go to basket

Summer at Anson Mills

July 2012

Cotton Boll

Hey, everybody!

It’s been a long time. We’ve been meaning to write—honestly. But we found ourselves burdened with creation. The seeds we sowed to bring Anson Mills’ website 2.0 into being demanded enormous care and attention. As we beheld the new Anson Mills take root, grow green, and flourish, we found ourselves unwilling to return to the parched mustard walls of the original site—except to pull content off of it!

Click around! Our design and development teams have worked themselves silly to produce this website. We think it is clean, beautiful, and supremely functional. Fresh information and new images inform many pages. We hope you like the results. Stay tuned for regular updates. We’ve missed you!

Kay and Glenn

County Fair Kettle Corn

Popcorn couldn’t be more American. My grandfather, who ate it nearly every night before bed, called the salty-bald kernels in the bottom of the bowl “old maids.” For breakfast he’d sprinkle leftover popcorn with sugar and flood it with cold milk. It is still my favorite cereal. More grandly ceremonial in their traditions, Glenn’s family sourced popcorn from local Native Americans in Mission Valley, and popped it on an open hearth in a long-handled heirloom iron popping basket whose sliding filigree lid was punched with tiny holes. (The children’s burns were epic.) Neither of our childhood experiences comes anywhere near that poor flatulent paper bag lying bloated in the microwave. Yet this is just how many Americans today experience the miraculous ancient native foodway known as popcorn. Ding!

Well, we’ve got a cure for that! This diminutive heirloom yellow flint popcorn is naturally so sweet and alive with floral honeysuckle notes that it doesn’t really need a damned bit of embellishment. Our two dogs go mad for this corn, which we toss—in aforementioned virginal state—into the air like confetti while they swarm, snapping, at our feet. An admirable balance of light crunch and puff with outrageously rich toasted corn flavors, it pops to a diverse collection of shapes as well—Native Americans likened the changing shapes of their oldest maize food, to clouds.

Next, with a nod to early summer and fairs across the country, we present old-fashioned kettle corn made at home: shatteringly crisp, subtly sweet with dimensions of light parch corn and faint caramel over the big aroma and flavor of glorious summer corn. Think of it as a sensory preamble to fireworks: each kernel explodes and fluoresces while popping, and when you taste the kernels, it is as if you have captured the taste sensation of miniature Roman candles.

Sit back and taste the show!

Here’s to Anson Mills 2.0, y’all, and Good Food!