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66. (Not to be confused with 666): Deviled Eggs

4 Feb

Photo by Debbie R
Flickr Creative Commons

One day when my sister and I were in an antique store, she picked up a deviled egg plate and said, “Since I’m Southern, I probably should have one of these.” Alas, neither of us purchased one. Fast forward 20 years: I spot a nice glass deviled egg plate at Goodwill for $5. But did I buy it? Oh, no, I did not. Then a couple of weeks later I run across that SAME glass deviled egg plate at an antique store and they wanted $50 for it.

Right now you are probably thinking that I spend far too much time rooting through people’s old stuff. And I haven’t even mentioned my new estate sale obsession…But I digress…

I never actually tried a deviled egg until I was well into my thirties. I grew up Southern Baptist, for whom eating Satanic snack food is a sin almost on par with dancing. Ok, I made that up. Baptists eat heaps of deviled eggs (especially around Easter). But the sinful dancing part is true, in case y’all missed “Footloose.”

Why are these eggs brown around the edges? Because they're actually cookies! Photo by distopiandreamgirl
Flickr Creative Commons

I’ve kind of always had an aversion to yolks, and the only way I would eat eggs was scrambled until… My fellow Southern expats, Chad (Tennessee) and Leah (Georgia) had a brunch one Easter and there was (of course) a tray of deviled eggs. People seemed to be enjoying them immensely, and I started to feel left out – actually, the “left out” feeling began when the conversation turned to triathlons. Anyhow, I tried one. And another. And another. “Deviled eggs!” I thought. “Where have you been all my life?” Deviled eggs: “Duh! Only every gathering you’ve ever been to in the South.”

I was an immediate convert, an evangelist even. I probably went through a whole carton of deviled eggs before the novelty wore off or the cholesterol shot up. These days, I don’t make them at home much, but am always delighted to happen upon them out in the wild.

So far, I haven’t found any that tasted as heavenly as Leah’s. But I’ve used Paula Deen’s recipe, which is a pretty good approximation.

Now if only I could find a suitable deviled egg plate on which to serve them…

Paula Deen’s Traditional Southern Deviled Eggs

Ingredients
7 large eggs, hard boiled and peeled
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 ½ TBSP pickle relish (Paula specifies sweet; I prefer dill.)
1 tsp yellow mustard (French’s style, not fancy pants Gray Poupon)
Salt and pepper to taste
Paprika, sweet gherkin, or pimentos for garnishing (optional)

Directions
Halve 7 eggs lengthwise. Remove yolks and place in a small bowl.
Mash yolks with a fork and stir in mayonnaise, pickle relish, and mustard. Add salt and pepper, to taste.
Fill egg whites evenly with yolk mixture. Garnish with paprika, pickles and pimentos. Store covered in refrigerator.

Do you have a favorite deviled egg recipe? Please share!

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65. Crochet–Getting Crafty, Granny Style

3 Feb

Photo by Poppy
Flickr Creative Commons

You can’t throw a sugar packet in a Seattle coffee shop without A. Hitting a knitting group or B. Being chastised for mishandling some of our Earth’s precious resources (sugar, paper). Knitting has gotten quite trendy here in the last decade, thanks mostly – I think – to the catchy moniker “Stitch ‘n Bitch.”

Well, y’all, Southern ladies have been stitchin’ ‘n bitchin’ for centuries. Where do you think all your grandmother’s doilies and afghans came from? Walmart? I think not!

Before I get much further, I must confess that I have never knitted, nor crocheted, and I don’t exactly know how to differentiate between the two. As near as I can figure, knitting is for useful items (sweaters, socks, etc.), crocheting is mostly for decorations.

When I was growing up, crocheting was at an all time high. In the 70s, there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be prettied up with a bit of crochet. Is that an extra roll of toilet paper? No! It’s a lovely doll with a crochet “skirt.” Is that your blender? Goodness, no! Apparently an adorable chicken wandered in and took up residence on the counter. Is your broom wearing a skirt? Don’t be silly. That’s Twiggy. You know, the model? She lives here now. In our closet.

