Nov 14, 2025
Steve Troxler
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Steve Troxler
Top 10 Commissioner/Secretary of Agriculture of The United States
Here's my list of the 10 Commissioner/Secretary of Agriculture of The United States that I'd like to do.
#10. Douglas H. Fisher (D-NJ)
New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture
#9. Doug Goehring (R-ND)
North Dakota Commissioner of Agriculture
#8. Craig W. Buttars (R-UT)
Utah Commissioner of Agriculture and Food
#7. Russell Redding (D-PA)
Secretary of Agriculture of Pennsylvania
#6. Steve Troxler (R-NC)
North Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture
#5. Shawn N. Jasper (R-NH)
Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, Markets, and Food
#4. Hugh Weathers (R-SC)
South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture
Weathers has just about everything I like in a man. Handsome, average build and a nice voice.
#3. Sid Miller (R-TX)
Commissioner of Agriculture of Texas
Sexy silverfox with a dad bod with a high chance of being hairy. I can’t tell what he’s working with, but he’s from Texas and they supposedly grow ‘em big there.
#2. Rick Pate (R-AL)
Agriculture Commissioner of Alabama
Rick Pate is a guy I could spend a weekend with... fucking like rabbits.
#1. Michael G. Strain (R-LA)
Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner
Mike is a short chub with nice tits and a body that was made for bottoming. How could I not be in lust.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Tom Vilsack (D)
United States Secretary of Agriculture
Current US Secretary of Agriculture. He's no Sonny Perdue, but he'd catch a dick.
The story of why North Carolina’s agriculture commissioner avoids meat—and why Martha Stewart went to prison.
Steve Troxler first noticed something was wrong on a Sunday morning.
In February 2017, North Carolina’s longtime agriculture commissioner had just returned from a trade mission to Brazil, where he’d feasted on steak with local officials and businessmen. He awoke with a high fever and a rash, severe enough that he went to see his doctor Monday morning, who, in turn, sent him to an infectious disease specialist.
Before going to Brazil, Troxler had received four vaccines, including a live vaccine, which his doctors at first thought could be the source of the trouble. After that, they ran a series of tests over several weeks, looking for signs of every mosquito-borne disease known to science. A few false positives came up, but nothing helpful.
Through it all, doctors told Troxler he needed to keep his strength up, so he should eat lots of protein. He happily obliged, filling his diet with hamburgers, barbecue, and country ham. But he still felt terrible.
Then, one morning, he skipped his morning protein and ate a sweet roll for breakfast; his symptoms subsided. He went to work and ate meatloaf for lunch. Within a few hours, the fever and rash came back. A lightbulb went off.
In 2009 and again in 2014, Troxler had contracted Lyme disease, which put tick-borne illnesses on his radar. And he recalled another tick-borne illness that had been linked to an allergy to red meat. In Brazil and since he’d come back, he’d eaten a lot of red meat — and the whole time, he’d been sick.
“So I said, now, wait a minute, I think I got this thing figured out,” Troxler says. “I went back to the infectious disease doctor. I said, ‘How about testing me for the tick bite and red-meat allergy?’”
His hunch proved correct.
Troxler, whose department regulates the state’s $84 billion agriculture industry, has what’s known as an alpha-gal allergy, a reaction triggered by mammalian meat products such as beef and pork that, in severe instances, can cause fatal anaphylaxis.
As of this spring, there were more than five thousand confirmed alpha-gal allergy cases in the U.S., but that’s likely just the tip of the iceberg. The allergy isn’t well-known, even in the medical community. It’s only been discovered in the last twenty years, linked to ticks in the last dozen years, and the average time between when most patients first experience symptoms and when they are diagnosed is more than seven years. As an article in the journal Oxford Medical Case Reports noted last year, “The prevalence of this allergy is dramatically increasing.”
