True Grits was a great movie! LOL
Not to the rural part I take it.
QFT.
As to food:
I’m originally from southern California. Grits are great. Though I’d never seen nor eaten them before I moved to Oklahoma after grad school. In fact they’re the only cooked cereal I really enjoy. Oatmeal is just plain nasty snotty stuff and cream of wheat is sorta like half-assed grits.
The rest of the deep-fried cholesterol is nasty. Though a good dry rub BBQ is pretty tasty once on awhile.
Yeah, this. Of all the things about the South to dislike, this is the one. It is much more true between women, by the way. My God, they won’t tell you one single thing straight, you just have to guess (or if you’re Southern, I suppose you just know).
Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.
I also loathe the climate and the politics.
I like grits though.
No. In the USA, you are in the Southwest. The South is Dixie.
Also, okra is great if it’s cooked right.
Are there any places in the south that get four distinct seasons, or is it warm most of the year?
Beats me. I like them. With butter, of course. And sometimes cheese. And I like mixing mine with my scrambled eggs, but that’s family thing, not a southern thing. I was raised on them, though. And don’t like cream of wheat or oatmeal. Maybe people mostly just only like their own porridges.
Except South Florida still suffers from the oppressive humidity, monotonous weather, and huge bugs that are endemic to the South. Plus, you end up outvoted whenever a progressive measure is put to a statewide vote.
Which is (part of) why I moved from Ft. Lauderdale to Denver. Best decision I ever made.
I do miss good barbeque, though.
Same here. I pretty much despise hot cereals in general. However, between instant grits (even this California boy knows it takes twenty minutes or more for water to soak into a grit) in a couple of restaurants and polenta, I can’t imagine that real grits are so much different that I wouldn’t like 'em.
I’ve lived here most of my life, and about the only thing more irritating than a goddamned northerner sneering at the south is my goddamned neighbors giving them reason to sneer.
So yeah, the South has a shitload to answer for: David Duke to Robert E Lee to Roy Moore, just to get started. Racism, obesity, wealth inequality, religious bigotry, there’s a lot going on that’s awful down here.
But if we have to claim George Wallace, we also have to claim Martin Luther King, Jr. If we have to claim Robert E. Lee, we also have to claim Harriet Tubman. If Lynyrd Skynyrd is ours, so is Bessie Smith. A lot of folks–mostly white folks in my experience–tend to think “white people” when they think of the south, forgetting that a lot of folks down here aren’t white and are just as southern, and that just as a lot of the worst of our nation’s history originated here, so did a lot of the best.
There’s a ton to criticize about the South, but if one criticizes the South as a whole, be prepared for pushback–not because we’re nationalist yahoos, but because one is being kind of a bigoted dummy.
Yup. I made buttermilk biscuits for my school’s soul food potluck last night (combined with an event examining racial disparities in our city, strangely this event was not organized by Northerners but by my neighbors), and grits for dinner tonight. Our eating is mighty fine.
Well, the weather is fine so girls wear a lot of shorts and skirts ( sometime you just need air to circulate properly)! And there is a real reason to own a convertible. And nothing is better than sitting on the deck drinking iced tea. A cold beer can’t be cold enough. Fishing on a pond is very fun. The catfish is another great food product. And…wait for it…you can get real moonshine!
You can get real moonshine in the north too. I’ve had it.
I see you adopted “hateful,” so you were successfully converted to Southern. Just remember, it’s synonyms with “ugly,” “ill,” and “sorry.”
Your best bet is any part with elevation. Like in the Ozark or Appalachian Mountains.
I live in, and prefer, the big red part in the west. But the small red parts to the east might be okay weather-wise.
What do you mean by real moonshine? Like the kind that might make you go blind, and comes without any labeling?
Every decent liquor store in the non-south will have “moonshine,” (the fancy term is “corn whiskey”), though you might not count it.
Would you care to post the recipe? I still haven’t mastered fried chicken. FWIW, I have a 10-inch cast-iron chicken fryer.
On the surface, the people are nice to you but if you are speaking with more than a 100 word vocabulary they think you are uppity. I think the ones I met have had a bad education. One asked me if Maine was in the United States. They are gullible. If someone wants a vote they come to town and play the guitar. They give out a free pint of whiskey and truck you off to the polls to vote for their guy. If someone acts like a “good ole guy” they will believe anything you say. the Chinese restaurants have signs saying “Jesus Saves” because you have to be a Krees-tin to get any business. I worked for IRS and believe me the companies there know all the tricks and laugh at how dumb people are there.
I could never find a good dentist. I think all the “C” students move there. An orthopedic surgeon told me not to lose weight as it made my hip replacements stronger carrying around all that weight. really.
there is a very high use of alcohol and drugs in the area around where I lived in W.
VA. People would pee in public. A new fast food came to town and in a few weeks it was dirty, and the food was carelessly wrapped. They should have checked out the people available to work. They prefer unemployment or disability to actually working.
It’s hard to understand them sometimes. They pronounce “right here” “right cheer.”
Words In The South-Jeff Foxworthy
That Denver has moved from hard-right like Phoenix to semi-Progressive is one of the mostly-untold stories of demographic/political shifts in the country. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it not being full of drawling cowboys bitching about the hated Bureau of Land Management. The rest of Colorado OTOH …
Thank you for a balanced and sensible post. It is easy to forget the good.
Grits took me a really long time to warm up to. They were like nasty little sandy grains of…something…served hot with butter. I did not see the appeal at all. I have finally come to love them, though. They have to be cooked exactly right, and served with butter, cheese, and diced tomatoes.
Why do these threads about the South always come off sounding like this?