I don’t know where the obsession for turning everyday things into art projects came from. Possibly the same handbook that taught folks how to make the ubiquitous Barbie doll bake sale cake. (Don’t tell me you haven’t seen one.)

I, myself, got caught up in the crochet/knitting craze back in the early 00’s when ponchos were all the rage (remember that exhilarating five minutes?). I hooked up with someone on ebay who knitted custom ponchos (and matching hats!), and went a little overboard, buying poncho/hat combos for my mom and sister and three for myself. It was almost like having a grandmother. Though I don’t imagine most grandmothers are compensated through Pay Pal.

During the height of my own crochet frenzy, I sprang for some beautiful (and none too cheap) Alpaca yarn at the Puyallup fair. It’s around here catching dust somewhere, probably still hoping that it will spontaneously become a scarf one day. Alas.

Over the years, I’ve toyed with the idea of picking up needles and learning how to knit one, purl two. And maybe I will one of these days. Just don’t expect to see me showing up to stitch ‘n bitch night anytime soon. However, if the stitchin’ is optional, count me in!

Do you crochet? If so, could you make me one of those fancy TP covers so I can deck my bathroom out in retro style?

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61. Mud Riding (Filthy, Low Budget Entertainment)

27 Jan

Photo by Andrew Barron
Flickr Creative Commons

I’ll begin this with a caveat: I’ve never actually been mud riding. But I do know folks who have.

If you’ve never heard of mud riding, it’s a fairly simple concept: take one pick-up truck, add people, find some mud, drive around in it. Isn’t that messy? Heck, yeah. But some of the best things in life are – ribs, for example. I, myself don’t see the fun in slinging mud into every nook and cranny of my vehicle. Especially knowing that I’d eventually have to clean up the mess. I’m pretty sure the folks who were eager to pile in the pickup on Saturday night are none too keen on pitching in at the car wash on Sunday morning. But somehow the trucks do get clean. Sure, you’ll see an occasional truck-shaped mound of mud on the road, but they’re really the exception.

Photo by lostinthesparks86 Flickr Creative Commons

I couldn’t tell you how mud riding got started. I reckon it just took one person to get their truck stuck in the mud and think, “hey, this is cool.” And they told their friends, and they told their friends, and so on.

Probably girls have been known to go mud riding, but I think it’s mainly a boy sport (and I use the word “sport” very loosely). Call me sexist, but I think the desire to revel in filth rests on the Y chromosome.

If you’re tempted to try mud riding but don’t actually own a pick up, I reckon an SUV would do. I would not, however, try it with a Volkswagen Beetle (old or new) or any sort of four-door family cruiser. And whatever you do, resist the urge to take someone else’s vehicle out for a quick trip through the local mud pit. If you’d like to remain on speaking terms with them, anyway.

In fact, if you’d like to try mud riding, the best thing to do is find someone who’s already going and tag along. That’s what most people do, which I reckon is why they call it “mud riding” and not “mud driving.”

Have you ever been mud riding? Would you do it again?

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60. Groom’s Cakes (Even the Ones in Poor Taste Still Taste Good)

20 Jan

Bee-u-ti-ful groom's cake
by maggie valley club

I just recently found out that groom’s cakes are a Southern thing. Here’s how it happened:

Me: What kind of groom’s cake are y’all having?

Bride, groom and everybody at the engagement party table: Huh?

What? People get married without a groom’s cake? Seriously? The bride gets the venue she wants, the flowers she wants, the music she wants, the photographer (and the 18 million pictures) she wants, the wedding cake she wants, and so on, and the groom can’t even get a lousy chocolate sheet cake?

C’mon people!

Supposedly, in the tradition’s early days, the groom’s cake wasn’t eaten at the wedding. Slices were packaged and sent home with single girls who would put them under their pillows to induce dreams of their future husbands. Right. Like a Southern single lady with post-wedding blues is going to let a perfectly good slice of cake go to waste? Never gonna happen.

These days, the cakes are tailored toward the grooms tastes and/or interests. I’ve never actually witnessed first hand a cake shaped like a Lazy Boy recliner, TV remote, or bottle of Jack Daniels, but surely they exist. As far as flavors go, well, they don’t go far: nearly every groom’s cake I’ve encountered was chocolate.

