annecros

Bay Leaf Studded Pork. Actually, the whole plate is from "The Gift of Southern Cooking" Watercress in Pork Stock Butterbeans in Pork Stock Plain Rice Bay Leaf Studded Pork with Mushroom Sauce If you've never had watercress in pork stock, just do it. There are no words to describe just how wonderful this dish is, and it cooks up in less than 10 minutes, closer to 5. The butterbeans and rice are just simple presentations of the food I have eaten all my life, and these were particularly good butterbeans, but I must admit they came from the freezer. I make my pork stock ad hoc (as in "add a hock to some boiling water"), but I do have a good source for quality smoked hocks and other meats. The cookbook calls for making a stock from an entire pork shoulder, which would be a bit too much trouble for me to store and keep track of. I hate to waste. I wouldn't argue too hard with you if you told me that you cooked a pork roast just to get some of this mushroom sauce! There's a whole bottle of port that lived in the pot with the pork roast as it roasted 5 hours, with onion and other spices, and it just took the whole meal over the top with flavor once it was done. It made that plain rice come to life, and although the roast was already moist and tender, the sauce made it a thing of beauty. We ate good. A very satisfying meal.

Keep it simple. Hubby made this hot pepper vinegar today from "The Gift". We are running low, and in about a week this will be ready to sprinkle on the greens. As an added bonus, hubby was inspired to prepare a "Peppar" type vodka to use in his Bloody Mary's in the future. We had no glass ketchup bottles handy, but I graciously emptied this bottle for my husband's use. Yes, those are my sheets on the line. I couldn't sleep without sheets dried in the fresh air. Presently there is a "Bay Studded Pork" roast (I used a butt) in the oven. It smells so good. Will update later. Annie

Yep, been there done that, and it is mighty tasty. Just make up an egg wash with milk, flour, egg, worcestershire, tobasco or pepper sauce of your choice. Slice the cabbage in long strips, dip and fry, salt and pepper. Great finger food. I make a horseradish dip with mayo and mustard and prepared horseradish on the side.

Yep. I am trying to figure out how I can sneak a cup of Maker's Mark from darling husband's bottle for the pound cake without him getting snippy. But, after all, don't cook with any alcohol you wouldn't drink, in the words of Miz Lewis!

So, if I may ask, which recipe are you looking to try here? Edna Lewis didn't say anything about having specific genes for her cooking ... guess it was not terribly elaborate in its conception ... just incredibly delicious! I may make her: Sauteed chicken with hominy casserole Creamed scallions Apple Brown Betty Edna's Biscuits Yeah, that would be a lovely dinner! ← Sounds great! I am still consulting with hubby. We eat southern style two or three times a week, and in fact I made blackberry cobbler similar to Scott Peacock's on Valentines Day, so I am considering something a little different. Maybe one of her game recipes (I've been hungry for quail lately, snicker). Maybe even one of her African style recipes. I'll have it finalized in the next day or so, as I also want to "forage" in the local farmer's market to see what is available and looks really good. We also have a family gathering planned March 6 for my stepdaughter's birthday, and I have fixed a meal of southern style vegetables for her since she was 13 (she's now 27), so I'll probably do it again then, and just pull a bunch of recipes from "In Persuit of Flavor" and remember what these foods have meant to me all my life. There will be 8 to 10 of us eating, and I get to meet my son's new girlfriend (he is so in love), and being Jewish from New Jersey it should be intresting to see her reaction to southern foods. Thank goodness she doesn't keep kosher! I don't know what it was with Mom and the egg whites. I swear the woman had cream of tartar brain waves or something. Everybody else loves souffles when I do prepare them, they just aren't "right" to me. Oh well, I'll just keep trying I suppose.

What other city can you stroll down the main street, bare foot, with your dog scattering the chickens, a mojito in one hand, jerked something on a stick, hubby smoking a fat stogie, and chat with the guy completely painted silver from head to toe, in front of the display window full of the latest S&M fashions, after you have applauded the sun for performing the feat of setting? Maybe New Orleans? We've had some great times in Key West, but we really prefer the middle keys for both the seafood and the snorkling.

Looking forward to hearing about it. I was born sans the souffle gene. I don't know why, my mother made the most amazing souffles I have ever eaten out of the most amazing things (sweet potato, pumpkin, corn, squash), and I have eaten quite a few in quite a few different places. I watched her every move, too. I was a counter monkey as a child (you get first dibs on the batter bowl that way) but I have never been able to get it quite right. To be fair, I have never been able to duplicate her divinity either. Don't get me wrong, it is good stuff and never goes uneaten, but it just isn't the same as Mom's. But she was famous for her divinity, and universally acknowledged by many a southern cook as the master. HER mother even acknowledged that, and if you knew my grandmother you would know what a big deal that is. Maybe I was born without the egg white gene? Must have come from Dad's side. Pictures please, if you don't mind. I learn so much from this message board.

