When I’m in Culpeper, I always stop and see Jessica at the Raven’s Nest Coffee House on Davis Street. She’s a wonderful cook, and makes baked goods, soups and breakfast and lunch specials from scratch, using fresh produce in season from the Culpeper Farmers Market. I worked there all day using the fast internet connection between my travels in different directions and had a delicious tomato-mozzarella salad (caprese) and a very nice chicken salad with grapes, both with a hard, crusty roll. She gave me a taste of her mint lemonade, a real treat on a hot, dusty July day. Jessica said she also makes lemonade with rosemary or thyme, but the fresh mint was delicious. To make it, Jessica chops mint leaves finely, adds sugar, covers everything with an inch or so of boiling water, then adds the juice of 2 lemons or so for a quart, then cools it down with cold water and lets it steep in the refrigerator until it’s ready to pour. Davis Street, one of the city’s two main streets, has become a culinary center – more on that later.