Steel Magnolias: The movie that launched
a thousand red velvet armadillos

“Steel Magnolias” features the beat-all, end-all groom’s cake: an armadillo-shaped confection featuring a red velvet interior. Yum!

I think the groom’s cake is an excellent addition to any wedding reception (but then my motto is “the more cake, the merrier”). However, clearly, not all grooms ought to have free reign at the bakery, as evidenced by the ill-conceived collection posted on cakewrecks.com.

Did you have a groom’s cake at your wedding? What kind?

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59. How to Sound Southern: Accent the First Syllable

19 Jan

Photo by Tom Hynds, Flickr Creative Commons

I’ve never been particularly drawly, even less so having lived outside the South for lo these last 16 years. However, my Dixie tends to slip out around midnight, when I’m too tired (tarred) to add a “g” to the end of every word. You’ll also hear a drawl if I’ve had one drink too many (or maybe that’s just a slur). And if you hear me chatting with my Mississippi peeps on the phone, you might think you’ve happened upon an extremely low budget remake of Steel Magnolias. (I’ll be the one playing Ouiser.)

Considering my non-drawliness, I was surprised when Geoff called me on my pronunciation of ordinary, everyday words. He said, “Say I-N-S-U-R-A-N-C-E.” It took me a few moments to figure out what on earth he wanted me to say. (I can hardly ever spell things aloud, which is why I have a hard time around small children.) When I figure it out, I say, “INsurance.” He says, “It’s pronounced inSURance.” We argue about this for as long as it takes him to pull up some bogus pronunciation tutorial on the Internet that agrees with him.

Once he’s on a roll, he gets me to say words like HALLoween, THANKSgiving, TEEvee, UMbrella, and JUly (which sounds like JEWly).

I had never before noticed that folks in Seattle had such freakish pronunciation. teeVEE? thanksGIVING? Seriously?

Of course, I immediately consulted my Southern friends to assess their pronunciation. Sure enough, we tend shift the emphasis to the first syllables of certain words, Merriam Webster be damned!

I can’t tell you why we do it anymore than I can tell you how folks manage to stretch my name into three syllables: KEE-EE-UM.

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A Belated Holiday Post: Deep-Fried Turkey.

13 Jan

by Henry Alva, Flickr Creative Commons

As y’all know, I’m generally in favor of deep fried foods, but you’ve got to draw a line somewhere. I humbly suggest we draw it at turkey.

It would be one thing if you wanted to cut up a Butterball and batter it, but whose idea was it to just drop the whole dang turkey in a vat of boiling oil? What’s the point?

Fried turkey aficionados will tell you that deep frying produces a bird that’s moist and delicious without being greasy. I will tell you that I’ve tasted deep fried turkey alongside oven-baked turkey and the only difference I could discern was the extra hundred or so dollars spent on oil and a turkey-frying contraption.

The upside of deep fried turkey is that it frees up oven space for the requisite sweet potato casserole, dressing (not stuffing: Southerners don’t bother with actually stuffing the poultry), rolls, and green bean casserole. The downside is, well, it’s difficult to enjoy dinner when your house is burning down.

Even I, a card-carrying member of the Safety? Schmafety! Society, must confess to feeling uneasy seeing folks frying turkeys in the garage around a bunch of flammable materials. Cars, for instance. Yeah, folks know you’re supposed to fry turkeys outside, far from kids, pets, and other wildlife. But that’s also far from the kitchen. Besides which, it might be raining.

Despite all the exploding turkey stories you hear, misguided fry masters are STILL dropping half-thawed poultry into boiling oil. I don’t imagine they do it more than once, but to paraphrase P.T. Barnum, there’s a nitwit born every minute. Here’s hoping you aren’t married to one. I was going to say “here’s hoping you aren’t related to one,” but realized the odds for that are very, very slim.

Do you enjoy deep-fried turkey more than the regular variety? What am I missing?

