Southern Cooking by a Yankee at Heart
I suppose I could be considered a Southerner by now. I’ve lived in Texas since 1984 and 8 years in Georgia before that.
I grew up on a farm where cooking was done in huge amounts to feed threshing crews; plentiful and high calorie. Dainty salads were something in the magazines with the fanciest salads being jello molds for holiday meals.
The South has some very different ideas about cooking. In Georgia, sausage biscuits and fried okra were an instant acceptance but grits mixed into scrambled eggs doused with ketchup was not. Then there was the annual discussion beginning two weeks prior to the holiday event about the barbecue—chicken or pork, pulled or chopped, hash, and potato salad–always served with a slice of that white bread that clings to the roof of your mouth. Those in the know bought each part of their barbecue meal at separate places. Red Velvet Cake was the favored dessert and took several bottles of red food coloring.
Now in Texas there are different views about cooking with Cajun and Tex-Mex thrown in. Some places have a strong German/Czech/Polish influence with kolaches. One of the cooks at one of the hospitals gave me a lesson in how to cook okra and tomatoes—I could make an entire meal on this.
While many of us are spending more time in the kitchen, I decided I would try fried green tomatoes. It was time-consuming but not hard. We paired it with a broiled fish filet and a bowl of fresh strawberries drizzled with some of our honey. Regrettably it was the last of my tomatoes—weather far too hot for them to continue to produce—maybe I’ll get some fall tomatoes to try this again
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Sylvia Weir Art 