It’s not just that researchers are becoming more aware of the allergy, either. There’s evidence it’s spreading, too. Tick-carrying deer populations are exploding around developed areas due to a decrease in hunting and the disappearance of natural predators. And, thanks to climate change, the Lone Star and other alpha-gal-spreading ticks — which have traditionally preferred warmer climates like the southeastern U.S. — are migrating further north than ever before.
Troxler says that his allergy has been “nothing more than an inconvenience.”
For others, however, it’s much more serious — and the answer isn’t always as simple as swearing off meat. The alpha-gal sugar that causes the allergy can show up unannounced in everything from deodorant to condoms, as well as life-saving medications and medical devices.
A cure remains elusive, but a biotech firm in Virginia is taking a different tack: Instead of seeking to change a person’s response to the animal, it’s changing the animal.
At a forum organized in Raleigh in August, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Revivicor’s initiative to genetically modify pigs that are free of the alpha-gal allergen had been accepted into its Veterinary Innovation Program, meaning the altered-and-cloned pigs would be ushered through the regulatory process on their way to the slaughterhouse and grocery store shelves.
And this could all happen sooner than you think. If everything goes to plan, both meat and medical products with alpha-gal-free pigs could be on the market within a year.
If it weren’t for the alpha-gal allergy, domestic diva Martha Stewart might never have been convicted for insider trading in 2004.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, researchers conducting human trials on a cancer drug derived from mouse cells found that some participants were developing serious allergic reactions. One patient collapsed and died.
The manufacturer, ImClone, had to report these reactions to the FDA. Stewart’s broker got an early heads-up, informed her, and she dumped her stock in the company before the news broke. Stewart ended up serving five months in the federal pen.
In 2002, Dr. Thomas Platt-Mills, the director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, linked those reactions to the alpha-gal carbohydrate in mouse cells.
A quick biology lesson: Within every cell are proteins responsible for most cellular functions. Attached to these proteins are sugars. Alpha-gal is one of these sugars, but it only appears among most non-primate mammals — i.e., not humans. It does, however, appear in mice, as well as the mammals that humans consume.
Not long after Platt-Mills published his findings, Dr. Scott Commins, now a professor at the UNC School of Medicine, began his residency and then a fellowship at UVA. With Platt-Mills, he began seeing patients at the UVA allergy clinic who had suddenly developed a reaction to red meat after safely eating it their whole lives. Oddly, their reactions were delayed, usually by several hours, and were most severe after they ingested fatty meat. (It takes the body about three hours to begin digesting animal fat.) This was unlike other food allergies, which occur instantaneously.
They quickly understood that their patients had developed an allergy to meat, but they didn’t know how it was being spread.
Geography held the answer.
Platt-Mills and Commins went back to the cancer study. Patients from California didn’t react to the drug at all, but about a quarter of those from the Southeast did.
From there, they figured out that a map of participants who’d had reactions to the drug correlated to places that had seen outbreaks of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a potentially deadly bacterial infection spread by ticks and most commonly reported in the rural Southeast.
Then, a lab tech working on the alpha-gal puzzle developed a beef allergy after going hiking and receiving several tick bites. The tech found an attached female Lone Star tick that left a “persistent itchy spot for several weeks.”
That, Commins says, “provided a clue that perhaps ticks were part of the story.”
The tech wasn’t alone. Multiple alpha-gal patients in the UVA clinic recounted irksome tick bites — especially from the Lone Star tick, the most common transmitter of the alpha-gal allergy in the U.S. — before they became symptomatic.
Intuitively, this made sense.
As with other tick-borne illnesses, a tick could carry an alpha-gal molecule from an animal it had bitten and then transmit it into a person’s body. The molecule could then trigger an immune system reaction to red meat: anything from hives and swelling of the face or tongue to abdominal pain, headaches, and lightheadedness.
In the most extreme cases, this reaction could cause anaphylaxis — a potentially fatal reaction that restricts breathing.
