A Beloved Blueberry Muffin - No. 337

Where do you eat in your hometown + Happy 4th birthday Between the Layers!

Martha Nesbit’s Blueberry Muffins. Photo: Rinne Allen

FEW PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD WHAT the word ‘’Substack’’ meant when I told friends and family I would write a weekly newsletter on this platform. That was four years ago, and this is my 337th newsletter.

Since we’ve been together I’ve stayed true to an initial idea of storytelling and sharing great recipes like my versions of Chicken Marbella, Trisha Yearwood’s Iron Skillet Apple Pie, and that Very Good Chocolate Cake. I’ve also offered cooking advice like how to make the best summer cobbler, cornbread, and chicken scallopine.

I’ve reported how food seeps into culture with posts on Ukrainian garlic bread after the Russian invasion, how strawberry cake reminds me of a tragic school shooting, and why I love the Gulf of Mexico and blackened redfish.

Thank you for traveling on this journey with me.

Northern Ireland.

Why travel is important

My longtime Canadian friend who had worked in Nashville for 30 years and had an up-to-date work visa, visited her elderly parents in Canada in January. Upon return, she was detained by U.S. Homeland Security and not allowed back into the United States. She couldn’t return long enough to grab her belongings. Her Canadian siblings traveled to Nashville two weeks ago to place her house on the market, sell her station wagon, and pack up her things for good.

We never got to say goodbye.

Since Donald Trump took office in January, tourists along U.S. borders have been detained and interrogated. Those with work permits have been sent to ICE detention centers, and people have been wrongly deported, The Guardian reports.

It’s hard for me to process the extreme changes taking place all at once right now in America and not mention them here. These are unprecedented times of a president not adhering to the judicial power of the Supreme Court, security breached by cabinet officials, the firing of thousands of federal employees and lost aid to the needy around the world, as well as severed ties with longtime allies.

On Earth Day, it’s important to mention the administration’s rolling back of environmental policy that protected our earth for future generations. And the frosting on the cake is that our economy was bustling before Inauguration Day, but this might have been the Easter holiday with the fewest deviled eggs ever.

This conversation may make some of you uncomfortable. But something’s got to change.

Higham Ferrers, England. St. Mary’s Church.

This is the time of year when you think about travel. And traveling has been a favorite hobby not so much because I wanted to leave home as I couldn’t resist the opportunity to taste something new. In this newsletter, I’ve shared some of those food travel experiences, from visiting with baker Ciara Ohartghaile in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, to sipping chocolate in Santa Fe, to dining in New Orleans.

A good part of my career as food writer for The Atlanta Journal was to drive the backroads of Georgia and interview people about fishing, farming, growing a new flat, sweet onion in a small town called Vidalia, raising blueberries, baking with pecans, and putting up pickled peaches. The people who told me their stories weren’t influencers, content creators, or celebrities, just ordinary folks growing and making good food.

Fresh blueberries weren’t something I was raised on in Nashville, but Georgia was awash with them. They were called rabbit-eyes, larger than what you find in Maine and the northeast and almost as sweet.

No blueberry muffin can compare to one baked by a very good friend, Martha Giddens Nesbit of Savannah. We met at a conference for food writers so many years ago, and as we were both young and writing about food and from Georgia, we bonded.

Martha in the kitchen with Bobby Flay in 2000.

Martha would write a book in 2019 called Nibbles & Scribbles about her life in food and include a peach pound cake recipe from me. And here’s what she remembered from our early food writer’s conferences:

‘’While the rest of the food editors and writers would be sitting in sessions designed to make us use whatever product the sponsor was advertising, Anne was in the hotel kitchen chatting up the local chefs and coming away with the real scoop on the food of the area we were visiting.’’

In short, my friends told me what new product Kraft was rolling out, and I told them where we were going for dinner.

Book tour stop in Savannah 2024, reconnecting with my dear friend Martha Nesbit.

Possibly the best thing I’ve ever tasted while traveling was tiramisu in the colorful Italian hill town of Lucignano, lush with green vineyards, silver olive trees, and maize-colored houses, each with a terracotta roof. In mid-morning, cypress trees poked like tall pencils into the deep blue sky.

Our family rented a villa with another family one week one summer nearly 20 years ago to mark my significant birthday. I didn’t know that a lovely Italian woman named Elena and her sister Marcella would be available to cook for us if we liked. I must have thought about that for three seconds before shouting, yes!