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54. Yard Dogs, Not Pampered Pocket Pets

12 Jan

by Madame Meow, Flickr Creative Commons

When I was growing up, dogs were allowed in the house only: A. During inclement weather which involved either below-freezing temperatures or tornado warnings and B. When they were giving birth. That’s it. For roughly 358 days a year, the dogs stayed in the yard. Not necessarily in the fenced-in area of the yard, but still: In The Yard.

I’m not going to say that all Southern folks ban their canines from the house. For the last seven years or so, even my dad has let dogs have the run of the place. Actually, most of what I have to say about Southerners and dogs no longer pertains to my dad. His little dog “Happy” has managed to earn the status of favorite child. Probably because he’s never wrecked a car or asked for money.

But many Southerners treat dogs like…well, dogs. Whereas folks here in Seattle tend to treat dogs like family. Better actually. It’s not like you’re going to catch someone carrying a plastic baggie of their brother’s poop.

Here are a few cultural differences: Southern people generally don’t take dogs on vacation. They don’t take dogs shopping. They don’t take dogs to restaurants. And I’d venture to guess many Southerners have never even heard of doggie day care.

If you attend an outdoor festival in the South, you’ll see plenty of debris on the ground: beer cups, food wrappers, cigarette butts, caramel apple cores, what have you. What you won’t find is dog poop. The dog poop stays where it belongs: in the yard. With the dog.

Me & the world's best dog... RIP Wink.

Ok, I admit, I enjoy walking through a festival without stepping around (or worse, IN) other people’s garbage. And I do appreciate that folks here generally clean up after their pets in public. But couldn’t I just once go from one booth to the next without tripping over a leash? Does your dog really like craft items/concerts/the smell of patchouli that much? Wouldn’t it rather be at home chewing your shoes?

Once I went to a huge indoor antique show whose promoters felt the need to mention that “dogs are no longer allowed inside the Showplex.” I don’t know what disturbed me more: that they once WERE or that some people snuck them in anyway.

I don’t want to come off as an evil dog hater. I actually like most dogs, in the same way that I like most children: when they are at home and well behaved.

What do y’all think? Should a dog be something folks don’t leave home without?

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46. The Andy Griffith Show–Whistle While You Watch

28 Jun

Before “Splash,” before “Apollo 13,” before “Happy Days,” an adorable, six-year-old Ronny Howard charmed Southerners (and Yankees alike) as Opie Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show.” He’s maybe the first and last non-Southerner to emulate the accent without causing native’s ears to bleed while screaming “The horror! The horror!” Or maybe that’s just me. Even now, I’m nostalgic for his “Awww Paaawww…” I have never actually heard a Southerner refer to their father as “Paw,” but who cares? Opie can do no wrong. (In case you are wondering, I believe fathers in the South are most frequently called “Daddy” pronounced “Dead-E.”)

For some reason, Southerners got into the habit of calling Andy Griffith “Andy Griffin.” (Hey, maybe that explains why I can never remember whether the infamous D-lister is called Kathy “Griffith” or Kathy “Griffin.”) I, for one, always wondered why the show was called “Andy Griffith” rather than “Andy Taylor.” Yes, I have since figured it out.

Growing up in the boondocks, I was always a little jealous of the town folks in Mayberry. Where was our bullet-less deputy? Our lovable drunk? Our chatty barber? Sure, as a teenager I wanted my MTV like a good Gen-Xer should. But when I was little, I wanted my Aunt Bee. (Although I must say my aunt Tommie was infinitely more fun. Especially when she switched the contents of her all-day giant sipping cup from Coke to wine coolers, due to the “New Coke” debacle.)

The most lasting lesson I learned from Andy Griffin was Barney’s motto: “Nip it! Nip it in the bud!” Of course it took more than a few non-nipped situations to make me realize the wisdom. But these days, I am quick to get out the scissors. There’s a reason one of my favorite things to say is “Goodbye.” (However, I should note that this is also one of my least favorite things to say.)

After a decade and a half living as a Southern ex-pat, you will not likely find me whistling “Dixie.” But I still do a mean rendition of the Andy Griffin theme song. It’s almost as good as this parrot’s.

