What you’re missing, ftg, is that these people are expressing true Southern hospitality - they aren’t just asking how you are doing, they’re asking how your spouse, children, parents and/or siblings are doing. You know, your folks.
BTW, there is a difference between how pen and pin are pronounced, but you have to grow up with it to hear it.
Liberal, I don’t often agree with you, and most of the time, for one reason or another, your posts irritate the hell out of me, but for this one, I think I could come to love you. 
Proper cornbread: Old-school southern cooks actually don’t measure anything out. It’s usually done purely by feel. Every woman I’ve ever known in my family has made cornbread for so long that they just know when the batter’s perfect. Made it in the same pan, too. I currently have my great-great-great grandmother’s black-iron skillet (it may actually go back further than that) in which I make cornbread. It’s well over 100 years old.
Somewhere along the line, however, I managed to approximate a “real” recipe from watching my mom. She also uses a bit of wheat flour in it to give it body.
3 cups stone-ground corn meal (you can use self-rising instead of leavening.)
1 cup flour (ditto on the self-rising bit.)
2 large eggs.
pinch salt
about 1 Tbsp sugar
2 cups WHOLE buttermilk (do NOT skimp and use that filthy low-fat shit.)
Mix ingredients and set aside. Lightly grease skillet with lard. Melt 6 Tbsp lard in skillet on eye of stove. When lard begins to bubble, Transfer half by spoonfuls to the batter, mix batter, then pour batter into hot skillet. Immediately transfer to COLD oven, and set it to Bake at 500 degrees.
By the time the oven reaches 500 and cuts off, your cornbread should be done. Test with a clean knife. Invert on a plate and admire the spectacularly golden, thick-crusted piece of art you just produced.
But not long enough for it to get cold. Split and serve with butter.
As for barbecue, there’s a legendary tar-paper shack in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, called Dreamland (the other locations are pretty good, but the original’s the best) that serves the following:
BBQ ribs slathered in mouth-watering sauce,
White bread,
Beer,
Co-cola.
That’s all. Oh, wait. I think they have a rack of potato chips too. But who the hell needs those?
I took a group of Boston Yankees there one time. Granted, they were a little put-off by the pack of feral dogs in the gravel parking lot fighting over the chewed-over bones, but by the time they left, they all had sauce on their chins and stars in their eyes.
This entire thread is making me drool. Damn, I don’t leave work for another hour and I’m broke. This is going to suck.
Zakalwe, you are correct, Jensen Beach is the next town north of Stuart just as you cross the river. It’s always cool to hear from someone who has heard of my home town, especially on the boards.
Oh, and one other thing: after you’re done with that cornbread, if you wash that iron pan in soap, you’re liable to be run out of town.
Scrub out the crusties with a plastic scrubby, rinse with water, and put back in a warm oven for an hour or so. Then, lightly grease the inside, put a paper towel in it, and put the thing up. Soap should never, ever touch it. I thought my mom was going to commit homicide when she saw my Yankee sister-in-law submerge her iron skillet in soapy water once. It was damn near a family emergency.
Hah! I learned it the same way when I was a kid in Alabama. Although, I suppose that means that when I say (and I often do) “all y’all,” I’m being horribly redundant.
Oh yes. You get more crunchy bits (crust) that way. Love it, love it!
Oh man - this post gave me instant homesickness.
Spent darn near my entire life in the South. Moved from Georgia to California last year.
The ghost of my dead grandmother just swatted me upside the head. The above recipe for cornbread should read “2 cups corn meal, 1 cup flour” for a total of three cups.
Sorry, Memaw (ow!)
I’ve travelled all over the U.S. and the world, and I’ve never encountered anything as magical as a Southern snowfall.
All traffic ceases (to the scorn of Yankees, who apparently take pride in working too much); there are no plows, so the snow just stays. The city goes quiet, with a blanket of snow muffling all sound. People walk to the (grocery, video, liquor) store. Since no one has proper snow gear, everyone basically wears about nine layers of summer clothing.
All schools and most businesses close. City fields get crisscrossed with dog and squirrel tracks in the snow. Everything you do that day will be etched in your memory, ennobled by the most magical phrase a Southerner knows:
Snow day.
Sorghum (pronounced “sorgrum” syrup) was more traditional when I was growing up.
My NC barbeque story:
A few years ago I was camping just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I thought I’d ride my bike to Linville Falls, about 25 miles from my campsite. At the time, a 50 mile round trip was something I could do without too much trouble. But I somehow didn’t take the fact that I was in the mountains into account.
By the time I got to Linville Falls, I knew I wasn’t going to make it back to the campground that night. Luckily I had my wallet and credit card, so I stowed up in a motel there. And I was absolutely STARVING. Apparently I’d burned a lot of calories on the ride over there. I didn’t have much cash, so I just ordered the barbeque sandwich.