Like Steve Troxler, Beth Carrison diagnosed herself with the alpha-gal allergy. Many patients do.
According to a 2017 study in the Journal of Primary Care Community Health, which conducted interviews with twenty-eight patients at Commins’s allergy clinic at UNC, alpha-gal sufferers were correctly diagnosed by doctors less than 10 percent of the time, and more self-diagnosed than were accurately diagnosed by a physician.
Researchers believe that 20–25 percent of southeastern U.S. residents carry the alpha-gal allergen, though only 1 percent of carriers are symptomatic. Scientists also think that many previously unexplained anaphylactic reactions may stem from alpha-gal allergies.
Carrison, who co-founded the Pittsboro-based organization Tick-Borne Conditions United in 2018, says the information gap on the alpha-gal allergy within the medical community is more like a chasm.
“I self-diagnosed for both [the alpha-gal allergy] and Lyme because I connected the dots and then brought the information to my physician,” Carrison says. “In both cases, he refused to test me.”
So she found a new doctor who was willing to listen to her story and her recollection of being bitten by a Lone Star tick. He’d just come back from a conference where Platt-Mills had spoken, and he agreed to test her. The test confirmed her self-diagnosis; her symptoms appear about two hours after she ingests pork — or within minutes after she’s exposed to red meat particles in the air.
Indeed, ingesting red meat isn’t the only way to trigger an alpha-gal reaction.
For Annie Mae King, who owns Harper’s Grill in Bear Creek, a small community in Chatham County, even exposure to airborne meat particles can lead to nausea, vertigo, and fatigue. She’s no longer able to taste her restaurant’s food, cook, or even be in the kitchen. Her business is up for sale.
Byproducts harvested from animals that carry the alpha-gal sugar can also cause reactions, and they’re found in all sorts of things. Glycerin made from beef fat can be used in tapioca pudding, shaving cream, and condoms. The musk in some perfumes comes from deer, and sheep-derived lanolin is used in some lipsticks and deodorants.
Medical products aren’t immune, either. Gelatin capsules and gummy vitamins have components made from animal hooves. Vitamin D3 is derived from sheep. Heparin, pancreatic enzymes, and thyroid medications are made from pigs. Premarin, a hormone used by menopausal women, is produced from horses. These are but a few of the mammalian-based medications commonly found in medicine cabinets.
And animal-derived materials are also found in medical implants. They’re used in polymers and the coatings of synthetic devices, bone substitutes, and collagen injections. Cows and, more commonly, pigs are sources for heart valves.
For a heart-valve recipient who also has an undiagnosed alpha-gal allergy, this can lead to a life-threatening rejection until the valve is removed and replaced with a mechanical valve (which carries a greater clotting risk).
At UVA, surgeons are familiar with alpha-gal because of Platt-Mills’s work; elsewhere, however, many patients aren’t tested for the allergy before heart-valve surgery.
Rejections are often attributed to unknown causes, researchers say.
In August, Steve Solomon, the director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, came to Raleigh for a press conference with Dr. David Ayares, the CEO of a Blacksburg, Virginia-based biotech company called Revivicor.
A spinoff of the British company that created Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned animal, in 2003, Revivicor has been developing what it calls GalSafe pigs — hogs that have been genetically modified to remove the alpha-gal sugar.
Solomon was there to announce that the FDA was conferring these pigs fast-track status through the regulatory process.
“For consumers like Commissioner Troxler that have this allergic condition, this is a significant change,” Solomon said.
Revivicor’s nondescript headquarters in a cookie-cutter office park in Blacksburg belies the whiz-bang nature of the work done inside. Even the lab where pigs are cloned looks more high school biology classroom than Star Trek.
The company was founded to address the shortage of organs and tissues available for human implantation through xenotransplantation, or animal to human transplantation. The biggest challenge with this work is rejection — and alpha-gal is the largest provocateur of rejection response, says Ayares.
