If you’ve shopped at any of our local farmers markets recently, you know the season of Southern eating has arrived.
In the era of the modern supermarket, there is hardly anything that is out of season. Somebody somewhere is growing the fruits and vegetables we love. Of course, that often requires those foods to be picked before they ripen and shipped from far-flung places, a journey of up to a week or more.
There are places, I suspect, where people are unable to discern between a shipped tomato and one picked ripe right off the vine from your garden or a local farm. We Southerners pity these people for their ignorance.
We know now is the time for the best of Southern eating.
My dad had one of the best vegetable gardens in the county, a solid acre of southern staples – tomatoes, potatoes, greens, okra, green beans, purple hull peas, butterbeans, squash, cabbage, radishes, onions, peppers, watermelons, cantaloupes and occasionally sweet corn (when it didn’t burn up for lack of rain, which made it a 50/50 proposition). It was about this time every year that all of those wonderful vegetables were in season at the same time.
One year, dad even raised a couple of hogs, which meant virtually everything that made it to the dinner table came from his own supply.
The hogs turned out to be way too much bother. First, my brother and I regarded them as pets. So when Huey and Louie met their untimely demise, we were inconsolable. Second, Huey and Louie were forever plotting and carrying out daring escapes no matter how well fortified my dad could make the hog pen. Third, my dad was determined to get the maximum out of his investment, which meant we were served pigs ears, pigs tail, pigs feet, chitlins (aka chitterlings among Yankees) along with the actually digestible chops and bacon. We ate everything but the oink, as the saying goes.
The big meal after church on Sunday was the reward for all the misery of those sunburned summers full of hoeing, spraying, picking, shelling, preserving, etc.
Whenever somebody is executed by the state, a note is made about the prisoner’s last meal. Usually, the requests are for steak, lobster, hamburgers, fried chicken or pizza, followed by pie and ice cream.
To each his own, but none of that stacks up to my idea of the perfect last meal (although fried chicken could be a part of it).
My ideal last meal is a Sunday dinner (called lunch outside the South) in late June or July. It consists of stewed potatoes, tomato slices, purple hull peas (with homemade pepper sauce), fried okra (or fried green tomatoes), a Vidalia onion wedge, cornbread and a fried pork chop (or fried chicken) and iced tea.
A few notes:
First, to be considered an authentic Southern meal, two of the items must be fried.
Second, I would like to clear up some confusion about cornbread by defining the term. Cornbread is made in a cast iron skillet with white cornmeal. It is relatively flat and dense. It is not sweet. It is served in wedges. These instructions can be found in the Bible, I think, probably in one of those books nobody ever reads like Numbers or Obadiah.
If your cornbread is made in a sheet cake pan with yellow cornmeal and is fluffy, sweet, as tall as a cupcake and served in squares, you are not having cornbread. You’re having cake.
Have a little dignity, people.
Finally, in the last half century, some Southerners have taken to broccoli, zucchini, Brussels sprouts and other fancy foreign vegetables that my mama could never spell and wouldn’t know how to cook. I guess it never hurts to broaden our horizons, but let’s not forget the Foods of our Fathers.
My ideal Southern meal may not be exactly what you prefer. A case can be made for greens (mustard or collard), green beans, mashed potatoes, squash, cream corn and, perhaps, macaroni and cheese. You’ll get no push-back for substituting buttermilk biscuits for cornbread. I am not a tyrant, after all.
But whatever you want on your plate, do it now while all of these wonderful vegetables are in season. If you don’t grow them yourself, you can easily find them at our local farmers markets. They will appreciate your business.
Bon Apeitit! (which is French for Let’s Eat!)
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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