Neither would the majority of areas that are designated cities, according to people who keep the demographics. I guess there is a difference between the generic term city, and the term city as in "THE City" as in the big one in New York. Which is actually a collection of boroughs. And islands.

Looks like a good solid list, but I would suggest one addition, having been in a disaster area. Liquor.

I am so looking forward to this thread! Good food makes me happy.

apparently ... The Southernmost City in the Continental USA in fact ... ← Their site should be in the .gov or .fl.us domains, not .com ← What? You tryin' to tell the Conch Republic what to do? It gets pretty dense down there Fantasy Fest week, as well. We took a miss last year, because of the storm of course, but will try to be down there this year. You are right about the exercise issue. Anybody can get off the couch and take a walk, but will they? I guess it is another one of those blame an external factor things, and I never really thought about it before. ETA Fantasy Fest Link http://www.fantasyfest.net/

May God rest her soul in peace for the joy she shared with her many food lovers. ← Sad passing. May she rest in peace. Don't forget, Edna Lewis also wrote "In Persuit of Flavor" and "Taste of Country Cooking". "In Persuit of Flavor" is one of my favorite cookbooks when I need a little nostalgia.

Yep. A really cool one, too. You should plan to go sometime, if you have never been. Plenty of conchs living there year around. I have a sisterinlaw that was raised there.

It has not been forever. It wasn't until the 1950s postwar boom that car ownership became really common in the US. Before that, people shopped in city and town centers, not shopping malls, and walked a lot. In the 1939 World's Fair, my parents remember seeing models of empty highways to Long Island in the "World of Tomorrow" tent (or some such). They were counting on all those empty roads providing efficient transportation. What they didn't figure on was that if you build a highway, people will move to locations along its length and turn it into a long parking lot. By the way, New York is by no means the only large US city that's conducive to walking. The problem, for the most part, isn't that people who live in the centers of big cities need cars to go shopping; many of them don't. The problem is the number of people who live in suburbs and suburban-sprawl cities, where the built-up center(s) is (are) mostly for business and not residential (you know, LA and several cities I haven't visited, like Houston, Dallas, Phoenix -- correct me if I'm operating under a misimpression), and generally need to drive to the mall every time they go shopping. ← Yeah, but they used a buggy or wagon to get to the town centers before they had cars. Goods were cheaper there because the railroad ran through it and stopped there. Before then, the town centers were crossroads, or in the cases of larger areas, ports. Hmm, so you don't see NYC as rather unique? I've never been anywhere like it, but there are a lot of places I haven't visited. I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist, nor would I care to be one, but haven't Americans always "sprawled" all over the landscape? It's funny you bring this up, because I was reading an article a few days ago about the "reruralization" of America. Seems there is a population shift of retirees and working people who have the technology to work remotely to more open spaces. The United States certainly never has had the population density you find in Europe except in some densely populated areas that are centers for trade. Hubby and I moved the kids to suburban Palm Beach County in the 1980s, and I am glad we did it. They have had opportunity for educational and cultural experiences and exposure to other ethnicities and foods (to try and stay on topic a bit) and we both had professional opportunities that we would have never experienced in "Urban" (that's the way the census describes it) Albany, GA. We live in a subdivision safe enough that they could enjoy the Hide and Seek, Kick the Can type games after dark. They called it "Manhunt", but it was basically Kick the Can. And when they were in Middle School, I didn't have to worry about them much because every parent in the neighborhood parented each other's kids, and they were always within earshot of somebody yelling at them if they got out of hand. To my mind, the suburbs just seem to be the compromise between being able to work for a living, now that the family farm can no longer support itself, and the need to be away from the crowds, yet still feel part of a community. The suburbs do neither perfectly, but hey, you can make do with it. In the future for us, God willing, will be a shack on an unnamed key, or maybe a trailer in the Georgia Piedmont area. With a good, big dog and a vegetable garden. Land and woods around us. Maybe a few chickens... I've got grandchildren on my mind.

