As yuppies get older their kids–even their grandchildren–struggle each holiday season with what to buy them. By this time in their lives, many yuppies have most everything they want and can afford to buy what they don’t yet have. They have rabbit-ear wine openers, their golf clubs cost more than their college education, and their televisions take up a wall once covered with pictures of children.
For the record, yuppies aren’t the only group who are difficult to buy for. Millennials may still be paying off their college loans, but they’ve outgrown the kitschy and have definite opinions on what fabrics they’ll wear, from what countries their preferred products are made, and which corporate brands they avoid/boycott.
What’s a conscientious gift-giver to do? I’ve found that gifts of taste and experiences are among the best gifts for people such as these. You know all of the large catalog brands that have been around for years and have probably used them—Hickory Farms, Swiss Colony, Harry and David, etc. The problem is, they’ve been around for years and your giftees have probably received them. You want to send something different, distinctive, right? While researching another story, Piedmont Brings Inspired Food to Durham, I learned about Heirloom Provisions, an online market of organic and artisan foods sourced from small-batch Southern vendors.
Heirloom Provisions order arrived in insulated box with ice packets.
Heirloom Provisions is an outgrowth of Coon Rock Farm in Hillsborough, N.C. Farmers Richard Holcomb and Jamie DeMent had been shipping their grass-fed pork and turkeys to addresses around the United States and fielding requests for additional organic products when they decided to branch out with Heirloom Provisions in December of 2013. Gathering products from more than 50 growers and producers throughout the South, Holcomb and DeMent assembled a line of Southern-inspired products, including heirloom grains, fresh and cured meats and seafood, jams, nut butters, small-batch cheeses, breads and sauces.
The couple also operate a sister site to Heirloom Provisions, Bella Bean Organics, which provides fresh, organic and sustainably grown produce and other groceries through a similar mail-order website. Holcomb and DeMent are also partners in Eno Hospitality group, which owns Piedmont Restaurant in Durham and Raleigh’s Zely & Ritz.
Within the links of Heirloom Provisions, I found a quick and easy source for such hard-to-find meats as free-range, hormone-free duck and rabbit, as well as pasture-raised beef, pork, lamb, free-range turkey and chicken. Meats such as these are the basis for a meal fit for kings, or at least those hard-to-please people in your life. Over in the site’s artisan pantry, you can outfit the meat with sides of farro, nests of vegetable or whole-wheat fettuccini, ravioli, even ricotta gnocchi. You’ll find marinara sauces for that pasta, barbecue sauces (the local Cackalacky sauce is a favorite around our table) for the meats, and a variety of soups for starters. Click over to the dairy page and a world of artisan cheeses awaits your tasting and gifting, while a click to the bakery and pastas page reveals breads and pastas full of whole grains, gluten free choices, and much in between.
Some of the brands offered by Heirloom Provisions have regional recognition and a growing national allure. La Farm Bakery, for instance, is renown in central North Carolina for its artisan breads baked under the eye of master baker Lionel Vatinet; same for French Broad Chocolates of Asheville, and San Giuseppe Salami Company based out of Greensboro. Most of the other providers are hyper-local, focusing on distribution at regional farmer’s markets and small shops. Here’s where you’ll find the greatest treasures of Heirloom Provisions.
Nut butter lovers will adore the specialty spreads from Big Spoon Roasters. My favorite is Peanut Almond Chai Spice, but I’ve yet to sample their Almond Ginger, Almond Brazil, Peanut Cashew, or other innovated nut spreads. Surely you can find a sampler of spreadable sweets for jam and jelly fans, beginning with such delectable mélanges as Shelly Mac Farm’s Hot Jalapeno Peach, Scuppernong, or Triple Berry (raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries). Cheese connoisseurs can pick from a wide variety of cow’s and goat’s milk cheeses, as well as vegan cheese-like spreads. Add a meat such as Coon Rock Farm’s 100-percent Grass Fed Beef Hot Dogs, pork liver and sweet potato pate, or one of the San Giuseppe salamis and you’ve just made an epicurean giftee very happy.
Heirloom Provisions ships to the U.S. and Canada and has a special local rate for addresses within Central North Carolina. My order took only a couple of days for delivery and came in an iced, fully-insulated box to preserve the frozen products.
I ordered the Heirloom Provisions Artisan Picnic Collection for $59.95. This would be an ideal gift package for those hard to buy-for friends, relatives, clients or employees. Packed inside the insulated box was a square of Cultured Cow Farmstead Cheddar, a box of Accidental Baker lavash-style crackers, a packet of smoked Applachian mountain trout, a 6-oz link of Giacamo Salami Classico, a pint of spicy pickled okra from Pickled Silly (a favorite of my husband), and a 60-gram bar of Palo Blanco Community dark chocolate from French Broad Chocolates (my favorite). We dug into the collection that night with visitors, but waited to the next day to cook the next part of my order. A duck. (The duck is not included in the Artisan Picnic Collection.)
Not just any duck. A hormone- and antibiotic-free locally raised and naturally processed pekin duck from Joyce Farms of Winston Salem, N.C. I prepared the duck according to the crispy skin method. After fully defrosting the duck, I pricked the skin, rubbed it with sea salt, seasoned it lightly with white pepper, and slow-roasted with four, full-bird flips every 45 minutes. After the last flip of the bird, I glazed it thoroughly with a red-wine reduction of orange, apple, cranberry. The bird was supremely browned and the skin the perfect mingling of sweet and salty, crispy and chewy. The flesh inside was succulent, falling off the bone and melting in the mouth tender. I would never have known the bird had been frozen.
With the current interest in Southern culture, you can’t go wrong with a gift from Heirloom Provisions.