The Revivicor team modified pig genes to essentially remove instructions that told the pigs to produce the alpha-gal sugar. They then used these manipulations to clone genetically engineered pigs.
They’ve produced multiple generations since the original manipulations, with enough pigs to now have breeding herds that solely consist of GalSafe livestock.
Final FDA approval hinges on showing that the engineered pigs are otherwise identical in every way to their unaltered relatives, from appearance to anatomy to the taste and aroma of the meat.
After that, Revivicor will partner with a slaughterhouse as well as a harvester for medical products and a meatpacker and retailers.
So far, the company appears to have encountered little resistance from anti-GMO groups. Perhaps that’s because of the nature of the modification — removing a trait rather than adding genes or creating or hybrid — or maybe it’s because its work, and the alpha-gal phenomenon generally, isn’t well-known.
Either way, it’s a different reception than the first genetically modified food received.
In 1989, AquaBounty first combined the Atlantic and Chinook salmon with the eel-like ocean pout to create Aquadvantage, a fish that grows faster and can be brought to market quicker than typical salmon. The product went on sale in Canada in 2016, but its sale in the U.S. was held up in Congress as lawmakers battled over labeling. Recently cleared, AquaBounty could be in stores next year, though it remains controversial.
Troxler doesn’t think Revivicor’s pigs will take nearly as long to reach the market — for food, drugs, or medical devices.
And the commissioner, who’s had to go without meat much longer than he’d like, is impatient for progress.
“The first piece of pork off the grill is mine,” he says.
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Steve Troxler
Steve Troxler
Bring your finest Thanksgiving dish and gather ’round our imaginary table.
After the success of last year’s soiree, we decided to make our Virtual Holiday Potluck an annual tradition. So once again, we contacted a collection of notable North Carolinians with one question: What would you bring to a holiday potluck?
Without further ado, let’s (virtually) gorge.
Guests
Durham Distillery
WRAL anchor Ken Smith
Duke football coach David Cutcliffe
Attorney General Josh Stein
Raleigh Mayor-elect Mary-Ann Baldwin
Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane
Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry
First Lady Kristen Cooper
Fashion designer Alexander Julian
Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler
Actress Amy Sedaris
Theatre in the Park executive director Ira David Wood III
Elementary school student Stella Freelon
“Local Dish” host Lisa Prince
Cocktails
Durham Distillery offers two libations for our virtual feast. The first is a Gin Martinez, a twist on the classic martini. The second is a concoction to fill your punch bowl, featuring the distillery’s Damn Fine chocolate and coffee liqueurs.
Ken Smith, meanwhile, shows off Guavaberry rum, a holiday favorite his mother made for Christmas Eve carolers on Tortola in the Virgin Islands.
Conniption Gin Martinez
1.5 oz Conniption American Dry gin
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 bar spoons Luxardo
4 dashes bourbon-barrel bitters
Orange peel garnish
The Naughty List
1 375 ml bottle Damn Fine Chocolate Liqueur
1 375 ml bottle Damn Fine Coffee Liqueur
12 oz. Irish whiskey
3 oz. simple syrup (turbinado or demerara preferred)
20 dashes of bitters (Bittermens elemakule preferred, or Angostura)
25 oz. of skim or 2% milk
Serve on ice with orange peel and cracked cardamom pod as garnish.
Guavaberry rum
Serves 24 (4 oz. servings)
1 cup red guavaberry, divided
1 cup yellow guavaberry, divided
1 cup brown sugar
1 bottle dark rum (750 ml)
1 cup prunes
1 cup raisins
Vanilla beans
1 cup sorrel
Gingerroot
Cinnamon sticks
Prep: Rinse berries and clean by popping them and removing seeds. Rinse seeds, strain, and save liquid. Put seedless berries into a large pot, but reserve 1/2-cup yellow and 1/2-cup red berries for later. Add liquid saved from rinsing seeds into the pot and add brown sugar. Boil mixture until berries are soft. The juice should have a medium syrup consistency or be sticky when cool. Mash or grind saved berries and mix with strongest old rum available. To the cooled mixture, add prunes, raisins, vanilla beans, sorrel, ginger root, and cinnamon bark. Pour into bottles and cork.
