Dear Reader:

Yesterday I was on a Tuesday Trek to Find Local Culinary Talents! (Actually one specific and very special cuisine for me…pimento cheese!)

It started almost two years ago. Mollie invited me to attend an outside local produce “fair” on an empty lot near a deli the family frequented often on Clements Ferry Road…They were supposed to have a wide variety of vendors…ranging from local cuisine to native flowers and plants. I was so excited!

Mother Nature let us down…it started ‘raining cats and dogs’ just as we arrived. It must have been some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas because they had all kinds of props for visitors to put on and get family photos on the front porch of the eatery.

Due to the inclement weather…many vendors bowed out…but a few brave souls showed up …one of them being Angie Leopard…cook, creator, and owner of Coachman’s Pimento Cheese. 

Now I hate to say that I am a pimento cheese snob…but truthfully I am. Even Jackson always brought me a certain kind of pimento cheese that only could be bought at one of the fresh markets in Columbia. Jackson would bring it every time the Ya’s had a beach gathering. (She always brought just one special separate container for me…love that Jackson!)

My taste for only the best pimento cheese, however, began with Dee Dee (my mother-in-law)…she made homemade pimento cheese…weekly I think. It was always in a green bowl with a plastic covering in the fridge…(the one thing I looked for…every time I went to her house.)

Once you have eaten homemade pimento cheese…it is tough to eat the store bought…even the ‘wanna’ be, almost brands…are still not close enough.

So two years ago when I tasted Angie’s I wanted to cry with joy…it was smooth and creamy like Dee Dee’s…Angie roasts her pimentos first…and adds some crucial substitutions that make her pimento cheese so ‘creamy’ it melts in your mouth.

I bought some from her that rainy day long ago…and then she and the cheese just seemed to disappear. During Covid I tried to track her down again…but the phone was out of order.

…But then a God Wink appeared last week.

I was going through my business cards straightening them out and throwing away old ones or duplicates when Angie’s Coachman’s Pimento Cheese business card popped up…I googled it and this time a name of a place appeared on-line where one could buy her pimento cheese.

3025 Ashley Phosphate Road-Charleston, SC

My mouth was watering all night in anticipation of buying and then eating her smooth, delicious pimento cheese. I was not disappointed!

I found it, without any trouble, and was welcomed into this little market that sponsors local culinary talent from spreads, to pimento cheese, to barbecue rubs and sauces for cook-outs…all homemade with old family recipes…besides some talented woodcraft objects-especially for kitchens and home decor.

Christina is co-owner, along with her partner, Megan…they run The Compass Market together. Megan wasn’t there…but Christina was so sweet and gave me a sample of each kind of three different type of the Coachman’s Pimento Cheese…all delicious. I ended up purchasing containers of everything pimento.

Everything inside had a fun rustic trading center feel to it….the painting (below) was done by a relative when the young ladies opened up their first business endeavor…The Compass Market. 

The Compass Market advertises food and goods from near and far…but it is the near that people, like me, want.

Isn’t this true of life? Don’t we all get caught up in the game of the ‘grass is greener‘ syndrome during some stage in our lives? We start to think the best things in life must be just a little farther down the road…or just around the next bend in it.

Instead some of the best things in life are right in front of us…made, cooked, created, built by people we know and love… or in some cases…even by ourselves.

So until tomorrow….

When looking for compasses…always look for the one that points you home.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Here comes the state flower…The Yellow Jessamine…it is our SC golden trumpet flowering vine announcing spring is on its way.

Them there is the ‘fairy-like’ delicacy of light pinkish tinged camellias!

And speaking of fairies…Mollie sent me the most precious video of Eloise setting up her first fairy garden yesterday. Her little fairies were adorable and she was completely absorbed in the task at hand. Mollie made a photo from one clip of the video though I wish you could hear Eloise explaining her fairies to me and introducing them…too precious!

It is moments like this that you pray will last forever in your memories…a little three-year-old who does believe in fairies and imagination and love…may it stay with you for ever Eloise!

“I believe” ...in things one can not see but feel…one day these feelings will turn to faith. Little fairies become God in all His Majesty…if we learn to believe in the possibility of the presence of the Divine in our everyday lives.