Hurricane Cookies for Sale Labor Day Weekend

Harriet McLeod’s (Go Away) Hurricane Cookies will be available for sale at the Labor Day Barbecue.  When we first moved to the lowcountry, our MOST favorite Post and Courier column was on page B1 of the newspaper:  Good Morning Lowcountry.  There was no byline, just GMLC.  It was an awesome column– full of information for locals, and especially helpful for newcomers.

It was the first thing I read in each morning paper.  I learned how to pronounce the name of the Cooper River, Vanderhorst Street, and Huger.  I learned where to do neat things (especially free things) and how to behave at an oyster roast. And the day I read about the author baking annual Go Away Hurricane Cookies, I thought, “I have got to meet this writer!”  Anybody who bakes in the face of an impending storm and credits those cookies with changing the course of storms is awesome in my book.

Little did I know, I had already met the author.  Harriet McLeod is a Dewees regular, and I was delighted to find that sending an email to GMLC from the newspaper’s website resulted in an address for Harriet!  In fact, the tradition began with a hurricane evacuation of Dewees! Here is the background:

The cookies have their provenance on Dewees. Harriet started baking them for the boat captains in 1996 while helping button up the McLeod house for hurricane warnings and evacuations.  She noticed that every time she baked them the approaching hurricane would veer off and avoid the Lowcountry coast. Since then, she’s made the cookies in advance of every Lowcountry storm watch or warning, and each time the storm went somewhere else. Except once. The back side of Hurricane Floyd smacked us in 1999 while Harriet was vacationing in Maine and unable to make the cookies!

(Go Away) Hurricane Cookies are a scrumptious and messy (like a hurricane) mix of chocolate, caramel and pecan with a secret ingredient that serves as powerful gris-gris against hurricanes. This season, we need them more than ever to send storms away from Dewees and the Lowcountry and back out to sea.

Go Away Hurricane Cookies

Gourmet caramel, pecan, chocolate chunk cookies. Messy, like a hurricane.

Powerful gris-gris against tropical storms*
*With secret ingredient guaranteed to make hurricanes go away

Order by the dozen at hurricanecookies@gmail.com.

$15/dozen

Copyright 2010/harrietmcleod

So bring your money and take home a few cookies this weekend.  It looks like Harriet is taking pre-orders, and we’ll be getting some for ourselves.  And those awesome GMLC columns… well, we’re hoping that they are available sometime for everyone to read!

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Interview with Judy Drew Fairchild

I recently caught up with Dewees Island creative force and environmental inspiration Judy Drew Fairchild.  She had some interesting things to say about the series of books and videos she has recently released about the island.

[Reggie:]  Judy, why are you putting out these books and videos about Dewees Island visitor education?

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2009 Dewees Island Visitors Guide

Judy Drew Fairchild, the former head of the Dewees Environmental Program Board, has created a beautiful and insightful 40-page visitors guide to Dewees.  It includes all kinds of tips, tricks and guidelines as well as pictures of life on Dewees.  If you ever have guests on Dewees or if you’re visiting for the first time, I highly recommend this book.  Get one for Dewees and another for your home off the island.  Click the link below to preview the first 15 pages of the book and buy your copy today.

Dewees Island …

By Judy Drew Fairchild

Book Preview

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Dewees In Winter — A New Book by Judy Drew Fairchild

I’m a little biased, but this book is awesome! Check it out and order one today. It makes a great present.

Dewees Winter

By Judy Drew Fairchild

Book Preview

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Dewees Book Published

Larry E. Leppert published a book called Raised in the Wild about growing up on Dewees Island Wordclay.com, a do it yourself publisher.  The book was published on 10/23/2008.  Jill Cochrane has been reading it and might be able to provide a review or lend you a copy.  You can purchase a copy from Wordclay.com.  Here’s the book cover and what Wordclay.com has to say about the book:

Book Cover art for Raised in teh Wild

Raised in the Wild is a non-fiction book about growing up on an uninhabited barrier island along the South Carolina coastline. The island was privately owned by Richard Reynolds of Reynolds Aluminum Company and only accessible by boat.  In 1954, Mr. Reynolds hired my grandfather as caretaker and allowed him and my father to build a small, out of the way house to watch over and maintain his occasional weekend retreat. A few months later our home was complete; a tiny two-bedroom wood structure with gaps in the walls and floor. The domicile was built on top of concrete blocks at the southwestern tip of the island.  Twice a month on either a full or new moon, the rising tide brought saltwater over the bank and under the dwelling. Our home was very primitive. We had no indoor plumbing, phone, TV and only minimal power provided single gas generator.  All meals and heat source came from a single potbelly wood-burning stove.

We were the only residents on Dewees, except for occasional guests of the Reynolds family. The visitors would stay in the fourteen-room lodge, previously build in the mid 1920s and owned by Coulter Huyler.  Dad served as the guests’ personal hunting and fishing guide, Mom prepared all meals, and after attending school by boat, my brother and I contributed by carrying their luggage and keeping fires stoked.

Our life was simple but exciting.  We lived off the islands natural resources: wild game and fresh seafood. Whereas most children had dogs and cats for pets, Mark and I played with and raised alligators, snakes and raccoons.  Little about our primal, isolated existence could be considered ordinary. The main characters include, Ola Leppert, my mom, Oscar Leppert, my father, Mark Leppert, my younger brother and me.  Growing up on Dewees Island provided a host of unforgettable memories. This book is a true life, “Huckleberry Finn” adventure. The outlandish adventures we encountered are assured to keep a readers interest.

A note about the book cover art: the picture appears to have foothills in the background and hence it can’t be from Dewees.  Too bad, lots of photographers from Dewees have pictures of truly amazing sunsets.

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Baby Terrapins at Wet Lab

The next time you’re at the Huyler House be sure to check out the Baby Diamond Backed Terrapins in one of the tanks.  Our intern Chrissie is a budding expert on Terrapins.  She’s studying the population of the creatures on Dewees and has enrolled the turtles in the Wet Lab in a  “Head Start” program.  The goal is to enable the Terrapins to grow over the winter, instead of hibernating.  Ask Chrissie about it the next time you see her.

If you’re interested in Terrapins, Judy recommends the book, “Diamonds in the Marsh: A Natural History of the Diamonback Terrapin” by Barbara Brennessel.

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