9/6/07
Habitat luncheon to feature award-winning authors
By Cathy Gilbert

CATHY GILBERT/Manning Times

Habitat Luncheon committee members are already hard at work planning the Nov. 2 event with the Lee Brothers of Charleston. Pictured are (seated) Marie Land and Shea Failmezger, (standing) John Flack, Sharon Cramer, Bill Smith, Connie Robinson and Ursula Horn.

Leave your hats and gloves at home and bring your husbands or best fellers … this is no ladies’ luncheon, but a rippin’ good time with some “new, funky Southern food.”

Mark your calendars now for the next Clarendon Habitat for Humanity luncheon at noon on Friday, Nov. 2, 2007. The Manning United Methodist Church fellowship hall is the locale and Habitat will be hosting The Lee Brothers – Matt and Ted – of Charleston.

Their cookbook, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-Be Southerners is a delight and they promise to provide a great afternoon of entertainment as they regale their audience with stories of their business ventures and their cooking adventures.

“We are so lucky to get the Lee Brothers,” said Marie Land, chairperson of the event. “They are becoming very famous and are published in The New York Times and in ‘Martha Stewart Living’ magazine.”

The Lee Brothers’ cookbook is a James Beard award winner, one of the highest accolades a cookbook can receive, much like an Oscar is to a movie. It is $35 and will be on sale at the luncheon. At a hefty 590 pages, it is a true value for the price.

“The Lee Brothers have written the classic Southern cookbook,” according to South Carolina author Pat Conroy. “They write with flair, brilliance and hilarious commentary on the recipes, customs and eccentricities of the South. Their recipes are so good I believe they may turn Southern cooking into an actual cuisine.”

The Lee Brothers were raised in Charleston, sons of a gastroenterologist and a girls’ school headmistress. After graduating from Amherst (Ted) and Harvard (Matt), they found themselves under-employed and homesick in New York City.

After finally locating a New York vendor who would sell them raw peanuts, they soothed their longing for the low country by boiling up a huge batch of the warm, wet and salty delicacies that Southerners are known for.

They thought they would be able to sell their favorite food to bartenders and restaurateurs in New York City and were met with disgust instead of the delight they had expected.

They then sent a letter to a food writer at The New York Times explaining their venture and she was intrigued. They delivered a bag of the boiled peanuts and though she hated them, she understood what they were about. Two weeks later, a short blurb in The Times announced that they were available by mail order and that very day, The Lee Brothers had one hundred calls. Not just from New York either, but from as far away as Alaska, people wanted boiled peanuts.

The Lee Brothers suddenly found themselves in business and quickly returned to Charleston and began seeking out resources. Their line expanded to all kinds of Southern foods including fig preserves, watermelon rind pickles, sorghum syrup, stone ground grits and Dew Drop soda.

Today, with more than 15,000 loyal customers, the Lee Brothers have a successful business and travel the world promoting Southern cuisine, which they call “new, funky Southern cooking.”

The Habitat luncheon will feature a delicious menu gleaned right from the pages of their cookbook. Be prepared to loosen your belts with a soup course chicken with sweet potato and orange dumpling, followed by succotash salad, fried flounder with Granny Smith apple and green tomato pan gravy, lemon grits, winter squash casserole, corn bread with sorghum butter and fig preserve and black walnut cake. And of course, there will be gallons of Lee Brothers sweet tea.

Are you hungry yet?

“Kitchen chairperson Shea Failmezger has again come up with a fabulous menu sure to please every palate and leaving no one wanting,” said Land. “She has a wonderful army of talented cooks that will help her get it all on the tables.”

Tickets for the Nov. 2 event are $30 and will be available at the Manning United Methodist Church, The Manning Times and the Chamber of Commerce. Groups wishing to sit together may reserve entire tables for seven or eight, but partial tables cannot be reserved. Tickets will be available by Sept. 13 and are limited to 250, so don’t delay in getting yours!

Celebrate fall and enjoy a hearty lunch with wonderful entertainment at this Habitat event. All proceeds will be used to continue building homes in Clarendon County.

To learn more about the Lee Brothers’ business and product line, surf on over to www.boiledpeanuts.com.