The ladies picked ripe tomatoes from the garden and simmered sauce (ragu) for hand-cut ravioli filled with ricotta. They fried zucchini blossoms in olive oil and then potatoes in the same oil perfumed with sage leaves. They rubbed chickens inside and out with salt, rosemary, and garlic and slow-roasted them.

In my broken Italian and Elena’s meager English, I was able to jot down her tiramisu recipe on a small square of paper. It became a precious souvenir I made sure to pack and bring home. I promise to share that recipe sometime soon. I just need to make it once again to relive those summer Italian memories before I do.

Tomatoes seasoned with oregano, Portugal.

That’s the thing about travel and food. Tasting a recipe takes you back. Each time I taste oregano I am in Portugal. Each time I spoon into lemon curd I think of Julie Buchanan and moving to England for a year. Julie is a subscriber of this newsletter, so she will read these words. Her late husband Eric was the vicar of the local parish church, and they were close friends of my husband.

When I arrived in England, I felt my Southern accent drew too much attention in the shops, and I wanted to blend in and learn about the Midlands of England by quiet observation. Once I met Eric and Julie, I felt more at ease. I listened more and spoke less, and instead of driving to the village market, I walked, frequented the same bakery each day, spoke to the neighbors and their dogs along the way, and things changed.

Assimilation isn’t easy. Any longtime visitor will tell you that. But if you set aside your own preferences when you travel and soak in more of the culture, you learn the varieties of locally grown potatoes, how to make tea sandwiches and a proper pot of tea, and in the summer know where to pick fresh tayberries (sort of like a strawberry) for shortcakes as I did.

Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.

Where do I want to travel now? To national parks I haven’t seen. I want to head back out West and to the tip top of the Northeast. To Canada to visit my friend. To Spain as well as Normandy. To the Hill Country of Texas. And of course, back to the summer mountain cottage in Tennessee we rent one week each year with our grown children.

Travel helps us stay engaged with the world. Mark Twain wrote about that more than a century ago:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. — Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) “Innocents Abroad," 1869

But this year might not be a big travel year for many people. The news tells us Americans will take fewer and smaller trips. Overseas visits to America were down 11.6% in March compared with the same month last year.

So I thought it would be fun, for Between the Layer’s birthday party, to play a bit of a birthday game. It’s a prompt I’ve borrowed from fellow Substack writer Scott Hines of the Action Cookbook Newsletter. And it will help us all learn about the food in other places if we travel or not.

Share your hometown and your favorite restaurants, bakeries, farmers markets, anything food-related you think others might enjoy checking out:

Where do you eat in your hometown? (And don’t say “home” even if it’s true!)

As for birthday party favors, my good friends at Schermer Pecans are offering a discount on Georgia pecan orders. When you order during April, National Pecan Month, use discount code ANNE10 to receive 10% off. Pecans are best stored in the freezer to pull out for baking all year.

And now, those yummy blueberry muffins from Martha. Their secrets are loads of fat blueberries and a sturdy batter in which the berries don’t sink.

Happy travels, happy baking, and thank you for four wonderful years!

- xo, Anne

THE RECIPE:

Martha Nesbit’s Blueberry Muffins

Valdosta, Georgia, native Martha Giddens Nesbit, was the food editor for the Savannah Morning News newspaper for many years, and took it upon herself to perfect the blueberry muffin. She serves them with pan-fried flounder, cheese grits, and salad. ‘’I once interviewed the man in Vidalia who brought these blueberries to Georgia. They are gigantic, and we love baking with them all year round.’’ A secret of this recipe is that the batter is rich and thick enough to suspend the berries so they don’t sink to the bottom. You can add a pinch of cinnamon or lemon zest, but Martha prefers them plain and simple so the blueberry flavor comes through. Stash these in the freezer for weekend house guests and Mother’s Day.

Makes 12 muffins

Prep: 15 to 20 minutes

Bake: 25 to 30 minutes

Vegetable oil spray for misting the pans or paper liners

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup (200 grams) sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup (4 ounces) whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups (240 grams) all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons sugar or Demerara sugar for topping

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 375º F. Spray a 12-cup muffin tin with oil or line with paper liners.

2. Place the butter and sugar in a large electric mixing bowl and beat on medium-low speed until creamy, 1 minute. Add the eggs, milk, and vanilla, and beat on low just to combine. Turn off the machine.

3. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl, and stir into the batter. Gently fold in the blueberries.

4. Using a 1/3 cup dry measuring cup or an ice cream scoop, divide the batter between the muffin cups, filling them nearly to the top. Sprinkle the tops with sugar. Place the pan in the oven, and bake until lightly golden brown and the tops spring back when lightly touched, 25 to 30 minutes.