11 minute read
RECIPE
Super summer sammies
BY BELINDA SMITH-SULLIVAN
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APPLE BACON BRIE PANINI ON RYE
MAKES 4 SANDWICHES
8 slices rye (or bread of choice) 8 slices brie cheese 2 small-medium Granny Smith apples, cored and thinly sliced
8 slices thick-cut bacon, cooked crispy 4 tablespoons fig jam 4 leaves green leaf lettuce Unsalted butter On four slices of bread, divide cheese, apple slices, bacon, jam and lettuce. Top with remaining four slices of bread. Spread butter on top of each sandwich. Preheat a panini grill to medium and place sandwiches on grill, buttered side down. Depending on the size of your panini grill, you may have to cook one or two sandwiches at a time. Spread additional butter on top and close grill lid. If you do not have a panini grill, you can do this in a grill pan or skillet. Cook until cheese is melted, about 3 minutes. Repeat as needed.
TURKEY REUBEN ON PUMPERNICKEL
MAKE 4 SANDWICHES
8 slices pumpernickel
Thousand Island dressing, homemade or store-bought 1 pound sliced deli turkey breast 1 cup sauerkraut 8 slices Swiss cheese
Unsalted butter Spread one side of each slice of bread with the dressing. Top four slices with turkey, sauerkraut and cheese. Place remaining slices of bread on top. Spread top of sandwiches with butter. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Place two sandwiches, buttered side down, in heated skillet. Press down on sandwiches with a spatula until buttered sides are crusty and cheese is starting to melt, about 3–4 minutes. Spread additional butter on top of sandwiches. Flip sandwiches and cook until crusty on other side. Repeat until all sandwiches are cooked.
GWÉNAËL LE VOT What is it about sandwiches that has made them so iconic? Is it their portability—we can eat them on the run? Is it their simplicity—you can make one out of just about anything you have on hand? Or is it as simple as putting your favorite meat or salad between two pieces of your favorite bread? Whatever the reason, let it take you to your happy place.
MICHAEL PHILLIPS
What’s cooking at SCLiving.coop
Got a hankering for chicken? Find Chef Belinda’s recipe for Open-face Chicken Caprese on Toasted Ciabatta as well as bonus recipes for homemade Thousand Island dressing and basil pesto at SCLiving.coop/food/ chefbelinda
IULIIA NEDRYGAILOVA CHEESESTEAK WITH SAUTEED VEGETABLES ON HOAGIE
MAKES 4 SANDWICHES
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided 1 large yellow onion, peeled, halved and sliced 1 red bell pepper, cored and sliced 1 orange bell pepper, cored and sliced 1½–2 pounds sirloin, thinly sliced 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
All-purpose seasoning 7 ounces sliced provolone cheese 4 hoagie rolls, split but not separated Into a large skillet over medium heat, add two tablespoons olive oil. Saute onions and peppers until soft. Transfer mixture to a bowl and keep warm. Add remaining two tablespoons oil to skillet and increase heat to medium-high. Add sliced steak and cook, stirring frequently, until no pink remains, about 4–5 minutes. Add Worcestershire and seasoning and stir well. Reduce heat to medium and continue cooking and stirring until all juices in the pan are gone. Add onion/ pepper mixture back to the pan. Place all slices of cheese over the meat in a circle. Cover with a lid and cook until cheese melts. Using a cast-iron skillet or griddle, sprayed very lightly with cooking spray (or in a 350 F oven for 5 minutes), toast hoagie rolls until lightly browned. Use large tongs to transfer equal portions of beef mixture to rolls.
CHEF’S TIP Make the cut. To make beef easier to slice, first place in the freezer for 30 minutes. Then on a cutting board, using a sharp knife, slice as thinly as possible across the grain.
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TRADITION CONTINUES
Cooper’s Country Store still does business the old-fashioned way
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY TIM HANSON
MEETING PLACE Herbert Hammond, who lives close by, routinely visits the store for his morning coffee and to catch up with friends. Top: William Cooper (left) and brother Russell Cooper Jr. help keep their dad’s store, which has been in the family since 1937, running smoothly.
BEFORE THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC introduced face masks and social distancing to the American scene, retired farmer Herbert Hammond’s daily ritual involved a mandatory stop at Cooper’s Country Store for a cup of coffee.
Hammond, 86, a native of nearby Kingstree, lives only a few hundred yards from the store, and he looked forward to meeting with his friends to catch up on community gossip and maybe spar over some prevailing political issue of the day.
The virus put Hammond’s routine on hold, and only recently has the one-time sharecropper begun to return to his preepidemic custom.
Such gatherings have been common ever since the store was built by Theron Burrows back in 1937. He operated the business until his death in 1974, and then his son-in-law, George Cooper, took over and ran the place for the next three decades. Finally, in 2003, Cooper sold the store to his nephew, Russell Cooper, the current owner.