I'd have to second that one. Along with sedentary lifestyles, fast food culture is a major culprit. But I still consider lack of physical activity the biggest proglem. I think of Greece, where I first went in 1975, and rarely saw fat youngsters. Certainly Greece has its share of sweet foods, and they use olive oil like it's going out of style; fried foods are fairly common as well. But they didn't drink entire liters of Coke when they ate, and servings weren't gargantuan. A gyros was something small enough that you had to get two to fill up. Fast forward to 2000, a new fast-food place opening every week it seems, loads of prepared sweetened foods on the market, the dab of yogurt on a gyros is replaced by globs of mayonnaise-based sauces, and kids are all addicted to Nintendo and Game-boy. Greece now has the highest rate of childhood obesity in all of Europe. Every time I go back to the US it seems there is a different food that has been declared evil. First it was sweets. Later it was fats and packages of things like maple syrup of all things, had big letters blaring "A FAT-FREE FOOD!" Last time back, it was carbs, and everyone was looking for "Atkins Safe" foods. But what sense does it make to eat all that stuff when you get into the car to go four blocks to the grocery store? Another thing is the way our cities are being built. I live in an older section of Istanbul. I can do all my grocery shopping on foot - there are small groceries, bakeries, butchers, cheese shops, fruit-vegetable vendors all within a few minutes walk from my house, not to mention the weekly markets with loads of quality produce at good prices. There is a reason to walk. Unfortunately, American cities are also being built more and more to accomodate cars rather than people; and even if you don't want to drive, it seems in many neighborhoods there is no convenient place to walk to; there is no choice but to drive or take a bus; neither are exercise. In light of this, finding yet another "culprit" food seems a bit absurd. ← Honestly, the majority of cities I have experienced in the US have not been conducive to foot traffic at all, and that has been forever. I think it has to do with all the real estate in the states. NYC is an obvious exception. I could probably get around in downtown Ft. Worth, TX without a car, if I could afford to live there. Key West is another city that comes to mind that you can walk and get what you need. I really can't afford to live there. I break myself on visits. Other than that, it is unfortunately a fact of life that to get around you need a car in the US. Yeah, it is kind of silly to blame this or that food. I guess it is just easier on the sensibilities to blame something outside oneself.

That would torque me pretty good as well. I've been there several times, however I wasn't looking for collards at the time. So, you can walk a couple of city blocks, buy enough straight up liquor to fry your liver out, eat a calzone, a conoli, a corned beef sandwich stacked high enough you can't get your mouth around it and enough salt in it to float an egg, and then that slice of quiche 3 inches tall just to top it off. But god forbid somebody drop a hock into a pot full of green, leafy vegetables? Somebody is not doing the math.

Wow. I enjoyed reading that Weston Price website. Thanks.

Hi bjones9942, Yeah, we have a saying in our family. If we have nothing else, we eat good! These were subsistance farmers, and running to the grocery store for a jug of vegetable shortening was just not an option. You made do with what you could produce yourself, until the cash crop came in and you could afford flour and rice, but you had to buy seed and feed as well. The reason there was so much butter and cream in the diet was because you had a milk cow that you HAD to milk every day to keep producing. Even my father's dirt poor sharecropper family had a cow and a mule, some chickens and some pigs. You had to preserve your meat because you typically only butchered in the fall when the weather cooled off. Sure, if you had too many roosters, and you almost always did, you would butcher and fry them if the preacher was coming to visit or there was a community gathering planned. If you had a hen that was too old to lay anymore, you had some chicken and dumplings. That, wild game and preserved pork was pretty much it for meat in the diet. Every once in a while a cow got butchered, but you had to be pretty wealthy and have a lot of land to raise beef cows. I contend that the high mortality rate in that population in the 1800s and early 1900s had more to do with lack of medical care than diet. Both of my parents were born at home, delivered by their grandmothers. Daddy had scarlet fever and malaria as a child. Sulfur was the only antibiotic available, and it was administered at home by your mother or granmother. I contend that there is a direct correlation in those areas of the south that you find obesity increasing in since the 1970s, and the urbanization of the southern diet. Fast food and soft drinks. The exceptional people of the rural south really pulled off minor miracles on a daily basis. Imagine cooking on a wood stove in August in South Georgia? And doing it well.

