Yankees writing about Southern Food

[tryska]

In addition to Yankees being unable to write about southern food, I'd like to point out that white people have nothing to add to any conversation about black food, culture, history or society (and vice-versa); men writing about women is pointless; women writing about men is absurd; the Franco-American divide is well-chronicled and it's probably best that we don't even think about one another; BOH's opinions regarding FOH are feckless, FOH observations of BOH are jejune; while living inside the Beltway I noticed that provincial criticisms of our ways was borderline farcicle, while living outside the Beltway it occurred to me that those back inside had an alarmingly insular and myopic view.  And don't even get me started on Californians, New Yorkers and farm-state peasants, each of which group inhabits a kind of socio-geodesic dome that so refracts information coming in, that their occasional journeys beyond the glass are no more real than Alice's.

In fact, unless you've spent a lifetime gazing at, and are possibly genetically related to, the navel, demographic group or brisket about which you are tempted to write, don't bother -- you're only fooling yourself.

←

word.

[Mayhaw Man]

Much as I love my boiled peanuts, I'll lob a bucket of them the next time I read another article about the South in a mainstream food publication that uses that approach.

And I'd make it two buckets for Colman, Jane/Michael and Ruth.

←

Ditto for people covering one more place that has the "best fried chicken" and those that use the phrase "down home" in any way, shape, or form (this includes Southerners, by the way).

You going to Oxford? It's only a week away, you know.

[Holly Moore]

Guilty on both counts, and on a good day both phrases in the same write-up.

Fortunately I really like boiled peanuts.

[ruthcooks]

Will we ever stop fighting the Civil War?   

←

People who live in or are native to the North (or anywhere "not Southern") do not call Southerners "Rebels," nor do they call themselves Yankees. They call themselves Americans. To most of them, the Civil War is a chapter in a history book they were forced to read in 7th grade. Or perhaps the setting of "Gone with the Wind."

Most Northerners have no prejudice against Southerners, although having lived over 35 years in the South I don't find the reverse to be true. While living in Tennessee, I belonged to two Gourmet clubs with a Southern teacher. She thought she was quite untouched by prejudice because she had married a man from Ohio, and--her ultimate proof!--because on the playground her children played on the side of the South. I didn't get that for a while. Then I realized that she meant the kids were playing North vs. South, a game which no Northern kid would "get" much less play.

Another time, a real estate saleman made remarks to me by phone about having to follow some backward clients around and said by way of explanation "They're Yankees, ya know." Deathly silence. Then he said, "Well, maybe you are too." I declined to look at his property. On another occasion, I was talking to the elderly father of a Southern friend, and think the conversation centered around a painting he had of a Confederate general. I sort of drifted off, and when I came back to the conversation he was talking about some old sumbitch this and some old sumbitch that. Finally I realized to my amazement that he was talking about Abraham Lincoln.

The war is over. I lost relatives on both sides. On both sides, our soldiers are all dead. Our soldier's children are dead. Most of their grandchildren are dead. The fierce Southern pride lives on, and nowhere does it manifest itself more than in the defense of Southern food.

I'm qualified to write. I didn't fight, but I've been through the war.

[kpurvis]

You going to Oxford? It's only a week away, you know.

←

Sadly, not this year. Budgets and schedules are both tight. Sorry I won't be there to tell you in person how much your posts after the storm moved me. Give yourself a virtual hug around the neck from me.

[Mayhaw Man]

You going to Oxford? It's only a week away, you know.

←

Sadly, not this year. Budgets and schedules are both tight. Sorry I won't be there to tell you in person how much your posts after the storm moved me. Give yourself a virtual hug around the neck from me.

←

Virtual hugs, well, they just aren't the same. I'll miss seeing you though. It's going to be a little bit of a release for some of us and thank God for that. Even going to the grocery store is a military operation these days.

[Bill Miller]

personally, as an occasional texan, i don't think southerners know anything about bbq either.

←

Well, many people in the South consider the other white meat to be BBQ, as well. There is one little niche that even loves goat as the meat of choice (but it's pretty far up North, now that I think about it-this situation could be the result of outside influence).

And if it makes you feel any less like The Lone Ranger-I still don't get cooking a hog to perfect and then chopping it up and pouring vinegar all over it as if you were trying to innoculate it from some evil disease. I am trying to be more accepting of this though. It's a growth process, I suppose.

←

That's why most of us in Texas don't even put sauce on our brisket. If done right it doesn't need it.