Cooper’s Country Store sits at the intersection of state Hwy. 521 and Martin Luther King Jr. Road in Salters, the unincorporated community of less than 4,000 people in Williamsburg County.
It is a two-story affair, the upstairs portion being an apartment where Burrows and his wife lived until 1954. A balcony extends forward from the apartment and covers a modest two-hose gas pump in front of the store.
Downstairs, in the store’s narrow aisles, customers will find a dizzying array of items—groceries and farm equipment, plumbing supplies, buckets of paint, knee-high snake-proof boots, machetes, fishing poles, animal traps, live crickets, cold beer, and a deli counter that keeps employees hopping to serve hungry customers six days a week.
Near the front door, a rocking chair and two pants-polished stools await those customers, like Herbert Hammond, who just want to sit a spell and talk with their neighbors.
“We have a very diverse customer base,” says William Cooper, one of Russell
Cooper’s two sons. “We see people with every level of income, every age—every segment you can divide people into. A customer might come in here to get a propane tank filled or buy a pound of bacon or get a two-by-four to fix his fence.”
William’s brother, Russell Cooper Jr., says the store does not sell as many groceries as it used to but makes up for it by selling other items.
At one time, country stores like this one were common in rural South Carolina. They served a population of working people who could not always easily travel to one of the larger towns to make their purchases.
These days, however, such stores are rare, and the few that do remain, like Cooper’s, sometimes become repositories of period memorabilia and aging documents that show how business was once conducted.
Owner Russell Cooper, for example, still has several oversized accounting ledgers that were once used to keep track of the store’s business transactions. In days long gone, he says, customers would buy groceries on credit and then make payments on their accounts at the end of the month. He pulls one of the big books from a storeroom shelf, blows a layer of dust from its cover and opens it to a random page.
Other tokens of a bygone era are scattered throughout the store: a couple of old-time cash registers perched on a top shelf; a decades-old, razor-sharp, crosscut saw hanging high and safely out of reach of customers; a mule-powered, farmer-guided Boy Dixie plow; an ancient, well-worn Dixie Cups dispenser; and a 12-drawer cabinet filled with Old Hickory shoelaces that once sold for 10 cents a pair.
Cooper isn’t the only one to witness the decades of change. Jay Woodard, for instance, began working at Cooper’s as a 17-year-old back in 1976.
“We once had a service station here,” he says. “I used to do all the car oil changes and tire fixing. We don’t do that anymore. Probably the biggest change I’ve seen is the way people do business now. Everything is credit cards. Hardly anyone uses cash anymore.” uu
p GET IT HERE Cashier
Kelley Cooper has been greeting customers and ringing up their purchases for decades.
t FOR THE RECORD Owner
Russell Cooper dusts off one of the ledgers used to keep track of transactions before the digital age.
q VARIETY STORES
National brands share shelf space with local products such as raw honey from Jamestown and stoneground meal from Irmo.
These days, as might be expected, inevitable concessions to changing times have been incorporated into the business. The store maintains an active presence on Facebook. Its page has more than 4,000 followers.
“Got a new assortment of straw brooms in,” reads one recent post that included a photo showing a dozen or so brooms with gray, red or black handles.
And then there is the food.
During the week, Cooper’s sells as much as 300 pounds of barbecued pork and around 300 barbecued chicken halves, says pitmaster Laverne Darby, who has worked at the store since 1975. And when Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, he says, the store adds barbecued turkeys to their list of offerings.
All of the barbecuing is done using seven pits—at least one of which can hold up to 23 turkeys or 50 chickens at a time—located in a shed behind the store.
Back inside at the deli counter, Darby says he keeps busy slicing meat and cheese and making sandwiches for workers in the area who find Cooper’s a convenient spot to pick up lunch.
Right next to the deli counter is a walk-in, wire ham cage where whole, salt-cured country hams are hung and which sell, especially during the holidays, by the hundreds.
Unlike other now-shuttered country stores, Cooper’s enjoys a favorable location on a state highway that brings a steady flow of summertime vacationers headed for the coast.
“The beach traffic has always come from Columbia, Spartanburg and Tennessee,” says the senior Cooper. “Some families have been coming year after year, and we have gotten to know them by name. We’ve watched their children grow up and get married and watched them have children.”
TENDING THE FLOCK Jay Woodard, an employee since he was 17, keeps a watchful eye on the pit that can barbecue 50 chickens at once.
GET THERE
Cooper’s Country Store is located at 6945 Hwy. 521 in Salters. Hours of operation are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday–Saturday. Barbecued pork and chicken are available Thursday through Saturday. For the latest updates on what’s in stock or cooking on the pits, visit the store’s Facebook page or call (843) 387-5772.
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