Store in a dark place for several months. When guavaberry liqueur fully ripens (the taste will tell), strain and re-bottle for use. Careful: Guavaberries can leave a permanent stain.
Apps
For his first dish, Duke football coach David Cutcliffe brings us a healthy chicken salad with apples, cranberries, and sour cream, served with whole wheat crostini and endive dippers. His second: blue deviled eggs (get it?) in two varieties. One has blue cheese stirred into the yolks; for the other, the whites are soaked in a blue dye bath until they are a true, brilliant Duke Blue.
Attorney General Josh Stein says that, when he was a kid, his mom’s sweet potato rolls always got the best of his self-control: He’d eat as many as he could. His mother and now his sister-in-law still make the rolls — the recipe came from Leah Chase’s The Dooky Chase Cookbook — for him every year.
Incoming Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin shares her Bloody Mary shrimp, a zesty blend of fresh shrimp, vodka, horseradish, and sriracha, garnished with avocado and served as a single bite on a porcelain Chinese spoon.
Sweet Potato Rolls
Makes 12 to 18 rolls
1/4 cup warm water
1 package dry yeast
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup butter or margarine
2 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 egg (slightly beaten)
5–7 cups sifted all-purpose flour
More butter
Prep: Put warm water into a small bowl and dissolve yeast, then set aside. Scald milk; add sugar, salt, cinnamon, and butter. Stir until butter is melted. Pour over potatoes, add lemon juice, and beat until smooth. Cool to lukewarm, then add egg and the dissolved yeast and mix well. Stir in 2 cups flour and beat at medium speed for 3 minutes. Add enough flour to make a fairly stiff dough.
Turn onto a floured surface and knead until satiny. Place in a greased bowl, grease top of dough, cover, and let rise until it doubles in bulk. Punch down and knead once more, then shape into rolls. Place in a greased pan, cover, and let rise until double in bulk. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes. Brush tops with melted butter.
Bloody Mary Shrimp
Makes about 40–50 hors d’oeuvres
1 pound peeled and de-veined shrimp
3 to 4 celery ribs, thinly sliced
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup Absolut Peppar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
Zest from one lemon
2 tablespoons horseradish (or more, to taste)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon sriracha
Garnish with diced avocado
Prep: Bring large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add shrimp, then remove from heat and let stand in water until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Drain in colander and cool to room temperature. Cut shrimp into four pieces and put in large bowl with celery and scallions.
Whisk together remaining ingredients. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Stir sauce into shrimp mixture. Spoon shrimp mixture into Chinese soup spoon or shot glass and arrange on tray.
Sides
Baldwin’s also making Collard Green Gratin, a recipe she snagged from the culinary site Epicurious and made her own, using pancetta instead of country ham or prosciutto and sometimes adding muenster cheese on top.
The woman she’ll replace next week as Raleigh mayor, Nancy McFarlane, is bringing a sweet potato pudding, an update of the familiar sweet potato casserole that you can top with either marshmallows or tropical coconut. McFarlane got her recipe from a well-worn, stained page in a cookbook of submissions from politicians’ wives.
Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry will be leaving office next year, which means another face will grace the state’s elevators. Her contribution is a twist on the Thanksgiving standby mashed potatoes. She adds butter during boiling, then adds, um, mayo (Duke’s, of course) during the mashing.
Once again, North Carolina’s first couple will sup with us, and Kristin Cooper is supplying the traditional cranberry sauce, sans can. She took a recipe from Southern Living and adapted it over time.