Pears, peaches, figs, plums, peaches, muscadines, watermelon, cantelope, blueberries, strawberries. Blackberries that grow wild on the fence row. Mom even went out into the woods and dug up two young mayhaw trees, took them home, and cultivated them in a low place in her yard so she wouldn't have to forage for them at jelly time. I ate a lot more blackberry cobbler than I did chitlins, I can guarantee you that. I can only remember eating chitlins maybe three times, and that was because I was around when I was very young when they were slaughtering hogs, and my grandparents generation wasted nothing. Although grandaddy used natural casings for his sausage, and I never turned one of those down, it's a little different. That would have been in the late 60s, maybe as late as the early 70s. I still bake and eat blackberry cobbler two or three times a year. Nope, now that they can and freeze during the growing season, southern families should have no problem eating that 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I've had 5 to 9 servings at one meal a couple of times a week, now that I think about it. If we had peas or butterbeans, we always had okra. If there was a ripe tomato in the county, mom found it and sliced it and put it on the table in addition to the meal. Green onions or radishes on the side when they were in season, corn relish or pickles when they weren't. Mom didn't consider corn a vegetable. She categorized it as a starch and prepared other vegetables to go with it. Then, what ever was in the process of being frozen or canned got thrown on the table as well. At the end of the week, all the leftovers got tossed into a pot with some stewed tomatoes, a little salt pork and we had vegetable soup and cornbread. It was a very frugal, very healthy way to eat. OK, now I'm hungry! ETA: No problem, that is, if they aren't busted by the fat police, and convinced that southern food is bad for them by people who do not know or understand the culture.

Glad it worked out for you. I will be making this again when my daughter comes home for spring break next month. There will be a lot more traffic through the house that first weekend. It's a bit much for me and hubby to finish off by ourselves, although I don't see any reason why it wouldn't freeze well.

Everyone in the US has an option to bring their own food. They are also supposed to have a nutritionally sound meal available to them at school (elementary, middle school, and high school), recently expanded to include breakfast as well as lunch, at little or no cost depending upon the family's financial position in all public schools. This program was conceived and designed in the beginning to both feed those that are underpriveledged, and support the farmer. Things change. I brought my own. My kids usually brought their own, but two parents working at the time, it didn't always happen. I think much of this comes down to personal choice. People can do whatever they want, put whatever they want in their bodies, and feed the kids whatever within reason. Yep, the great collard war. There is no way collards are bad for you. You can do bad things to collards, and I can stand as witness to that, but they are fundamentally cheap, plentiful, and nutritionally dense. At least certainly in the rural south, where this story takes place. Big collard fan here. I have seen them get people through hard times, and they have gotten me through a hard time or two. I still don't understand the cornbread is bad for you thing.

You got that right! I saw this on the news last night, about low-fat diets not doing a heck of a lot to stop whatever it is they were trying to stop. I don't put much stock into studies of people who've had a diet or lifestyle inflicted on them for a couple of years when they reach 60 or 70. Yanno, I'm not so sure I want to live to be 100. By all rational accounts, my family members should not have lived anywhere near the 90-100 most all of them have. If I know I'm going to live that long, I'll have to save more money now to afford yucky nursing home food in 50 years. by then, though, they should have orthopedic Manolos all over the place. ← Agreed. If nothing else, at least we have learned that inflicting culinary torture upon an old person makes no difference. They've lived this long, and by gosh, shouldn't they be enjoying thier golden years, without the added insult of oatmeal at every turn until they can't stand to see another bowl, and taking bacon away from them?

I think this is the rub. Somebody should study it.

the only place i've ever seen (or heard of) soft drinks being consumed at breakfast, is in the South. ← Wow. It was milk or juice or coffee for the grownups in our house. We were allowed a soft drink every once in a while. Sweet tea was always around (and is a pretty good source of folic acid, even though it is loaded with sugar), but the children in my family were not allowed to drink it other than at lunch. Mom said it would keep us up all night, and made us drink water.

Yeah, we both know that. But the southern diet has been so stigmatized, by people who never ate it or even looked at it closely, that people just don't get it. I guess they learn through repitition, and heard the same myths over and over again, and it is hard to get through to them. Paula Dean is doing us no favors either. Although to be fair, she makes no bones about the fact that the food she is demonstrating is over the top. And it is. She is carrying some excess weight around, but to be fair so is Mario. Her sons are in great shape though, and judging by their size, it was probably a challenge over the years to keep those two fueled up. I have a son that size. When he went to fix a sandwich, it was a loaf of bread, not a couple of slices. It was also darn near a box of cereal as opposed to a bowl. But he is very active and always has been. When he wasn't racing bicycles, he was playing football or weight training. I can see where he may have a weight issue as he gets older. In fact I am certain of it. He is going to have to struggle with reducing his intake according to his physical activity. My husband is the biggest consumer of fats in the house. Three pints of ice cream a week, miracle whip or butter on his bread and lots of it, four or five eggs at a time, fishes the ham hock out of the vegatables and claims it all for himself. He has the lowest body fat ratio, lowest cholesterol and lowest blood pressure in the house. The man is 6' tall and weighs 150 wet. He also sits in a cubby at his computer all day long, the most exercise he gets is walking to the lunch room. Sometimes he cuts the grass on the weekend. Go figure.