A story & recipe by Julia Flower about going home to a surprising South Carolina where her friends were sporting Obama gear and watching drag queen comedy.

A North Carolina Food Lion called the cops on Joe Neal for pocketing a $3 steak. The 74-year-old didn't have enough change to pay for the sirloin. The steak was later consumed, not by Joe's son, but by a fire that ravaged Joe's house. The cops were summoned when Neal returned to the store to pay for the steak.

For years, the good monks of Mepkin Abbey, a monastery in South Carolina, supported their calling by running an egg farming business, and selling the eggs to local food retailers. However, the animal activist grooup PETA launched a campaign against the monks' egg farming practices. In response, the monks are calling it quits.

A few months ago our production manager read an article about pigs in North Carolina that eat everything from trail mix to licorice to peanut butter cups. As a result, we were wondering if a local pig farmer could use our waste chocolate as pig food.

Slow Food Charlotte gather for lessons in cheese making. North Carolina creamery comes down to teach the Charlotte group how it's done.

Prior to the American Revolution, the British began taxing American colonies to raise revenue. South Carolinia residents were outraged about the 1767 Townshend Acts that taxed tea, paper, wine, glass, and oil. To protest the earlier (1765) Stamp Act, South Carolina sent wealthy rice planter Thomas Lynch, 26-year old lawyer John Rutledge, and Christopher Gadsden to the Stamp Act Congress, held in 1765 New York. Other taxes were removed in 1766, but tea taxes remained. Soon South Carolinians confiscated the tea that arrived at Charleston Harbor and stored it in the Exchange and Customs House. It was later sold to help pay for the Revolution.Many of the South Carolinian battles fought during the American Revolution were with loyalist Carolinians and the part of the Cherokee tribe that allied with the British. This was to General Henry Clinton's advantage, whose strategy was to march his troops north from St. Augustine and sandwich George Washington in the North. Clinton alienated Loyalists and enraged Patriots by attacking a fleeing army of Patriot soldiers who posed no threat. He also threatened to take away the parole of Patriot prisoners of war unless they took up arms against their fellow Americans. Enslaved Africans and African Americans chose independence by escaping to British lines where they were promised freedom. More than 25,000 slaves, one-quarter of those in the colony, escaped and joined the British during the Revolutionary War.Patriots regained control of Charleston and South Carolina with untrained militiamen by trapping Tarleton's troops along a river. In 1787, John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Pierce Butler went to Philadelphia where the Constitutional Convention was being held and constructed what served as a detailed outline for the U.S. Constitution.