Sometimes GPSs are more trouble than they are worth!!
On Tuesday Shirley and I was trying to find a little country store about 15 miles from my apartment and I've never seen so many twists and turns on this little bitty narrow country road. There's no way I could ever find it on my own and the GPS wasn't too much help.
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I don't or won't cook much just for myself. So, I am always on the lookout for ready-to-eat stuff I can warm up.
I bought some home-grown sausage. Can't wait to try that. I sure hope it is good.
I got some chicken salad which was pretty darn good.
And, a dozen deviled eggs. Gee, it's nice to be able to just open the fridge and get one out when I want it. I didn't have to peel one single egg!! Yippee!
And, I got Hoop Cheese.
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For those of you who don't know what hoop cheese is... Hoop cheese is farmer made, not produced manufacturally and can be difficult to find because it has a short shelf life. It used to be a common cheese product in the Southern United States in the early to mid 1900s. It's dark yellow, a bit chewy, stringy when heated. I was thrilled to see it and got 1/4 lb. should have gotten more. Had me some Hoop Cheese Toast this morning. Yummy.
Now, there is a story behind my excitement in finding it. When I was a teenager, my mom and stepdad owned a dry cleaning establishment. When I would go with them for a day my stepdad would drive up to a nearby store and buy hoop cheese and crackers plus stuff for us to make a sandwich for our lunch. I don't think I've had hoop cheese since that time.
Seeing it in Darden's store was like walking back into my youth.
Thank you for explaining what Hoop cheese is, otherwise I was going to hit Google search. Your cheese on toast looked very tasty. When my mother was a little girl in WW2, sweets as well as many other food stuffs were rationed. She and the neighbourhood kids would get so desperate for something to suck on they’d pool their money on oxo cubes ( used for gravy browning yuk) or a tiny tin of liquorice confits called Nippits. She they were so nasty tasting, even with their lack of sweeties, they never got through a tin. I thought they had stopped being manufactured as I’d needed seen a tin growing up in the U.K. Imagine my delight when I discovered Nippits in a tiny, retro tin being sold at Goats on the Roof Emporium on Vancouver Island! I had to buy a tin! I so connected to connected to my mother ) I was visiting my auntie, her sister). I sampled one when I was home and had to agree with her that they did taste grim. :)
ReplyDeleteall of it sounds delish. My dad's brothers owned a small grocery store, a dry cleaners, a slaughter house and was the mayor of a small town in southern GA that had a total of Population 300. As a child I was fascinated by the grocery tore which was much like this one. I thought he and my aunt were mean because they had all the FOOD and would only let me choose one food and one drink when we visited. They knew, but I did not that i was born eating like a labroador retriever. ha ha.. forgot the ice house, the only one in 50 miles, it was a busy place and now i am longing for hoop cheese toast, done in the oven
ReplyDeleteSounds like my kind of store. How neat that you found hoop cheese. I have never heard of it.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great find! Sounds like a perfect spot!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to visit a store like that. The cheese looks so good.
ReplyDeleteNow I want to find me a Real Country store like Dardens. Surely they must still exist here in Alabama?
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun place to go to! I would love to visit it - if I could find it!
ReplyDeleteI wish we had a place like that around here! I would go crazy with all the homemade goodies!
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweet tale!
ReplyDeleteI'd be so excited if I found a country store similar to the one you visited. Hoop cheese sounds interesting and tasty.
ReplyDeleteEven though it took a while to locate that country store sounds like a great place to visit again, Latane. I had never heard of hoop cheese, but it sort of looked like cheddar when melted.
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