call Maughon at 706-754-7715 for more information on the Guide’s distribution.
NorthGeorgiaTechnicalCollege partnered with the Appalachian Sustainable Agricultural Project to create a version that spotlights the producers and providers in NorthGeorgiaTechnicalCollege’s (NGTC) eight-county service area.
Sandra Maughon, Continuing Education Director at NGTC, comments on the motivation for the project, and the college’s collaboration with ASAP, “Healthy local markets for our regional farms mean that farms are preserved as part of our landscape. Rural economies and cultures can thrive when local economic activity remains in the communities. As they say, local food is thousands of miles fresher, and that’s why it makes more sense to buy local.”
Are you a grower, producer, sponsor of an event, restaurant, vineyard, dairy, rancher, canner that offers fresh and local products from the North Georgia Mountains? Then let us know and we will be glad to link to you. Contact us at info@georgiafoodways.org
We will be glad to add your event or add your link to this website.
Georgia Moonshiners
What are Local and Regional Foodways?
Just how is it that particular foods become associated with particular geographic locations -- communities, regions, sections of the country, states? What is the relationship between foodways and locales? By speaking of "foodways" rather than "cuisine," we place more emphasis on those restaurants and cooks who focus on tradition rather than innovation. This is the culinary aspect of everyday culture. We also mean by "foodways" not only food, but the entire complex of ideas and behaviors centered on its preparation, serving, and consumption.
Georgia Foodways, and in particular the Foodways of the Georgia mountains, are the product of gradual development; passing food fads at a particular place and time are not regional foodways. Regional foodways are accepted by the people in that region as the natural way of food. Often regional foodways have heavy symbolic meaning and are important in marking off the social boundaries between one group of people who live (and eat) here and that other group of people who live (and eat) there.
There is nothing that all Georgians eat in common and that only they eat - or drink. Rather, Georgia foods are those of the many communities -- ethnic, occupational , local -- that constitute Georgia. What's more, state boundaries never conform to cultural boundaries. People don't stop eating grits or making Moonshine at the South Carolina border. And, no matter how closely we may associate the Georgia Mountains with Moonshine, it is really a part of the subculture of the Southern Appalachian Mountain region that extends into parts of North Carolina and South Carolina.
The Georgia Foodways Alliance considers not only the food but the entire complex of behaviors and ideas related to its preparation, serving, and consumption. Hunting, fishing, and gathering, for example, are significant social, recreational, and occupational activities and their products comprise large additions to our diets. As an important agricultural state, Georgia is thought of for many crops and farm products, including: peaches, peanuts, blueberries, melons, muscadines, chickens, pecans, shrimp, catfish, pumpkins, and a host of truck gardens and nursery products.
Culinary Tourism in the Georgia Mountains
Culinary tourism is a theoretical framework for analyzing the role of food in tourism. It refers to the "intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of an Other." It is voluntary and consciously contains an element of curiosity—that is, people eating out of choice, not only physical need.The term "foodways" involves all the other aspects of food, referring to the network of activities and systems—physical, social, communicative, cultural, economic, spiritual, and aesthetic—surrounding the product itself: Procurement, preparation, preservation, presentation, consumption, clean-up, and conceptualization. In this sense, culinary tourism can occur in any aspect of foodways, from purchasing familiar ingredients from a new grocery store to adding exotic ingredients to a familiar recipe. It can also include behaviors connected to thinking and talking about food: collecting recipes, watching televised cooking shows or films incorporating food, conversing about restaurants, reading cookbooks and food columns, reminiscing about food experiences.The culinary other is simply anything different from the known and familiar. It can be broken into six overlapping categories. National or cultural identity is the most commonly perceived category and includes "ethnic" foods as well as "foreign" foods. Foods become a cultural Other by being placed in a context in which they are different. Thus, kimchi is standard fare in Korea, but is ethnic and foreign in the United States.