Who’s your favorite Mayberrian?

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36. Manners AKA Acting Like You’ve Got Some Raisin’

6 Apr

For Southern children, one of the most often heard phrases after “Don’t feed THAT to the dog!” is, of course, “Mind your manners.”

My apologies in advance to Yankee-type folks who might take offense, but Southern people are, in general, far more genteel than y’all. We can’t help it. It’s how we’re raised.

We don’t rant and rave when things don’t go our way. We figure out how to get what we want…subversively.

For example: Say a non-Southern child is denied a cookie. He/she might start hollering and carrying on (although non-Southerners probably wouldn’t call it “hollering” or “carrying on”) saying, “I WANT a COOKIE! I want a cookie NOW!! If you don’t give me a cookie NOW, you will RUE the day, BITCH!”

Ok, now say a Southern child is denied a cookie. He/she might make a pouty face and say, “Oooooooookaaaaaaaay…” Then immediately run to Dad who is distracted by college football and say, “Can I have a cookie? Thanks!” And then sneak back into the kitchen and take a handful.

Naturally, this carries over into adulthood. For Southern women, in particular, not being “nice” ranks among the seven deadly sins right below wearing something tacky.

Don’t misunderstand me, though. Southern women are just as catty (if not more so) as their Northern sisters. They just don’t let anybody know it.

The basic rule is you can say whatever godawful thing you like about somebody as long as you end on a high note.

A Southern conversation might go something like this:

Dixie Girl 1: “Have you seen Wanda lately? She’s growing an extra ass.”

Dixie Girl 2: “What? To keep her three chins company?”

Dixie Girl 3: “And that dress she wore on Sunday? Did she make it out of couch cushions?”

Dixie Girl 1: “Nope. Not enough material.”

All three: “Bwaaaaah Haaaaaah Haaaaah Haaaaaaah!!”

Dixie Girl 2: “She does make really good chicken and dumplings though.”

Dixie Girl 1: “I KNOW! Aren’t they the best?”

Etc.

Hypocritical? Perhaps. Sneaky? Probably.

But, hey, at least we’re polite.

Do you remember to act like you’ve got some raisin’? Why or why not?

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14. Cornbread, Baked in Cast Iron the Way God Intended

12 Jan

If you’ve never lived in the South, chances are you’ve never eaten cornbread. Maybe you’ve ordered “cornbread” at a barbeque joint or some Southern-style restaurant, but nine times out of ten, you’ll get something that ought to be called “corncake.”

On line for dinner at a writers conference years ago, I noticed they were serving sweet cornbread. (And, yes, you can tell the difference just by looking at it.) The girl in front of me said, “that’s not cornbread; that’s YANKEE PONE.” And that’s what I’ve called it ever since.

When I was little, my mom made cornbread in a special pan so that it looked like little sticks of corn. Later, she moved on to the simpler cast iron skillet. This made the cornbread easier to butter, but the sticks were just so cute. However, neither of these iterations of cornbread contained a single teaspoon of sugar. And they were both made with self-rising white cornmeal, which I’ve yet to find outside the South.

My mom was never one to use a recipe when it came to making bread-like items, namely biscuits and cornbread. The one time she did follow a recipe – a three page one for my aunt tommie’s croissants – she swore she would never do it again. Her croissants were flat as folks used to think the earth was, but still they tasted pretty good.

I tried watching my mom to see if I could duplicate her recipes, and imagine my surprise upon finding that the secret ingredient to cornbread is bacon grease. (And people wonder why I’m leery of bringing my vegetarian with vegan tendencies boyfriend home with me.) Not only are all the vegetables seasoned with meat, turns out the bread is too.

Over the years, I’ve developed an appreciation for what passes as cornbread around these parts. Especially the mix they sell at Trader Joe’s. Though now that I have publicly declared this, they will probably discontinue the product. Still, no matter how yummy sweet cornbread can be, it just doesn’t go with chicken ‘n dumplings. Which I suppose is irrelevant considering how rarely one stumbles across chicken ‘n dumplings in the Pacific Northwest.

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