Spring time in the South

[wcmckinney]

As we seem to be turning the corner in the Carolinas into the Spring I was wondering if there are any Springtime rituals/favorites y'all might have that involve Southern eating and drinking?

I have some friends that forsake bourbon from here to the fall, this seems unduely harsh to me but nevertheless along the lines of what I am asking.

Any thoughts or stories?

[douginvirginia]

Two things come to mind.

First, is the joy - and the anticpation - of putting in my garden. I've got the onion sets, radishes, and several lettuces in now. Have a load of aged horse manure & sawdust ready to till in, but it may be two weeks with all the rain we've had. Tomatoes and eggplants have sprouted in the sun room, they'll need to be transplanted to larger peat pots in a week or so.

The second is morel hunting which will begin in another 2 weeks or so. The old timers here call them Merkles - as in 'it's a merkle when you find a good bunch of them'.

[Lan4Dawg]

checking the mint for new shoots in order to have plenty for Kentucky Derby Day; watching the blue berries bloom and anticipating how many you will have; following the Fuss around to out of the way nurseries, plant shows, garden stores, &c finding the best and cheapest tomatoes, beans, pepper, & squash plants; checking the temperature every night to see if it is still too cold for the basil to be transplanted out side; purchasing a big block of sharp cheddar, Duke's mayonnaise, red pimentos and white bread for pimento cheese sandwiches b/c the Masters' is just around the corner and you can not really enjoy the Masters' w/o a fresh home made pimento cheese sammich; knowing that finding zucchini in the market at over $1.49/lb will soon be but a mere memory; anticipating what to do w/ the scads of zucchinis that will find their way to your house come July/August; realizing while frying bacon that in just a couple of months tomatoes will be ideal for the perfect "BLT"; sweet corn, sweet corn, sweet corn; listening for the unmistakeable sound of a tiller being started--they have a different pitch fr/ other small engines; finding the first earth worms on the concrete and gently moving them to the garden area; one day you return fr/ the wine store and realize that the case you just purchased contains no cabs or other big reds but is full of sauv blancs, chenin blancs, beaujolais, &c and you did not even know you were buying that way; boiled pea nut vendors begin to show up on country roads and those little road side farm stands are getting a fresh coat of paint as they start opening; you spend fifteen minutes watching as a honey bee makes her rounds fr/ blossom to blossom and realize it is the first of the season that you can recall; one day you come home fr/ work and it dawns on you that you crave a big glass of fresh squeezed lemon ade and do not really know why; just as you finish dinner you hope there is some left over fried chicken b/c it would be awfully good served cold w/a big scoop of potato salad while you are sitting in the park at lunch the next day; you have a hankering for pesto made fresh fr/ the garden; you brush the Carolina jessamine away fr/ the mail box and suddenly have a serious craving for a Dr. Pepper; you open all the windows in the kitchen while preparing dinner and take twice as long to make it as you enjoy the breezes and noise fr/ out side; one day you find that you do not want to turn on the oven b/c the kitchen will just get too hot and you start searching for dishes that can be made stove top; you realize that soon--very, very soon--you are going to completely ruin the front of a white shirt by eating a tomato fresh fr/ the garden and you can barely control your mouth watering in anticipation.

in loving memory of Mr. Squirt (1998-2004)--the best cat ever.

[racheld]

Lan4Dawg:

You took me HOME!!! Throw in the smell of dirt turned by a tractor four fields away, the swish of firstgreen weeping willow sweeps, the jeweled pages of a Burpee catalog, the peepfrog symphonies at sundown, and the morning mist over the miles-away treeline, and you must have lived in Mississippi.

Thanks,

Fellow Worm-Mover and Bee Watcher

[DTBarton]

As we seem to be turning the corner in the Carolinas into the Spring I was wondering if there are any Springtime rituals/favorites y'all might have that involve Southern eating and drinking? 

I have some friends that forsake bourbon from here to the fall, this seems unduely harsh to me but nevertheless along the lines of what I am asking.

Any thoughts or stories?

←

I'm glad another poster mentioned Derby Day, how can you forsake bourbon until after the Derby?

I have known some old timers that didn't drink brown liquor of any type between Memorial Day and Labor Day (gin and tonic season, you know), same idea, I believe.

I know many people that consider the eating of fresh shad and shad roe to be a southern spring time ritual. I like the first days that are nice enough to long cook something on the grill, love that first rack of ribs or pork shoulder. Definitely concur with the garden anticipation and bud/bee/bird watching. Trophy rockfish season is traditional here in Maryland, starts April 16th, looking forward to that first grilled rockfish fillet.

We had a ritual at college in South Carolina, but it was personal. Several of us would get a bottle of vodka and some bags of grapefruit on the first nice warm afternoon (usually early/mid March) and sit in the sun in shorts and drink Greyhounds.

[racheld]

This weekend took us to Cincinnati on Friday, with a downtip ending in Louisville for the night. The scenery was a marvel of cloudpuffs echoed by the round whiteness of blossoming fruit trees. We rode and looked our eyes full; we strolled the gravelheat of outdoor fleamarkets waking from their hibernation. We bought a weeping willow from a vendor at one market, scooching its ten feet of fragility oh, so carefully into the hatchback, ending with tickling tendrils on our arms and faces when it would spring loose from the intricate weavings we had architectured to hold it fast. A trip to Home Depot for a new shovel also brought us a box of four varieties of grapevine, snugged into a fourpack illustrated as nicely as the label on any bottle.

We've taken out the ferns and cacti, showered and watered and misted and soaked the housebound, Spring-hungry plants with great gushes of cold hosewater, and now the grill is sending up lovely aromas of two yard-lengths of baby ribs. Two artichokes to share are simmering in a lemony bath; a hefty, broad-shouldered sweet onion is chilling, awaiting the slicing and anointment with Blue Plate mayo, a sprinkle of salt, and the nestling between two cushiony slices of Wonder Bread.

We don't live in the South any more, but we create our own bubble of it and find it where we can.