Amy Sedaris — star of Strangers With Candy and Divorce — will join us with either her homemade spanakopita, spinach turnovers made with phyllo dough, or a Mediterranean macaroni-and-cheese-like dish made with ground lamb and long tubular noodles called pastitsio.
Collard Green Gratin
8 servings
4 oz. thinly sliced country ham or prosciutto (alternative: pancetta)
1 cup coarse fresh breadcrumbs
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1 cup finely grated parmesan, divided
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
2 bunches collard greens (about 1 pound), center ribs and stems removed
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups whole milk
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Prep: Preheat oven to 325°. Place ham on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake until crisp, 20–25 minutes; let cool and break into pieces.
Combine breadcrumbs and 2 tablespoons oil in medium skillet; toast over medium heat, tossing occasionally, until golden brown and crisp, 10–15 minutes. Remove from heat and add thyme and 1/4 cup parmesan; season with salt and pepper. Mix in ham and set aside. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)
Cook collard greens in a large pot of boiling salted water until tender and bright green, about 4 minutes. Drain, transfer to a bowl of ice water, and let cool. Drain and squeeze dry with paper towels. Coarsely chop greens and place in a large bowl.
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring often, until softened and golden, 15–20 minutes. Transfer to bowl with greens; set aside. Reserve saucepan.
Increase oven to 400°. Melt butter in reserved saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and cook, whisking constantly, until mixture is smooth and pale brown, about 4 minutes. Gradually whisk in milk, 1/2 cup at a time; add nutmeg. Bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer, whisking often, until thickened, 5–8 minutes. Whisk in remaining 3/4 cup parmesan. Add béchamel to collard greens mixture and mix to combine; season with salt and pepper.
Transfer collard greens mixture to a 10-inch cast-iron skillet or 9-inch pie dish and top with breadcrumb mixture; place pie dish on rimmed baking sheet. Bake until gratin is bubbling, 15–20 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving.
Sweet Potato Pudding
6–8 servings
2 cups mashed sweet potatoes
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 cup marshmallows
Prep: Blend potato, butter, and sugar. Add eggs, beating after each addition. Add spices and milk. Mix thoroughly. Bake in buttered 9-inch square pan at 375° for 35 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle on coconut or marshmallows. Return to oven and bake for 10 minutes or until top is toasted. Serve warm.
Cranberry Sauce
4 cups fresh cranberries (two bags)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons grated orange rind
1/2 cup orange juice
1/3 cup slivered almonds, toasted
Prep: Combine the first five ingredients in saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes or until the cranberries pop, stirring occasionally. (It will seem runny. That’s OK: It doesn’t firm until chilled.) Cool, cover, and refrigerate.
Toast nuts in microwave on plate for 1 minute; stir. Toast for additional 15 seconds if needed. (Caution: They burn quickly.) Cool and stir into the sauce just before serving.
Mains
Alexander Julian is the fashion designer behind the iconic UNC argyle. He’s also an Eastern NC barbecue evangelist. He brings us “a nice warm, aromatic bowl of Eastern North Carolina barbecue from The Pig in Chapel Hill. It’s organic, and it’s whole-hog, and I think it’s got more flavor than anybody’s.”
Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, an alpha-gal sufferer, is allergic to meat. He’s bringing a Honey Baked Ham anyway.
Ira David Wood III, executive director of Theatre in the Park, one-ups the commish with his very own country ham, which he boils for 4–6 hours on low heat in a deep pan.
The trick, he says, is to pour off the salty water every hour or so and refill the pan with fresh water; for the last two hours, swap the water for apple cider.
Desserts
Stella Freelon’s father is currently running for state senate, her late grandfather was an iconic architect, and her grandmother is a renowned jazz singer. That’s quite the pedigree.
Young Stella, who’s in elementary school, is a budding chef with a unique take on a yogurt parfait. She layers the yogurt with honey, blueberries, granola, and chocolate chips in a large vessel. It resembles an English trifle but is fresher and lighter.