The waitress set it down in front of me, I picked it up and took a big bite… and froze. There was cole slaw on my barbeque sandwich! :eek:
I had a big Moment of Decision – do I follow my upbringing and all that I know is holy, or do I eat this sandwich?
I was starving – I ate it.
But only that once.
zakalwe, your post about watching the Braves games with your grandad just about brought tears to my eyes - I was born and raised in Georgia, but I spent a lot of the summers with my grandparents in East Tennessee. My grandad was the biggest Braves fan, and my brother and I would sit with him and watch the games together every night on TBS. My family spent the entire '91 and '92 seasons wishing that he was still around to see them winning.
Also, is calling your grandparents names like Mamaw and Papaw a southern thing? I’ve never known any non-Southerners that called their grandparents anything similar to that.
Mamaw and Papaw are definitely a southern thing.
Just like calling all soda “Coke”, all diapers “Pampers” and using the word “license” as a plural. As in “Mah license was expahred, so I had to go down to the motor VEhicle to get them renewed.”
"Tea" is hot.
“Iced tea” is cold.
“Sweet tea” is an abomination.
gasp
Sweet tea is what the Israelites drank when they ate their manna and quail when they were tromping around the desert with Moses!!!
Gaah! This thread is making me hooongry!
Anyway, only a true Southerner knows what hash tastes like after its been slowly simmered all day and night in a big stockpot and then dished out of the back of their Grandpa’s pickup truck at Homecoming Dinner.
And that REAL macaroni and cheese has a whole block of sharp cheddar cheese added in.
Archergal, I’d never seen slaw on a barbecue sandwich before I moved to Memphis, but here, that’s the standard way a sandwich is prepared. I was a little put off by it at first, but now I’m totally hooked; if a shoulder sandwich doesn’t come with slaw on it, I’ll put it on there myself.
OK, now I’m hungry…
My tea pitcher was given to me by my grandmother shortly after my wedding in 1980. She had used it since her wedding in 1937. It is still in use, every single day. The difference is that our pitcher is made from a very heavy, very utilitarian, very work-a-day but beautifully crafted glass. Granny said that when she got it, it was the finest, most dear (read: expensive) thing she had ever touched, let alone owned, in her life.
I’m starting to think that it should be retired so that my daughter can have it, intact, when she grows up and has a home of her own, if not to use, to have as a family heirloom.
Which is where the Jiffy mix is vindicated; it clearly states that it is corn muffin mix and therefore, use of it to make cornbread is at your own peril. Why anyone would use a mix to make cornbread when it’s as simple as it could be to mix some up from scratch – without sugar, or with only the slightest bit if you absolutely must – completely eludes me.
I ain’t getting into barbecue with y’all. Every time I see someone biting into a sandwich piled high with shredded up dead pig – with or without slaw – I thank God a little harder for my decision to eschew flesh. :eek:
Oh, piffle. Everyone knows they drank sarsaparilla.
You have a point, Daniel. That’s why the correct word choice is actually no longer directly, but dreckly. Much less specific with a natural hint at dra-a-a-ging.
jackelope, you certainly understand snow days. Even though I’ve retired from teaching, I still make it a point to celebrate on the days when schools are out. We didn’t have much snow at all last winter. Nashville missed out by only ten miles a couple of times. Nothing to write home about. That all changed on April the 13. I had already boarded the plane in Nashville for the first leg of my journey to Paris when we had the beginning of the prettiest snowfall. Big flakes coming down fast. We had to have the plane de-iced! Then we flew north and left my only snow behind.
One of the things that I like best about my fellow Southerners is that we tend to have a sense of humor about ourselves. The OP mentioned some that might feel “embarrassed” to be Southern. If there are such Southerners, I don’t know them. And they would have to be reacting to the ignorance of others – not to any reality of Southern life in general.
BTW, when I came back from Paris and landed at the airport in Philadelphia, the first thing I asked for in the restaurant was a big glass of iced tea. The young waitress said, “It’s sweetened. Is that okay?” I swear I heard violins and angels.
Roy Blount Jr. wrote a column in The Oxford American about this phenomenon once; he discussed how Southerners–even those who live in big cities, have college degrees, and can quote Shakespeare–like to drawl our words and call ourselves hillbillies and scream ourselves hoarse at SEC football games.
The rest of the country doesn’t seem to understand that we’re just doing it because it’s fun; as a result, we have to be careful doing it around Yankees who don’t know we’re kidding. He ended the column with a brilliant paraphrase of Thomas Jefferson:
“For a Southerner, eternal vigilance is the price of irony.”
Well, that’s thay damned Yankee frugalness coming out. I make cornbread so infrequently (once or twice a year) that buying a big thing of cornmeal is a waste. It’ll be full of critters the second time U use it.
::Hang head low:: I’ll also admit to using Bisquick for biscuits