Alexe van Beuren - The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from a Southern Revival

Copyright 2014 by Alexe van Beuren
Photographs copyright 2014 by Ed Anderson

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House LLC.

The B.T.C. tomato logo design is by Coulter Fussell and painted by Bill Warren.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van Beuren, Alexe.
The B.T.C. old-fashioned grocery cookbook / Alexe van Beuren ; with recipes by Dixie Grimes.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Cooking, AmericanSouthern style. 2. B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery. 3. Water Valley, Miss.Social life and customs. I. Grimes, Dixie. II. Title. III. Title: BTC old-fashioned grocery cookbook.
TX715.2.S68V35 2013
641.5975dc23 2013019690

ISBN 978-0-385-34500-2
eBook ISBN 978-0-385-34501-9

Cover design by Marysarah Quinn
Cover photographs by Ed Anderson

v3.1

W HEN WE WERE FIRST APPROACHED about putting together a cookbook, Dixie and I were a little hesitant. For one thing, it seemed awfully presumptuous: We are (still) a new business, fighting for survival in our dusty small town, hauling watermelons in a station wagon, and cooking on two battered electric stoves. Plus, were pretty busy, and carving time to write a book out of our precious spare time seemed like a daunting undertaking.

But we chose to write the book. And the big reason we were all fired up to do so wasnt necessarily the food (though Dixies food is awesome) or the acclaim (we have no aspirations beyond making a living) but something more elemental that burns in our hearts every single day: We love Water Valley. This town has given us everything we ever wanted, and just about every day, something magical happens here. Its a special place, the likes of which do not exist just anywhere, in our country of interstates, suburbs, and chain restaurants. Granted, its not perfect. The average income is low. I sure would like the city to repair the sidewalks and plant some trees. The school system is not nationally acclaimed. But regardless, this town provides a rich and storied life for almost every inhabitant, from the teenagers who work in the B.T.C. after school to the elderly who meet at the drugstore for early-morning coffee and Christian fellowship. This town promises to know you, through your struggles and your triumphs, and when you have passed on, it will remember you. Knowing and rememberingisnt that what we all yearn for these days?

With that in mind, we agreed to the word revival in the title. Lets be clear: My small grocery has not saved Water Valley. The industrial car plant down the road that employs hundreds does a lot more for folks in this town than my small store can. We have enriched Water Valley, but we have not revived it. Water Valley was here before the B.T.C., and hopefully it will be here after us (at least a century from now, as I have every intent that the B.T.C. stay open for decades upon decades).

No. The B.T.C. did not revive Water Valley. Instead, Water Valley has revived us. My family and Dixie and Cora and the other myriad souls who have opened up small businesses on Main Street are living lives that would not be possible anywhere else. Small business ownership is possible without a lot of capital, with virtually no tourism, in the kind of town where someone from the courthouse calls you to remind you to pay your taxes; the UPS man delivers your packages to where he knows youre at rather than what the address may say; and the ladies at the drugstore will gladly hold your baby if you need to, say, give a radio interview.

We live in a town of Southern revival. And every day (mostly), we give thanks.

T HERE ARE SO MANY IFS in this story. If you were to forsake the West Coast or the East Coast or Chicago or Louisiana or the coast of Maine or wherever you hailed from; if you were to drive to the forsaken state of Mississippi, last in so many national polls; if you were to detour off the beaten paths of Jackson, Ocean Springs, or Oxford; if you were to take the unmarked exits off of Highway 7, you would come to a little town called Water Valley.

And if you were to drive down the cracked main street of the three-block downtown of this small rural Deep South village, and if you were scanning the names of the storefronts, you might see my store: an old two-story brick building, biggest one in town, standing proud and true on the corner of Main Street and Wagner and boasting a sign that reads THE B.T.C. OLD-FASHIONED GROCERY , generally with a stall of Mississippi-grown red tomatoes out front.

SANDWICHES MADE TO ORDER , another sign says. And if you were to pull to the side of the road and come inside, youd find a grocery store and cafe that seems wildly improbable among the dust and cotton fields of North Mississippi. Cane-sugar colas in glass bottles, local grass-fed hamburger, yellow hoop cheese with the red rind still on, handmade pastas from San Francisco, avocados priced at ninety-nine cents, artisan ice cream, warm peach fried pies on an old wooden table, and everywhere sunlight, which slants across the cracked red and blue booths in the back of the store and the copper counter in the front.

If it were lunchtime, youd see women with pearls in their ears and men in faded shirts and work boots standing in line, waiting for salads of baby greens with goat cheese or country boy sandwiches with fat slices of bologna, dripping with mayonnaise.

Youd meet Dixie, fast-moving in a baseball cap and glasses, hands slinging sandwiches onto checked wax paper. Hard to figure shes been in the New York Times for her . Youd meet Alexe, fresh-faced in a red apron, busing tables and bagging groceries and asking you where youre from.

Theres a good chance youd ask Alexe how the store came to be.

You wouldnt be the first.

At this point, Im not even sure what possessed me to open a business other than a deep and abiding vision of what could be in the brick building on the corner of Main Street and a certainty that no one else was going to make that vision happen. So in February 2010, I sent my husband, Kagan, an email. Honey, it began. Lets open a funky little produce place, with Billy Rays milk, nothing fancy, for really cheap.