Finally, we have two family recipes from Lisa Prince, host of the WRAL cooking segment “Local Dish”: peanut butter balls, a riff on buckeye candies with a creamy peanut butter center covered in a shell of Ghirardelli dark chocolate; and a classic chess pie made with cornmeal and vinegar.
Peanut Butter Balls
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons butter, softened
10 oz. Ghirardelli dark melting wafers
Prep: With a mixer, combine the powdered sugar, peanut butter, and butter. Shape peanut butter mixture into 1-inch balls, placing them on a baking sheet covered with wax paper. Let balls stand for 20 minutes until dry.
Melt dipping chocolate. Drop balls one at a time in melted chocolate. Using a fork, remove from the chocolate, letting excess chocolate drip off. Place back on the wax paper. Let stand until dry.
Cover and store peanut butter balls in a cool, dry place.
Classic Chess Pie
1 deep dish or regular pie crust
2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons cornmeal
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
Prep: Stir together sugar and next 7 ingredients until blended. Add eggs, stirring well. Pour into piecrust. Bake at 350° for 50–55 minutes, shielding edges after 10 minutes to prevent excessive browning. Cool on wire rack.
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"Being able to use my voice to amplify the idea that we’re human beings who deserve love and respect and equality and dignity has been a really powerful experience."
Jenna Wadsworth is used to blazing trails. At age 21, she became the youngest woman elected to a North Carolina office with her successful 2010 campaign for Wake County Soil and Water District Supervisor. Now, at age 31, she’s eyeing an even bigger goalpost: to oust Republican Steve Troxler and become the state’s next Commissioner of Agriculture. It’s one of the state’s more conservative offices, and Wadsworth is not only unabashedly progressive, but if elected, she’d be the first-ever LGBTQ person to serve on the council of state. Wadsworth sat down with the INDY to talk about how to celebrate Pride during the pandemic, legalizing weed, and what readers can expect if she’s elected.
INDY: You grew up in rural North Carolina. How did that affect your experience coming out?
Jenna Wadsworth: Everybody’s coming-out story is a little different, and they all have merit. We should respect everybody’s process and timeline for coming out when they feel comfortable. I get asked about this a lot now, running as an out candidate, but you know, it didn’t feel like this ceremonious big event in my life. I am a North Carolina native. I was born in Raleigh, but I grew up on a hog, cow, chicken, corn, tobacco, and soybean farm on a dirt road in Johnston County.
I always knew that I was not straight, and that really became clear when I was 15 or 16. I’ve always been proud to be who I am; I want to be very clear about that. But there are a number of folks who didn’t even realize that I was out until they saw that I was endorsed by the National LGBTQ Victory Fund or LPAC as an out candidate. Everyone who was close to me always knew that I was bisexual. I have a degree of privilege being a cisgender feminine woman, especially since a lot of my more public relationships have always been with men. So people just assumed, and I don’t know if it was right or wrong for me to let them do that. I thought there were 100 things more interesting about me when I first ran for office in college than the fact that I could love someone who identified as a man or a woman.
Even in 2010, when I ran for office for the first time as a junior in college, we weren’t where we are now. We had just started evolving, as the South has become more progressive in recent years. We were going through the fight for marriage rights, trying to overturn DOMA on the federal level. I think people still weren’t as open-minded as they are now. In the last couple years, in particular, I’ve seen so many violations of our human rights. I’ve seen it be questioned by people who hold positions of power, whether or not we, as members of the LGBTQ community, deserve the same rights and privileges as anyone else.
When I occupied a position of power here in Wake County, and especially when I became the Democratic nominee for statewide office, I knew that it would be a waste to remain silent when so many other people who were members of my community were hurting, especially those who didn’t have the same privilege of being cisgender, like I am. Being able to use my voice to amplify the idea that we’re human beings who deserve love and respect and equality and dignity, the same rights and freedoms as everyone else, has been a really powerful experience. It’s been so moving throughout this campaign to have people of all ages who have not come out reach out to me to talk to me about how much my visibility matters. This election is so much bigger than just me: It’s an opportunity for voters to prove that representation does indeed matter.
Was it an easy choice to be so open about your sexual orientation when running for this office, especially in a state that has historically been so unwelcoming to LGBTQ+ individuals?
I’ve never been one who was willing to or capable of staying silent in the face of injustice. That’s just not who I am. I am loud and unapologetic when it comes to fighting for what’s right.
Do you have any words of advice for others in situations where they might not yet feel comfortable being open about their sexuality or gender identity?
I want to remind folk that they matter. You are important, and you are special, and you are valued, and you are loved, I’ll fight for you, and when you’re ready to come out, I’ll be there to support you and stand by your side. In certain professional settings, it can be so hard to come out and live authentically as yourself. More than anything, you hear criticism from outside voices, who would never have to experience not being their authentic selves. Folks with the privilege to not have to imagine how painful it is not to get to be yourself are the ones who often try to dull our shine, or shut us down or keep us silent. I had a number of folks that tried to discourage me from being so open about being a member of the LGBTQ community. “Jenna, you’re running for one of the most conservative offices that’s on the ballot as an unabashedly progressive candidate, and then on top of that, now, we hear that you’re gay.” I saw that “risk.” I said, you know, at the end of the day, getting to be proud, getting to be authentic, getting to be myself, I think that’s the most important thing. How could folks expect me to lead and serve them if I couldn’t be transparent and authentic about who I am?
What can our readers expect from you if you are elected to be Secretary of Agriculture?
One thing I’m advocating for is the legalization of cannabis. I think that’s probably one of the more exciting things that urban readers would be particularly thrilled to hear, and I think it’s a huge economic opportunity for our farmers. COVID-19 has created major budget shortfalls in places, so legalizing marijuana is a way to really fill some of those gaps and to provide money for the things that matter, including public education, health care, and transportation. Legalization also creates an opportunity to combat the opioid epidemic and to achieve social justice for communities of color who have for too long been disproportionately criminalized on the basis of possession charges versus Caucasian users, despite the fact that white folks and Black folks are using cannabis at the same rates.
I also talk about bridging the urban-rural divide and figuring out how, no matter where you call home, your zip code doesn’t have to be a determinant to your long-term success and outcomes in this state. That means advocating for rural broadband access. Although a lot of us in the Triangle have strong broadband access, there are places that don’t, but in particular, rural and disadvantaged communities. If you want to help people build power, you’ve got to give them the tools necessary to succeed.
I’m talking about advocating for investments in rural health care because if you are not healthy, you could not be an economically productive citizen. It’s another failure of legislative Republicans to create policy that actually made a difference in the lives of the people that they’re supposed to be serving. The current commissioner doesn’t recognize climate change and sits as an honorary co-chair of the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign team. Because of the inaction, poorly implemented strategies, and personal opinions of the current commissioner, we’re seeing farmers suffer. They are worse off now than they were 15 years ago when he first took office. As a result of all these bankruptcies and farm stress, you’re seeing farmers committing suicide at nearly record rates, especially here in the South.
When I talk about bridging the urban-rural divide and about making meaningful investments in health care, that absolutely includes mental health care and destigmatizing it in rural communities. But in general, when you destigmatize mental health care, that doesn’t just help our farmers: That helps people all over the state. It helps LGBTQ-identifying folks, especially LGBTQ youth, who are more likely to consider committing suicide, because again, they don’t feel welcomed or accepted in their communities.
I see it as a form of advocacy for my community, my LGBTQ community as well. I think it is absolutely critical that the person who is leading our state’s biggest industry is able to give a nod to our past to learn from our agricultural heritage but has a vision for the future and the ability to implement that vision to create a more sustainable, just, and equitable future for every single person who calls this state home.
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